PSYCHIC STUDY

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 28, 2 August 1921, Page 11

PSYCHIC STUDY

TOUCH WITH THE SPIRIT WORLD.

Dr. J. I. Wedgewqod, who is visiting the Dominion in the interests of the Theosophical Society, gave a very interesting and instructive lecture on "Modern Psychism: Its Value and its Danger" in the Town Hall Concert Chamber last nighjt. In introducing his subjoct, Dr. Wedgewood said it was at one time the usual thing to ridicule the study of such things as psychic powers, but the recent Great War had to some extnet altered tho attitude of the public. There was a tendency, he said, to over-credulity on the part of some, due to the neglect of men of science and the clergy to study the subject. There were notable outstanding exceptions, such as Crookes, Wallace, and Lodge. These men had put the result of their investigations on record, and affirm that-they can trace the working of the powers of. the soul intb finer matter, imperceptible to our physical senses, but cognizable •to a higher and sensitive organism. It had often been asked, why some possessed psychic powers, and others did not? In answering this question, they must distinguish between the higher and the lower psychism. Lower psychisra was s power shared alike .by animals and men, and was the product of the race in the past, dependent for its working on the sympathetic nervous system^ and was not under the control of the possessor. The development of the brain and mental power tended to obscure it. On the other hand, higher psychism was the result of the developing of the mental powers along with a refinement of the emotional and spiritual nature, and was connected with the cerebro-spinal system. The power of response to higher ranges of vibration varied considerably with different people. It is this power, latent in all but developed in tho few, that made some people clairvoyant and clairandent, or capable of seeing and hearing beyond the gamut of tho physical senses. Theosophy did not teach that man had a soul to save; it said he was a soul manifesting/ in a human body, and that the work of evolution was to unfold its powers on definite and scientific lines. By encouraging the higher and nobler things of life, by training and controlling the mind, and the purification of the.emotions of the physical body, it was possible to increase the power of receptivity of man, and so draw out the powers of the soul. It was possible, for it had been accomplished by some, to raisn the consciousness until the man became selfconscious in finer and more subtle worlds of matter. Then the existence" of another world and the continuity of life after tho death of the body become a matter of first-hand knowledge. The danger of modern psychism lay in getting into the hands of those unprepared to make ■the necessary sacrifices demanded by a life of study, purification, and devotion to the human race. Yet, apart from any danger incurred, Dr. Wedgewood maintained that it v/as a commonsense scientific nttitudo to investigate the forces afc work in the human race, be-, cause a full understanding of man was only possible when his whole constitution was included.

Speaking at the Unitarian Church yesterday on the subject of "''Reincarnation," 'the Rev. Wyndham Heathcoto said that as a theory to explain where men came from, the idea of reincarnation had much to recommend it. In man alone Jhere was a force which had during the ages carried him far in advance of tho other forms of life; and this was oxplained by believers in reincarnation by the "recurring ego," which was reinforced at each recurrence by the experience of its precedent existences. Mr. Heathcote said the doctrine must be Treated with respect, and it might quite possibly be true, but he himself, after many years' consideration, could not regard it as more than a legitimate speculation.