Occult Essays

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OUR FUTURE IN THIS WORLD In one of the popular magazines some writers of distinction in various departments of literature have responded to invitations asking them to give their opinions on the grave and all-important questions, "Have we lived on Earth before?" and "Shall we live on Earth again?" The questions are answered at some length by Mr Alfred Russel Wallace, Mr Rider Haggard, and Mr W. T. Stead. In their respective departments of intellectual activity each of these well-known men would command respectful attention, but a deeply-seated comicality resides in the notion that because three men are respectively great in connection with biology, novel writing and journalism, they are qualified to have an opinion worth listening to concerning a mystery of Nature belonging to the category of those investigated by the student of occult science. Mr Stead, it is true, has had some touch with Spiritualism, but for reasons with which only occult students can be familiar, that in itself is almost sure not to have afforded him a glimpse of the laws governing reincarnation. From the point of view of knowledge on these subjects there is a flavour of humour in the mere suggestion that psychic research confined to the methods of spiritualism could enable anyone to form an opinion concerning reincarnation. Meanwhile, broadly speaking, the reference of the questions quoted above to the three eminent writers who have answered them, mightbe paralleled by a reference of the question, for example, whether " Alcyone" is a hydrogen or a helium star to the Lord Mayor, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Kitchener. The reasoning and evidence which establish the truth of the reincarnation teaching (on so secure a foundation that it is just as certain, for those who study the subject properly, a...