THE EVENTS
In 1903, Max
Heindel moved to Los Angeles, California, and being very interested in
esotericism, he became a member of the Theosophical Society.
Max Heindel
showed a great admiration for Madame Blavatsky, but Theosophy did not satisfy
him completely because he thought it was too Eastern teaching and with very few
references to Christianity.
And that is
why when he heard that there was "a spiritual master" who taught in a
more Christian way in the old continent, Max Heindel went to Germany for five
months, where he frequented German theosophical groups, heard many conferences,
and also had several private meetings with Rudolph Steiner, who was the general
secretary of the German Theosophical Society Section.
The
admiration that Max Heindel initially had for Rudolph Steiner is demonstrated
by the dedication he put in his first book "The Rosicrucian Cosmos-Conception"
(1909):
« To my valued friend, Dr. RUDOLPH STEINER, in
grateful recognition of much valuable information received; and to my friend,
DR. ALMA VON BRANDIS, in heartfelt appreciation of the inestimable influence
for soul-growth she has excercised in my life. »
Dr. Alma Von
Brandis was a Max Heindel’s friend who helped him to go to Germany. But in the
second edition of that book (1910), Max Heindel eliminated this dedication.
THE
MAX HEINDEL VIEWPOINT
In the
preface to that second edition Max Heindel gave his reasons why he decided to
remove that dedication:
« From the beginning of
November, 1907, to the end of March, 1908, the writer devoted his time to the
investigation of the teachings of Dr. Steiner, who was absent from Berlin
nearly all that time. In the last of about six personal interviews with Dr. S.
the writer mentioned that he had commenced a book along occult lines; a
compendium of the teachings of the East and West.
Dr. S. then
urged that if any of the teachings promulgated by him were used he ought to be mentioned
as authority and source of information. In consequence the writer agreed to
dedicate the work to Dr. Steiner.
During January,
February and March, 1908, the Elder Brother, whom the writer now knows and
reveres as Teacher, came at times, clothed in his vital body and enlightened
the writer on various points. In April and May, after unwittingly passing a
test, the writer was invited to journey to the estate on which is found the
Temple of the Rosy Cross.
There he met
the Elder Brother in his dense body; there he was given the far-reaching, synthetic
philosophy embodied in the present work — which in the opinion of many old
students in England, on the Continent, and in America, embodies everything that
has been taught in public or esoterically in the past, besides much more that
has never before been printed.
Therefore
the unfinished manuscript for the book mentioned to Dr. Steiner was destroyed, but
as the later and more complete teaching given by the Elder Brother corroborated
the teachings of Dr. S. along main lines, it was thought better to dedicate the
book to Dr. S. than seem a plagiarist. Of that there would have been small danger,
however, for the plagiarist invariably gives less than the authority from whom
he steals, and it will be found that in any case where previous works are
compared with the present, this book will in all cases give more information.
The
dedication has therefore been a mistake; it has led many people who merely
glance at the book to infer that it embodies the teachings of Dr. S. and that
he is responsible for the statements made herein. This inference is obviously
unfair to Dr. S. and a careful perusal of pages 8 and 9 will show that it was
never intended to convey such an idea.
The writer
does not see how to convey the true idea in a dedicatory sentence, hence has
decided to withdraw the same with an apology to Dr. S. for any annoyance he may
be caused by the hasty conclusions concerning his responsibility for the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. »
(In
RE: DEDICATION)
Later, in a letter that Max Heindel wrote to a student, he mentioned the
following:
« October
14, 1911.
In respect to what Dr Steiner’s
pupil said, I do not care a snap. Dr. Steiner has no connection with the Rosicrucians
since he became General Secretary for the Theosophical Society.
Before that time he received a
little instruction from a lay Brother, such as I have since become, and he was
never in real touch with the Elder Brothers, and will never attain in this life
because his inordinate desire for position and power led him to forsake western
Teachings and shirk the pioneer work I am now doing, to oust Mrs. Besant (who
is head in name only of the outer section and has no control over his so-called
‘Inner school’).
When I dedicated the first
edition of the Cosmo I was ignorant of his true position and his jealousy has
made him forget even the courtesy of a common gentleman for he has never
thanked me for the book with autograph I sent him. »
(Letter to Mrs. Laura Bauer, the
translator of the Cosmo into German)
And to
further illustrate this theme, Augusta Foss who was Max Heindel's wife, she gave the following explanations:
« About this time a friend who was traveling in Germany had contacted Dr.
