The Hidden Side of Things

Our Hon. Secretary, Lily Chong, will give a lecture on the hidden side of things based on the observation of clairvoyants. This talk was last given more than two years ago, in May 2002.

In his book of the same title, C. W. Leadbeater writes:

“Theosophical students are at least theoretically acquainted with the idea that to everything there is a hidden side; and they also know that in the great majority of cases this unseen side is of far greater importance than that which is visible to the physical eye.

To put the same idea from another point of view, the senses, by means of which we obtain all our information about external objects, are as yet imperfectly developed; therefore the information obtained is partial. What we see in the world about us is by no means all that there is to see, and a man who will take the trouble to cultivate his senses will find that, in proportion as he succeeds, life will become fuller and richer for him. For the lover of nature, of art, of music, a vast field of incredibly intensified and exalted pleasure lies close at hand, if he will fit himself to enter upon it. Above all, for the lover of his fellow-man there is the possibility of far more intimate comprehension and therefore far wider usefulness.

We are only halfway up the ladder of evolution at present, and so our senses are only half-evolved. But it is possible for us to hurry up that ladder—possible, by hard work, to make our senses now what all men’s senses will be in the distant future. The man who has succeeded in doing this is often called a seer or a clairvoyant.

A fine word that—clairvoyant. It means ‘one who sees clearly’; but it has been horribly misused and degraded, so that people associate it with all sorts of trickery and imposture—with gypsies who for sixpence will tell a maid-servant what is the colour of the hair of the duke who is coming to marry her, or with establishments in Bond Street where for a guinea fee the veil of the future is supposed to be lifted for more aristocratic clients.

All this is irregular and unscientific; in many cases it is mere charlatanry and bare-faced robbery. But not always; to foresee the future up to a certain point is a possibility; it can be done, and it has been done, scores of times; and some of these irregular practitioners unquestionably do at times possess flashes of higher vision, though usually they cannot depend upon having them when they want them.

But behind all this vagueness there is a bed-rock of fact—something which can be approached rationally and studied scientifically. It is as the result of many years of such study and experiment that I state emphatically what I have written above—that it is possible for men to develop their senses until they can see much more of this wonderful and beautiful world in which we live than is ever suspected by the untrained average man, who lives contentedly in the midst of Cimmerean darkness and calls it light.

Two thousand and five hundred years ago the greatest of Indian teachers, Gautama the BUDDHA, said to His disciples: ‘Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see. The truth is all about you, if you will only take the bandage from your eyes and look; and it is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far beyond anything that men have ever dreamt of or prayed for, and it is for ever and for ever.’

He assuredly meant far more than this of which I am writing now, but this is a step on the way towards that glorious goal of perfect realisation. If it does not yet tell us quite all the truth, at any rate it gives us a good deal of it. It removes for us a host of common misconceptions, and clears up for us many points which are considered as mysteries or problems by those who are as yet uninstructed in this lore. It shows that all these things were mysteries and problems to us only because heretofore we saw so small a part of the facts, because we were looking at the various matters from below, and as isolated and unconnected fragments, instead of rising above them to a standpoint whence they are comprehensible as parts of a mighty whole. It settles in a moment many questions which have been much disputed—such, for example, as that of the continued existence of man after death. It explains many of the strange things which the Churches tell us; it dispels our ignorance and removes our fear of the unknown by supplying us with a rational and orderly scheme.”
 

Q & A and Free Discussion

The Lodge will be open for a question and answer session and free discussion, with Chong Sanne as the moderator.
 

Adyar -- The Flaming Centre

Our Hon. Treasurer, Bro. N. C. Raghava, who grew up in the campus of the International Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, Chennai, will take us on a tour of our HQ. He will show us the places of interest and relate to us his childhood experience in the campus which is called by Annie Besant, “the Flaming Centre” -- Home of the Masters.
 

Initiation -- The Perfecting of Man (Part II)

Bro. Kam Chai Heng, our Vice President, continues with the second part of this useful talk about Man’s spiritual quest based on the book of the same title by Annie Besant.