My Little Tribute To Our Beloved Max Heindel
by Corinne Heline
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
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.
