THE OSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

Evening Star, Issue 11609, 20 June 1902, Page 7

THE OSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

11l the Board Room,. Agricultural Hall, on Wednesday evening, Mr A. W. Maurais, on behalf of'the Theosophical Society, lectured on ‘ The Growth of Consciousness. According to the speaker, consciousness, as possessed by the average man of to-day, was the result of long-continued exposure of the soul, dad in garments of matter, to the elemental strife of Nature in the first place, and to contact and conflict with his fellow-man in the second place. Descending from divine consciousness, which, being beyond our comprehension, was equivalent to unconsciousness so far as we were concerned, the soul or monad went through the elemental kingdoms, then through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and in response to the tremendous impacts of primeval nature developed a capacity to send out answering thrills which were the consciousness of those kingdoms, consciousness appertaining to the soul alone, not to all or any of its encasements, though the latter affected its quality in transmission. At the end of animal evolution the dawn of mind was near. Man did not, nevertheless, come from the animal kingdom, except so far as his body was concerned, but descended into an animal body. The human and animal souls coalesced during each life, and each affected the manifestation of the other. Vast periods of time had elapsed since man came to earth, and meantime he had experienced savage and civilised life, and had accumulated stores of experience, to the end that the evolved soul, awake and conscious on this physical world, might return a deeper, wiser answer to the assaults of time and master. To-day the delicate and complex emotions of advanced humanity, together with the precise thought of scientific me®, were the answer of the monad or soul to the fcnockings from without, all this having evolved from the simple, dull original response of soul to the heavy Wows of matter at the door of consciousness. Miss C. W. Christie occupied the chair.