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LOOKING BACKWARD:
Editor's note: Reprinted from the October 1965 issue of Rays from the Rose
Cross in memory of Max Heindel's transition, January 6, 1919.
Dear friends, my heart is singing today for being able to be with you on
this occasion and give my little tribute to our beloved Max Heindel.
I would like to tell you about the first day that I met this remarkable
man, and in order to do this I shall have to touch briefly upon my own
personal life. I trust you will pardon me for this.
Perhaps you already know from my voice that I was born and reared in the
deep South. I was an only child, and my early years were filled with
adoration for my lovely mother. She was always my beautiful fairy princess.
However, she was very frail, and my childhood days were filled with the fear
that some day I would have to give her up. So I made up my mind in those
early days that if she was taken from me, I would take my own life and go
with her.
You see, I knew nothing in those days of Rebirth and the Law of
Causation. I was born looking for light, for answers to questions I could
not formulate. I did not really know just what I was searching for.
Consequently I had no idea where to find it. And as you all know the South
is deeply orthodox and conservative. But one thing I did know, and that was
that somewhere there must be a more adequate answer to problems of life and
death than orthodoxy gave, and I was determined to find that answer.
In the meantime my mother grew ever more delicate, and I was
persistently filled with a fear of losing her. A few months before her final
illness, a dear friend called me on the phone and said she had found a
wonderful new book that she was sure was exactly what I was looking for.
That very afternoon I went to her home, and you may surmise that the book
was the Cosmo. When I saw the picture of the Rose Cross and read that by our
own personal lives we were to learn how to transmute the red roses into the
white, I knew that at last I had found my own. That night, before I went to
sleep, my order was in the mailbox on its way to Oceanside for that
priceless book. I counted the days until it arrived, and just about the time
it did come the doctor said that my mother had to undergo a very serious
operation.
So I lived every day with this book. I slept with it under my pillow,
for in some strange way it seemed to hold the only solace for me that the
entire world could give. After my mother's operation the doctor said there
was no hope, that she had only a few months to live.
I still held to my blessed book. Then suddenly one day a strange new
thought came to me. Should I take my life and go with my mother as I had
always planned, or should I go to Oceanside and give my life to the work of
Max Heindel? The question held the answer. My mind was made up, and ten days
after my mother left me, I was on the train, the Cosmo under my arm, on the
way to California and Max Heindel. He seemed to me to be the only succor for
my grief that the world could give. Oh, I wish I could describe him
fittingly to you that first day I saw him here at Mt. Ecclesia! He came to
meet me with both hands outstretched, and his sweet face was illumined with
tenderness, sympathy, and compassion. Now, understand, I had had no personal
contact with him. I knew him only through his book, and you may imagine
something of my surprise and amazement when he took my hands in his and said
so tenderly, "My child, I have been with you often both day and night during
this terrible ordeal through which you have just passed. I knew that when it
was over you would come to me. Now you belong always to my work!"
That, dear friends, was a momentous day in my life. That was the day I
dedicated myself completely to the spiritual life and to the Rosicrucian
Philosophy.
For five wonderful years I was privileged to know this wise man and to
study and be trained under his guidance and supervision. I've always
considered those five years as being the most beautiful and the most
spiritually fruitful of my entire life. I wish I were able to describe this
wonderful man to you in the way that I came to know him. When I think of his
many admirable characteristics, perhaps the quality I loved most deeply
about him was his exquisitely beautiful humility. While he was always eager
to be of help and serve wherever possible, he was always firm in keeping the
personality of Max Heindel in the background. As I often studied his
complete dedication to the simple life, I thought many times of the words of
our dear Lord, the Christ: "Of myself I am nothing. It is the Father who
doeth the works."
I think, dear friends, that Max Heindel demonstrated the most perfect
blending of the mystical and the practical that I have ever known. He was so
simple and so humble. The most menial, the most simple services he performed
so graciously and so gladly. He would go down to the barn and milk the cow
if necessary, for you know in those days we had both a barn and a cow here
at Mt. Ecclesia. He would hive the bees, for we had bees too. He would climb
the telephone poles and mend a broken wire; he would plant trees in the
grounds, dig and hoe in the garden, and gather vegetables; he would do all
the simple things with the same earnestness and enthusiasm with which he
would go to the office, classroom or lecture hall, there to give forth so
freely of his great wisdom, or perhaps to meet with the Teacher who guided
him in this great work.
