Chapter XIII

REBIRTH, AND THE LETHAL DRINK

1 ' Birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.

The soul that rises with us, our life 's star,

Has elsewhere had its setting,

And cometh from afar." — Wordsworth.

WHEN Siegfried leaves the rock of the Valkuerie
and reaches the worldly court of Gunther, he
is given a drink calculated to make him forget all
about his past life and Brunhilde, the spirit of truth
whom he had won for his very own.

It is usually supposed that the doctrine of rebirth
is taught only in the ancient religions of the Orient,
but a study of the Scandinavian mythology will soon
rout that misconception. Indeed, they believed in
both rebirth and the law of cause and effect as applied
to moral conduct, until Christianity clouded these
doctrines, for reasons given in The Rosicrucian Cos-
mo-Conception (page 167). And it is curious to read
of the confusion caused when the ancient religion of
Wotan was being superseded by Christianity. Men
believed in rebirth in their hearts, but repudiated it

110 MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT OPERAS

outwardly, as the following story told of Saint Olaf,
King of Norway, one of the earliest and most zealous
converts to Christianity, will show: When Asta, the
Queen of King Harold, was in labor but could not
bring to birth, a man came to the court with some
jewels, of which he gave the following account : King
Olaf Geirstad, who had reigned in Norway many
years before and was the direct ancestor of Harold, had
appeared to him in a dream and directed him to open
the great earth-mound in which his body lay, and hav-
ing severed it from the head with a sword, to convey
certain jewels, which he would find in the coffin, to
the queen, whose pains would then cease. The jewels
were taken into the queen's chamber, and soon after
she was delivered of a male child, whom they named
Olaf. It was the general belief that the spirit of Olaf
Geirstad had passed into the body of the child, who
was named after him.

Many years after, when Olaf had become King of
Norway, and had embraced Christianity, he rode one
day, as he often did, by the mound where his ancestor
lay, and a courtier,who was with him at the time asked,

"Is it true, my lord, that you once lay in this
mound ? ' '

"Never," replied the king, "has my spirit in-
habited two bodies."

"Yet, it has been reported that you have been
heard to say, on passing this mound, 'Here was I.
Here Hived.'"

REBIRTH, AND THE LETHAL DRINK 111

"I have never so said," returned the king, "and
never will I say so."

He was much discomfited, and rode hastily away,
presumably to avoid discussion of an inward convic-
tion which all the dogmas of the new faith could not
eradicate.

As a matter of fact, all ancient people, whether in
the East or in the West, knew much about birth and
death which has been forgotten in modern times, be-
cause second sight was more prevalent then. To this
day, for instance, many peasants in Norway assert
ability to see the spirit passing out of the body at
death, as a long narrow white cloud, which is, of
course, the vital body ; and the Rosicrucian teaching —
that the deceased hover around their earthly abode
for some time after death, that they assume a lu-
minous body and are sorely afflicted by the grief of
dear ones — was common knowledge among the ancient
Northmen. When the deceased King Helge of Den-
mark materialized to assuage the grief of his widow,
and she exclaimed in anguish "The dew of death has
bathed his warrior body, ' ' he answered :

" 'Tis thou, Sigruna,

Art cause alone,

That Helge is bathed

With dew of sorrow.

Thou wilt not cease thy grief,

Nor dry the bitter tears.

112 MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT OPERAS

Each bloody tear

Falls on my breast,

Icy cold. They will not let me rest. ' '

Students, when they realize the fact of rebirth, gen-
erally wonder why the memory of past lives is blotted
out, and many are filled with an almost overpowering
desire to know the past. They cannot understand the
benefit derived from the lethal drink of forgetfulness,
and they look with envy at people who claim to know
their past lives— when they claim to have been kings,
queens, philosophers, priests, et cetera. There is, how-
ever, a most beneficent purpose in this forgetfulness,
for no experience is of value in life except for the im-
press which it leaves by the purgatorial or heavenly
postmortem experience. This impress then acts in
such a manner that at the proper time it directs,
warns, or urges a certain line of action, and this warn-
ing, or urge, though dissociated from the experience,
or rather for the reason that it is dissociated from the
experience wherefrom it was extracted, acts with a
quickness greater than that of thought.

To make this point clear we may perhaps liken this
record, graven upon our subtler vehicles, to a phono-
graph record, which playing, will cause a battery of
tuning forks placed near it to vibrate as each note is
struck. From the outward point of view there seems
to be no reason why a certain indentation on a phono-
graphic record should correspond to a certain one on
the tuning fork, and when the needle falls into that

REBIRTH, AND THE LETHAL DRINK 113

indentation, a definite sound should be produced
which sets the tuning fork vibrating. But whether
we understand it or not, demonstration shows that
there is a tie of tone between that little indenta-
tion and the tuning fork. And this does not depend
upon a knowledge of how the impress came to be im-
printed on the record, or what caused the tuning fork
to respond to that vibration. It is there, whether we
know all the facts about it, or not.

