"WHERE ARE THE DEAD?”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18514, 27 March 1922, Page 6

"WHERE ARE THE DEAD?”

In dealing with the subject, “Where are the Dead'/” Mr Banks, of Auckland, speaking in the Theosophical Hall last evening, said that all spiritual teachers and philosophers agree that man is immortal and that death does not end all. Knowledge of oocult matter is open to all, provided that they are prepared to make the necessary effort. To prove to ourselves that the dead live we have to unfold our latent spiritual faculties, but till that time we have to take the evidence of experts. The first fact wo have to realise on approaching this subject is that man is a soul, a divine being, and he assumes many personalities along the road of life. As we have in the physical world seven grades of matter — solid, liquid, gas, and the four ethers—so in the great ptanes of Nature we have the same subdivisions, corresponding to tne states on the physical, and as the ether interpenetrates the physical, so the spiritual interpenetrates all the seven worlds. After death a man lays aside his physical body, and after an interval slips into the astral world, the wort’d we all go to when we sleep. In that world desires are more intense than in the physical, and are cause of pain and suffering, because there is no physical body by which to gratify the desides; but, when the man rises above these into the higher regions of the astral world life becomes more enjoyable. In considering this subject there are three factors to be noted. The first is that the dead are not far away from us. We often feel the near presence of friends who died, and often in dreams we bring through the memory of having been with them. The second factor is that character is not changed by the change of death, but in that world the man is taught to transmute and purify his desires; and thus the character is unfolded till he rises to the heaven world. Grief is harmful to those who have died; it causes them great pain and suffering. The third factor is that the body is impervious to the elements; it does not feel the rise and fall of temperature. Food and clothing are not required, and so subtle is that world that man breathes in vitality. When the man's nature has become purified he rises to the heaven world, where all experience is distilled into wisdom and added faculty. Then, when the time is ready, he conies back again to earth to gain fresh experience, passing again at death to the astral world and then to the heaven world, becoming more perfect in character all the time, till he has unfolded all his latent and divine powers, and is ready to offer aCI he has to the service of the world.