THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE.

Northern Advocate, 3 September 1919, Page 1

THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE.

In connection with the first anniversary of the Whangarei Theosopliioal Society, iMr J. I{. Thomson, the general secretary of the New Zealand section, and president, of the H.P.B. Lodg-e in Auckland, delivered a lecture on Monday on "The Value of Thought in Daily Life." The lecture was in the Masonic Hall and there was a good attendance. MiThomson commenced by drawing , attention to the fact that all great things of life are hidden, instancing , electricity, radium, etc. A professor of Canterbury University was quoted as saying , that in as much radium as could be placed on a threepenny piece there was enough porvver to drive all the railways in New Zealand for a hundred years—if men iknew how to use the latent energy. Great thoug-h these and similar natural forces were, there were more to be discovered, and the power of thought was declared to be greater than all the known forces of ture. We are only at the beginning , of the conquest of nature, and nature was conquered by obedience. Just as the modern marvellous achievements of (science would have been regarded in the past as dang-erous and devilish, so some regard the movements of the dynamic power of thought and all assertions thereon as equally mischievous. The lecturer stated that it was more important to think than to do rightly, on the grounds that to think well is to act well. A strong- plea was made for a vigorous use of the power of thought ag a character builder. The political reformer was apt to believe environment as the predominant element in determining the ouature of the individual. Theosophy declared the greater relative importance of the man's inner directing energy. There is no devil but that of misdirected energy. Actions are the corpses of old thoughts, and in the recognition of the fact 'lies the cue to advancement. Leave ancient, effete, onoss-g-rown ideas, and go onward. Sorrow dogs the footsteps of the evil doer and thinker. God is love, wisdow and power, and no evil can peinna.neii.tly exist. All our suf-

fering , is self-imposed. If you help a man spiritually you help him for ever; whereas 'material help needs to be renewed. The right action of thought is the key of real evolution and progress. The present conditions are the sum total of our past. What we want to be we shall be, because thought is the dynamo that shakes "the energies of man,' and, sooner or later, raises the man to be hero, saint, sage or artist. The lecturer urged the changing , of the centre of consciousness to the highest part of one's nature, energising , thought along , lines of love, aspiration and service. Memorising , other men's thoughts does not give wisdom, but personal thinking , does. 30 per cent, of the energy of coal is wasted in smoke and it has been estimated that half of the electric force generated is lost awing to insufficient knowledge of the laws of the conservation of energy. In a similar way we fritter away the power of thought. Each man's destiny is in his own hands; and the aspirant to the highest life is he who ■ intelligently grasps the fact, and asserts his latent Divinity to rise above the world of sense and sensation. As a man fhinketh in his heart so is he.