Rudolph Steiner and became greatly enamored of the Doctor's teachings. In her
letters she urged Max Heindel to come to Germany to hear this man, but Heindel
was very happy in his work in the north, and furthermore he was not able financially
to take such a journey.
But this friend was so persistent
that she came back to America to persuade him in person to accompany her back
to Germany to meet this teacher. Her offer to pay his round-trip fare at last
persuaded Heindel to give up his classes and leave for Germany.
This journey was taken in the
fall of 1907. After he had attended some of Dr. Steiner's classes and lectures,
he became disheartened and restless, for what was being taught he already knew;
the teachings were similar to his own knowledge. And when he mentioned this to
the friend she greatly resented it, and this broke up the friendship between
them.
He returned to his room dejected
and discouraged, feeling that he had given up a fertile field of work in
America and come over to Europe, only to learn that he had not found what he
expected. He forthwith made preparation to return to America. At this
time the Teacher, an Elder Brother of the Rosicrucian Order, one of the
Hierophants of the Mysteries, came to him and offered to impart to him the
teachings which he desired, provided that he kept them secret.
Max Heindel had for years
searched and prayed that he might find something wherewith to appease the soul
hunger of the world. Having suffered and known the longings of his own heart,
he could not give the promise to the Elder Brother, and refused to accept
anything that he could not be permitted to pass on to his soul-hungry brothers.
The Teacher left him.
Can one imagine the feeling that
would naturally come over a starving man, denied food for some time, to be
offered a piece of bread, but before he could taste it have it snatched away?
His last condition would be more
wretched than the first. So it was with Max Heindel. His disappointment, in
going that long distance to meet one who, he had been given to understand by
his friend, had much new occult knowledge to give him, and finding that she had
been mistaken, was intense.
He sat for hours as one stunned
after the Teacher left him. In his disappointment at having to return to America
and start where he left off, feeling that he had wasted time and money in
coming, he spent a number of unhappy days.
Later, the Teacher appeared in
his room again and told him that he, Max Heindel, had stood his test. If he had
accepted the offer, namely, to keep the teachings a secret from the world, he,
the Elder Brother, would not have returned.
He was also told that the
candidate [Rudolph Steiner] whom they had at first chosen, who had been under
their instruction for several years and who by the way happened to be the very
one whom they had used as an attraction to bring Mr. Heindel to Berlin, using
his friend as a means of inducing him to go.
Unfortunately that individual had
failed to pass his test in 1905; also that he, Max Heindel, had been under the
observation of the Elder Brothers for a number of years as the most fit
candidate should the first one fail.
In addition, he was told that the
teachings must be given out to the public before the close of the first decade
of the century, which would be the end of December, 1910. At this last
interview with the Teacher he was given instructions as to how to reach the
Temple of the Rose Cross.
At this Temple, Max Heindel spent
a little over one month in direct communication with and under the personal
instructions of the Elder Brothers, who imparted to him the greater part of the
teachings contained in The Rosicrucian
Cosmo-Conception.
. . .
When Max Heindel reached the
Temple of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, as directed, he was strangely surprised,
for in his mind's eye he had pictured this headquarters as a massive and
beautiful structure, and it was quite otherwise.
He was ushered into what was
apparently the modest but spacious home of a country gentleman, a building
which no one would ever take to be the world headquarters of such an ancient
and powerful group of mystics.
Hundreds of curious men and women
have scoured Germany in the hopes of finding this building, but they, like Max
Heindel, have ever pictured it as a grand and noble Temple.
And so he found it, when his eyes
were opened to perceive the spiritual Temple interpenetrating and enveloping
the physical structure. There, as already stated, they imparted to him the
teachings of that wonderful book, The
Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, which was to be the textbook of the
association which the Brothers told Max Heindel he was expected to form: The
Rosicrucian Fellowship.
They also told him that the 350
or more pages of this manuscript would be enlarged and rewritten after he
reached the electrical atmosphere of America. Max Heindel doubted this, for he
was so elated over what he had received from the Brothers that he could not
imagine rewriting it, but such was the case. »
(Memoirs
about Max Heindel and the Rosicrucian Fellowship)
THE RUDOLPH STEINER’S REACTION
In the
conference he gave in Oslo, on October 5, 1913, he said:
« You see, we already have enough enemies and they act in a quite peculiar
way. I don't wish to speak of this now, perhaps you already know about it from
reading the “Newssheet”. You also know the strange fact that there are people
who have been saying for a long time now that what I teach is infected with all
kinds of dogmatic Christianity, even with Jesuitism.
