SPIRITUALIST CHURCH

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 1

SPIRITUALIST CHURCH

The subject of Mr J< M. M'Ewan’s address at the Spiritualist Church last evening was ‘ A Student of Hidden Things.’ This subject, said the speaker, had suggested itself to him as one under which Tie could explain just what an occultist (and what occultism) was. Most people, he added, thought of occult things as things mystical, whereas they were, in , effect, quite normal things when, in due course, we came into contact with them. Occultism was not clairvoyance, or crystal gazing, or any of those means by which so many human beings came into contact with the sub-normal. Occultism meant a great deaf more than that—something by which a human being sought to develop, or to evolve, into a force for good. One was a student of the occu.t when lie began to be self-forgetting, when he was ho longer self-centred, when he understood that life was impersonal,’that what we knew as personality must be made to disappear. An occultist was a man or woman who knew that ignorance had to be replaced by wisdom, weakness by strength, and, above all, self by service. All the knowledge gained in his studios was incidental to this striving to become a force for good. And all this, said the speaker, was, in brief, the aim-, in some sense or other, of every human being, though most of us might not be conscious of it; for, at'some time or other, the soul must begin to tread the path by which it would become a force for good. The occultist, obviously, must view lire from a new standpoint. In his sendiscipline and his self-education he learned to understand the unseen, the invisible. He took facts into consideration ; saw life as one great scheme, all religions and policies playing their parts and fulfilling their purpose. Seeing it all as a whole, he got to understand the various points of view, saw the aims of all philosophies. This was part or liis development as an occultist, and what was known as Karma, and the uses of reincarnation, became clear to him. Occultism, Mr M'Ewan .proceeded, had persisted down the ages and the ore.it schools of the past still existed, though under different names. It even existed, to a certain extent, in the Christian Churches of to-day, as could be discovered if wo searched for it. Those who had entered tho schools, however, were pledged not to reveal to the outer world tho inner teachings of occultism, the powers to bo derived from which might be put to base uses. True, certain individuals had tho capacity for developing those powers without teaching, hut if their knowledge was put to selfish or wrong use they would inevitably come up against tho law and learn that all life was one. Another reason against indiscriminate teaching of occultism was that there was, to the undeveloped person, physical and mental danger. Many people had begun to tread the path, but most of them had a very long way to go before could truly claim to be occultists. Students of occultism were all workers, not necessarily rtMth tbo hands, ana were aiming deliberately to do certain things to help the evolution of the human race in accordance with tho will of God. Those who desired to studv could do no better than turn/to the Sermon on tho Mount, or to certain teachings of Buddha, nr to the writings of Krishnamurti, and others, and so learn the discipline of selflessness, it did not matter if one lacked strength for the path, but it did matter if one lacked will;.an intense desire, the whole desire of one’s life, was necessary, otherwise the quest would be fruitless. The path was for the person of . will, for the few; it was the way towards perfection, to self-knowledge, to seJmastery. Mr B. N. llidd presided.