textfiles/occult/ROSICRUCIAN/15bt.txt

                              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