Especially certain followers of the so-called
Adyar-Theosophy talk in the worst way about this supposed Jesuitism, as well as
many more hateful, unscrupulous things. And a certain source claiming outrage
at the narrow-mindedness and perversity of our teaching, then completely
falsified it. A man from America learned our teaching over a period of many
months, wrote it down, brought it to America in a watered down version and then
published a Rosicrucian Theosophy, which he copied from us.
He says that he learned a lot from us, but that he was
then called by the masters and learned more from them. He was silent about the
fact that he took the more profound things from my unpublished lecture cycles.
One could accept that such a thing could happen in
America One could, like Hillel, remain meekly silent — even when it spreads to
Europe.
Those who are most enraged at us here make a
translation and in the translation say: Although there is also a Rosicrucian
world view in Europe, it is narrow-minded and Jesuitical, and it can only
thrive in the pure air of California.
Well, that's enough! That is our enemies' method. We can look at
these things not only calmly, but also with compassion — but we may not close
our eyes to them. When such things happen, then care must be taken by those who
for years indulged such people who acted without scruples. I would really
prefer not to speak about such things, were it not necessary in the service of
truth. One must see everything with clarity. »
(The
Fifth Gospel, chapter 5)
In a
conference he gave in Leipzig, on June 10, 1917, he said:
« I am going to speak of an
occurrence that happened some time ago....A certain Herr Grashof [Max Heindel]
became a member of our Society. For a time he attended lectures in every town where
they were given; he was always there. Naturally, you may ask,
Why was he
admitted to membership?
In certain
circumstances it is impossible to refuse admittance to people, especially if
they are introduced by trusted persons. It would be a question of foreseeing
the future!
Suppose a
man like Grashof were to come and I were to say:
- “We cannot admit him. Well, why not?
Oh, because later on he will be a traitor to the Society.”
One cannot
adopt this attitude about something that has not happened yet but will only
happen in the future. Such people quite obviously must be admitted to the Society.
This man
Grashof attended every lecture that he possibly could. He borrowed notes made
by the members and copied them all. And what people were unwilling to give him he
extracted through the inter- mediary of the person who had introduced him.
Then, after
a time, he returned to America, whence he had come, and wrote a book, compiled
from everything he had heard in the lectures and found in the books and had
also amassed from unpublished lectures. But he made no mention of this. He
wrote a preface to his book in which he said:
- “I heard this and that from Dr.
Steiner but felt that I was not ready for it. Then I was ordered to go to a master
[a Master in the transylvanian Alps of course!] and from this Master I learned
the deeper truths that I still lacked.”
But, the
“deeper” and “higher” in this book is copied down from my lectures and books
and from notes made by other members. His book was
published in America, under the title of Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception — and
even that was a plagiary.
Some people
might have said: Well, after all, that is American and perhaps one can expect nothing
else...but here in Germany there was a publishing company, managed by a Dr.
Hugo Vollrath. He was quite eager to translate the book into German, and he did
so, bringing it out as a series of Letters of Instruction.
His preface
stated that some of the contents had, it was true, first been given in Germany,
but had had to mature in the pure air of California!
In the
literary world proper such scandalous procedure is unthinkable. It is a scandal
which ought every-where to have been recognized as such — and it would have
been if there had been any soundness of judgment. I should really like to count
the names of the people who know the real facts. Few take any interest in such
matters, however, and so they recur repeatedly. »
In the
conference he gave in Dornach, on March 28, 1921, he said:
« What was his name? In his
books he called himself Max Heindel, but here he had another name, his name was
Grashof.
This man had
initially recorded everything he could record in our public lectures and books.
And of all this he wrote a book "Cosmo
Rosicrucian", and then also included in a second edition what is in
the cycles and what he has discarded otherwise.
When he back
to the United States, he told his people that he had taken the first step here
with us, but to win the second step, he had gone to Hungary to become a
teacher. And then he claimed that he had obtained that level. However, the
reality is that he only copied what he had received here, and especially all
the lectures he had heard.