On Saturday evenings it was generally his custom to hold a question and
answer session in the library. There was a long table that extended the
entire length of the room, and the students would gather about that table
with Mr. Heindel standing at the head to answer the questions. Each student
was permitted to ask one question, and it had to be in writing. Then Mr.
Heindel would collect the questions and answer them one by one. In noticing
him carefully, I found that he always seemed to know intuitively to whom
each question belonged, and hence he always addressed that individual from
whom the question had come. In the many times that I attended these
memorable sessions, he never once made a mistake in the identity of the
questioner. He was always so careful and painstaking, and would never leave
a question until he was sure that the individual who asked it had been
completely satisfied with the answer.
It was during these wonderfully enlightening sessions that I gained my
first understanding of the important place that color and music will occupy
in preparing the world for the incoming New Age. Mr. Heindel would announce
that an hour was to be devoted in these sessions of questions and answers.
However, more often than not that hour extended into two or two and one-half
or even three hours. They were such stimulating periods that time seemed to
fly by on wings of enchantment.
Dear friends, I wish I were able to tell you what Mt. Ecclesia meant to
Mr. Heindel as I knew him. How he loved this place! He knew the high destiny
that was in store for the work it was founded to do.
In his day there was a bench underneath the illumined Rose Cross that
stands in the grounds. There it was his custom each evening before retiring
to sit for some minutes or perhaps an hour in prayer and meditation,
broadcasting love and blessing in benediction over this holy ground and on
all those who were living here and serving the work so faithfully.
I wish I might describe to you the illumination on his dear face as he
would look with such deep reverence and devotion at that illumined Rose
Cross which meant so much to him. He never tired of telling us of the
wonderful things in store for Mt. Ecclesia. He would talk often of the
Panacea, the formula for which the Brothers of the Rose Cross are
custodians, and which worthy disciples will some day be permitted to use in
the healing and solace of multitudes who will come from all over the world
to this sacred shrine.
He would tell us of his dream of a beautiful Grecian theatre envisioned
to be built in the canyon below the Chapel and in which performances would
be given of plays with a spiritual message and occult truths such as the
great dramas of Shakespeare and other inspired classics. He also saw the
time when Mt. Ecclesia would have its own splendid orchestra composed of
permanent students, and that it would also perform in the theatre works of
master composers, particularly those of Beethoven and Wagner whom he knew to
be high musical Initiates. He said also that some time there would be
classes in initiatory music taught here.
Mr. Heindel liked to talk of the Elder Brothers and how they, in their
study of the Memory of Nature, had been able to look down through the ages
and see the condition that the world is in today. It was for this reason, as
you know, that they gave the Rosicrucian Philosophy to the world when they
did.
Dear friends, the soul of the world today is sick, is filled with
sorrow, filled with searching and questions. There is no answer in the world
for these questions. What the world is truly seeking is a more spiritualized
science and a more scientific religion. The Rosicrucian Philosophy holds the
answer to both of these quests. This Philosophy is but a continuation of the
great work which our Lord, the Christ, brought to Earth and gave to the
immortal Twelve. It contains the priceless gift which the Christ brought,
namely, the Christ Initiations which hold the very heart of the religion of
the incoming Aquarian Age. Mr. Heindel well understood this. He well knew
the great destiny that awaits this work. Therefore he never let
disappointment or difficulties deter him. He always kept his eyes fixed on
the stars.
Dear friends, ours is a very special privilege to be the custodians here
of this Great Work, and of this dedicated place which was set aside by the
Great Ones as a particular training ground for those who can pass the severe
tests that will make them worthy to be numbered among the pioneers of the
incoming New Age.
So my dear friends, let us follow in the footsteps of Max Heindel. Let
us be so united in peace, harmony and love that we may do our part in
carrying out the mission to which our beloved leader devoted and eventually
sacrificed his very life. So let us together lift our eyes to the stars as
he did. Let us face this world with new light and new power and new hope,
because it is only in this way that we shall be faithful to our quest and
see the glorious destiny of this Great Work fulfilled. It is truly the
religion that will be the very heart and very keystone of the new Aquarian
Age. May God bless you, each and every one, as you go forward in your quest
for the Light Eternal.
--Corinne Heline