THE LAW OF RE-BIRTH.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 November 1922, Page 6

THE LAW OF RE-BIRTH.

THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE. I At the Theosophical rooms on Thursday evening, an interested audience listened to a lecture by Alias Selene Oppenheimer on “The Law of Re-birth ” One of the objects of the Theosophical Society, said the lecturer, was to investigate the unexplained laws of Nature, and re-incarnation. The law of rebirth, was a law of nature. Amongst Western Peoples, who were more materialistic and less philosophic than those of the East, this law of re-birth was not an accepted fact, but was generally regarded as a theory only. But there were so many things in the life of everyone that could not be explained along the usual lines of thought that one was simply driven to probe further into the matter. The lecturer instanced a number of examples to show that all men were not equally evolved, and the only way to account for such oases was to bear in mind the evolution of the soul as well as the evolution of the body. An African nature was instanced as a child ; sou] in a man’s body, and the lecturer urged her hearers to bear that aspect of life in mind in dealing with others. Rc-incarnation accounted for many things which heredity could not explain —a “black sheep’’ in an otherwise irreproachable family record, and so on. The lecturer went on to explain that the spiritual man, the man “that was, that is. and will be,” left the physical body at death, functioned for a period in the astral plane, or plane of desires, ( and then, after a longer or shorter period in the heaven returned to the earth again of his own volition. The purpose of this law of recurring births was that the evolving soul might “become perfect,” an impossibility if the soul had but one short life of even a hundred years. They did not become accomplished scholars in one day or one year at school, but must return day after day. So with the evolving soul: each life might be likened to a day in school. During the present life period on earth man was creating capabilities which 'became faculties of expression in a future life. All that was good must be expressed, for if a faculty was not exercised it atrophised, and later on became a detriment to the man, and was the cause of the blanks in his life. No man was ever “lost” to God. no matter how far he might stray, “and,” said the lecturer, “we best serve God when best we serve our fellow men.”

Miss Oppenheimer will deliver further lectures in New Plymouth, and on Sunday evening will explain “What is Theosophy ?”