So his work was a complete and simple plagiarism!
And something
hilarious happened then. His book has been translated into German, with the
observation that in Europe one can get the same teaching, but that it would be
better to obtain it in the way it could arise under the free sun of America !!! »
(SE
203-305)
And in a
letter Rudolph Steiner wrote to Eduard Selander, who was the head of the Helsinki
section, he wrote him the following:
« In this respect, I mention only
that, recently, a large part of my theosophical work has been industriously
printed in America without my permission, and in an unprecedented way.
The danger
does not lie in the fact that it is a plagiarism. That is of no consequence;
people can plagiarize as much as they like for all I care. In the field of
theosophy that is not of the least importance. What is important, is that my
work is printed in a completely distorted manner and that the distortions are
harmful.
Therefore,
if I do not have the things printed as they should be, great harm will
eventually occur. It must, after all, be a matter of some concern that not all
of our theosophists are capable of discernment and that there are theosophists
in western Europe who think that the distorted, false publications are the real
ones. »
(Correspondence
and Documents, p.287)
MY OPINION
Rudolph
Steiner's followers accuse Max Heindel of stealing the anthroposophical
teachings. While Max Heindel's followers claim that he did not steal them, but he
had an instructor from the same Rosicrucian source, who also instructed Rudolph
Steiner, and Max Heindel received even more teachings.
However, I
do not agree with either of those two sides, and I will tell you what I think
about it. But, before,
I will summarize the situation to clarify the context.
A friend of
Max Heindel, who was a very Rudolph Steiner’s admirer, convinced Heindel to accompany
her to Germany. And when Max Heindel returned to the United States, he put in his
first book, a dedication thanking Steiner and his friend very deeply for
everything they had given him.
But then in
the next edition, Max Heindel retracted giving the explanation that he had
promised Steiner to mention him in his book, but since people were mistakenly
thinking that his book was a copy of Rudolph Steiner's teachings, he removed
that dedication, because although he could confirm that Rudolph Steiner’s teachings
were in line with the "Rosicrucian Master" that taught to Max Heindel
in Germany.
Instead that
the Master taught him much more and therefore his book "The Rosicrucian
Cosmos-Conception" contained much more information than Steiner’s teachings.
But the truth is that Max Heindel's explanation does
not convince me.
First, because
his dedication shows a sincere and enormous gratitude, it is not a simple commitment
that he would have promised, but it is really a very grateful to Steiner and
his friend.
And second,
because after having studied Rudolph Steiner’s teachings, I am convinced that
Max Heindel’ story (that he met a great Rosicrucian Master) is false, because
the Rudolph Steiner’s work is one of the most terrible teachings, I have found.
And
therefore it makes NO sense that a great Rosicrucian Master has taught the same
lies, nonsense and absurd things that Rudolph Steiner taught:
- The sun, the moon and the planets came out Earth.
- After the sun came out, life became very inhospitable on Earth, and that is why the Lemurian humans went to live on the other planets. But later they returned to Earth, when the moon also left Earth and life improved during the Atlantean era.
- And as humans had acquired different characteristics on the different planets that caused the different races that are currently on Earth.
- There existed two Jesus, two Mary and two Joseph. One of the Jesus children was a “immaculate zombie” and the Zoroaster spirit lived in the other child, but when the child has twelve years old, Zoroaster went to live inside the other child.
- And when Jesus' body was placed in the grave, a tremor caused the earth to open, the body fell into the crack, the earth closed again and that is why the next day people found the grave empty.
- It is not the heart that makes circulate the blood, but it is the circulation of the blood that makes the heart beat.
- The brain is a second stomach, where potatoes end up digesting, and that is why there are now many journalists, because people eat a lot of potatoes.
- Etc.
So as you
can see, Rudolph Steiner's teachings are tremendously crazy, and it makes no
sense that a true teacher said all these absurdities.
In other
words, Max Heindel did a big mistake having copied Rudolph Steiner´s teachings.
And if Max
Heindel had studied Theosophy more deeply, he would have noticed that Rudolph
Steiner was a big charlatan. But instead, he accepted him, as he also accepted
the falsehoods taught by Leadbeater and Annie Besant.
CONCLUSION
All this shows me that Max Heindel failed to distinguish
between true instructors and false instructors. And his
story of having been contacted by the Rosicrucian
Masters was only a lie invented by him to give himself more prestige.
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