St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-07-22
A THEOSOPHIST.
The Shadow of the Past Stood
Between Him and His Love.

The Shadow of the Past Stood
Between Him and His Love.
Mail and Express.
The talk had drifted to that queer
sensation OF living out, at certain
moments, experiences traversed at some
past time in exactly identical condi-
tons, which has been familiar to every
one on at least a few occasions in his
life. Habaran, who had been sitting
silent hitherto, at last looked up. ITO
a believer in theoSophy-the wisdom re-
ligiOn-such an experience offers moth
ing strange. The moments of which
you speak represent to me simply brief
clairvOyant conditions of the spirit,
former incarcerationS are borne family
in upon it-moments during which
the unmaterial part of man seems
to come i'll closer contact with the
Akasa, the great Astral Light. in which
all past happenings are recorded"
There was silence. Then some one
said commiseratingly: "You are a
frightful visionary, Habaran. Forum
ately," was the calm reply. 1.-THE world
of illusion in which the visionary, as
you call him, lives is the only true
world; the material things, if we but
saw rightly, would prove unSubstantial
as the stuff of which dreams are made.
| know that the theosophical doctrine
OF 'karma,' or successive incarnationS
of the spirit of man in different races
and planets, during which incarnation
he is slowing working toward his perfec-
tion-is beyond your conception or COM
prehenSion. | shall not attempt to
proselytize. shall simply speak of
curious experience of my own as con-
cerned with the subject of which we
have been speaking. Once in my life
it matters not when or where-I met
young girl who made upon me the most
powerful impression | have ever re-
ceived. l will confess at once that [
loved her at first sight, and she re-
turned the feeling in kind. Yet at the
moment of speaking to her a strange
sensation of having spoken once be-
fore, in conditions precisely SIM
liar, rushed upon me, and with it came
a vague dread, fear of something, |
knew not what. 1t was like the ache of
a wound long healed and that has left
scarcely scar behind. The next in
slant it was gone" Habaran stopped,
and the others smoked on in silence.
This young girl was of an especially
spiritual-I might almost say mystic
temperament. One day l discovered. as
we began to speak of that which was
nearest our souls, that she, too, was a
theSophist. And then curious fact
developed itself-that she, too, when l
had declared my love to her, had been
visited with that sense of hav-
ing known an identical experience
in some state of pre-eXistence, and
that with the sensation had come the
vague fear. Gradually after that found
her changing-s ubtly. indefnably-to-
ward me. tried to combat the change
in vain. A strange Observation-Disclosures
nation you will call it-had taken pos
session of her. She believed that in
some former incarnation we had met
and loved each other, and that great
grief and sin and misery had come of
that love. One day she told me that we
must part. All my arguments, my en-
treaties, were useless. She felt that
shadow ever between us, pushing us
one from the other. She left
me soon after. And l dared not follow
her. That is ALL"