Similarly, when we have had a certain experience
in life, be it joyful or the reverse, it is condensed in
the postmortem experience, leaving an impress upon
the soul to warn, if the experience is pugatorial; to
urge, if heavenly. And in a later life, when an ex-
perience comes up similar to the one which caused the
impress, the vibration is sensed by the soul; it awak-
ens the tone of pain or pleasure, as the case may be,
in the record of the past life, far more speedily and
accurately than if the experience itself were called
up before our mind's eye. For we might not, even
at the present time, be able to see the experience in
its true light while we are hampered by the veil of
flesh, but the fruit of the experience, gathered in
heaven or hell, tells us unerringly whether to emulate
our past, or shun it.

Moreover, supposing we did really know our past
lives: that by our present endeavors to live well and
worthily we had acquired that faculty. Supposing
that we had lived lives of debauchery, cruelty, crime,
and selfishness! If people now despised us accord-

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114 MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT OPERAS

ingly, we would then hold that they ought not to
judge us by the past — that they were wrong in ostra-
cizing us. We would contend that our present life of
worthy endeavor should be made the basis of judg-
ment, to the exclusion of former conditions, and in
this we should be perfectly right. But then, for the
same reason, why should we claim honor in the pres-
ent life, adulation or admiration, because in the past
life we were kings and queens ? Even if it were true
that we had held such positions, why should we lay
ourselves open to the ridicule of skeptics by telling
such stories? So, whether we have memory of our
past lives or not, it is better to concentrate our efforts
up to the highest possibilities of today.

There is no doubt, that one who is able to search
the memory of nature, and who does so for the sake
of investigation in connection with the progress and
evolution of man, will, at some time or other, come
into touch with glimpses of his or her own past. But
a true servant who really feels himself to be a laborer
in the vineyard of Christ, will never allow himself to
swerve from the path of service and follow the trail
of curiosity. The disciple who receives instructions
from the Elder Brothers, is warned at the first Initia-
tion never to use his powe rto gratify curioisity, and
on all subsequent visits to the Temple this idea is
dinned into his ears.

The distinctions between the legitimate and illegiti-
mate use of spiritual powers are so fine and so subtle,
that, as one grows, the restrictions whereby one seems

REBIRTH, AND THE LETHAL DRINK 115

beset, multiply to such an extent, that, were the tale
told to others, ninety out of a hundred would say:
"But what is the use then of having spiritual sight
or of being able to leave the body? When you are so
restricted, it seems that the possibility of trespassing
is multiplied to such an extent, that there is scarcely
any use of having these faculties. ' ' Nevertheless, they
are of great value, and the responsibility is only the
natural result of added growth.

An animal takes freely anything that it wishes: it
commits no sin and is not held responsible for its
action, because it knows no better. But as soon as the
idea of "mine" and "thine" has been imprinted
upon our consciousness, then also the responsibility
comes. As our knowledge grows, so does our responsi-
bility; and the finer the soul qualities, the finer the
distinctions between right and wrong. This we ob-
serve in in our daily lives that the standards of
the permissible or non-permissible vary according to
the quality of each individual.

And when we aspire to that power whereby we may
know the past, we shall find that we are no more
justified in using this power for aggrandizement,
than we would be justified in using it to obtain
worldly wealth or power. So the life, or the lives,
we have led are hidden from us for a purpose, until
we know how to unlock the door ; and when we have
the key we shall probably not want to use it.

For that reason, then, Siegfried is given the lethal
drink the moment he enters the court of Gunther, and

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straightway he forgets about his past life with Mime,
the dwarf, who claimed him as a son. He forgets
how he forged the magic sword, "the courage of
despair," which stood him in such good stead in the
fight with Fafner, the spirit of passion and desire. He
forgets that he had thus won the Ring of the Niebe-
lung, the emblem of egoism, whereby he gained knowl-
eldge of his true spiritual identity and slew Mime,
the personality, who wrongfully claimed to be his
progenitor. He forgets how, as a free spirit undaunted
by fear, he broke the spear of Wotan, the warder of
creed, and followed the bird of intuition to the abode
of the sleeping spirit of truth. He forgets his mar-
riage to her and the vow of unselfishness, implied
when he gave her the ring.

But each and everyone of these important events
have left their impress upon his soul, and now it is to
be tested: whether that impress has been deep or
superficial. Temptation comes to us, life after life,
until the treasure laid up in heaven has been tested
and tried by temptation on earth — whether or not it
will withstand the moth of corruption. After the
baptism, when the Spirit of Christ had descended into
the fleshy body of Jesus, it was taken into the wilder-
ness of temptation to prove its weakness or its
strength. And, similarly, after each heavenly expe-
rience we must expect to be brought back to earth,
that it may be learned whether we shall stand or fall
in the furnace of affliction.

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