The Heindel-Steiner Connection By Charles Weber PREFACE This study has been made with a view towards recapturing something of the bold and vibrant eclecticism that characterized the spiritual ambience of the Rosicrucian Fellowship during its first decade of existence. While the study demonstrates many points of affinity between the teachings of Max Heindel and Rudolf Steiner, it is emphatically not our intention to try to make converts to Anthroposophy, the term Steiner later used to designate his body of teachings. Rather do we believe that Christ-emulating, self-forgetting service, an ideal and practice tirelessly stressed by Max Heindel, is the proper focus for the Western spiritual aspirant. The pursuit of knowl- edge is subsumed by and ordered to the practice of this service. Nevertheless, in the application of supersensible truths to our daily affairs—in education, medicine, art, farming, and social organization, to name a few areas—Steiner’s science of spirit shows that Rosicrucian wisdom is eminently practical and ameliorative. Fellowship members can admit to considerable room for development in this direction; that is, we are called to make our higher knowledge fruitful for and directly serviceable to the needs of the four Kingdoms of nature evolving on this planet. All organizations face the prospect of entropy, of becoming ingrown, increasingly conser- vative, tradition-bound, preoccupied with rules, dogmatic and rigid—until they are no longer able to respond to their founding impulse. The Rosicrucian Fellowship needs to remain sen- sitive and compliant to the creative impulses of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of living Truth. Our earnest hope is that this study will help counter the tendency to organizational entropy by promoting a recovery of the open receptive conditions that prevailed at the time of the Fellowship’s inception. If the reader can conclude, upon digesting the contents of this study, that indeed Fellowship members can benefit from an exposure to a wider range of esoteric disclosures (of which the Steiner opus is a notable example) that complement, amplify, and ground the body of origi- nal teachings vouchsafed by Max Heindel, disclosures that engage the intellectual and spiri- tual needs of the Christ-centered individual, then it shall have achieved its purpose. - i - TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE SECTION 1 Statement of Purpose . .1 Dedication of the First Edition of the Cosmo . .1 Making the Teachings Public . .2 Regarding Steiner’s Early Use of Old Terminology . .4 Steiner and Theosophy . .4 Heindel and Theosophy . .7 Steiner’s Relation to Eastern Wisdom . .7 Steiner’s Direct Contact with Spiritual Impulses . .8 The Three Kinds of Initiation . .8 Steiner’s Clairvoyance . .9 Steiner’s Method of Obtaining Supersensible Knowledge . .11 Further Confirmation of Steiner’s VoluntaryClairvoyance . .13 Steiner on the Eastern Guru vs. the Western Teacher . .14 Steiner on Service . .16 Was Steiner an Initiate? . .17 Steiner vis-a-vis Christ and Christianity . .19 Steiner and Rosicrucianism . .22 Steiner as a Conscious Channel for the Masters of Wisdom . .23 Concentration, Meditation, and Retrospection . .23 Meditation on the Rose Cross . .25 Objective Conditions Necessary for Making Rosicrucian Teachings Public . .26 The Role of Authority in Rosicrucian Esotericism . .28 Steiner and the Elder Brothers of Humanity . .28 Annie Besant and Rudolf Steiner . .30 The Two Paths of Western Development . .31 Christian Rosenkreutz Conveys an Invitation Through Rudolf Steiner . .32 The Path of Rosicrucian Initiation . .33 Steiner’s “Several Years” of Instruction by the Elder Brothers . .36 On the Teachings Being Given in German . .37 The Cosmo’s Contents and Heindel’s Disclaimers . .37 Cosmo Material Which Is Not from the Brother . .38 How Do We Regard the Brothers’ “First Choice”? . .39 Steiner’s “Difficult Style”—Eliminating the Personal Element . .39 The Rosicrucian Does Not Appeal to the Emotions . .39 Truth and the Open Mind . .40 The Aim of the Science of Spirit—The Healing of Mankind . .41 - ii - SECTION 2 STEINER AND HEINDEL TEXTS COMPARED Cosmo Texts . .43 COLLATION OF OTHER HEINDEL BOOKS AND CORRESPONDING STEINER TEXTS Rosicrucian Christianity Lectures . .72 Questions and Answers, Vol. 1 . .80 Questions and Answers, Vol. 2 . .82 Rosicrucian Mysteries . .83 Ancient and Modern Initiation . .83 Mysteries of the Great Operas . .85 Occult Principles of Health and Healing . .87 Freemasonry and Catholicism . .87 Teachings of an Initiate . .89 Message of the Stars . .90 Letters to Students . .90 Christocentrism (partial list of books on Christianity and the Christ-Being) . .90 SECTION 3 FURTHER CONSIDERATIONs Discrepancies Between Statements and Facts . .92 The issue of Plagiarism . .92 Steiner’s Allegation . .93 Concern about Distortion of Content . .93 Steiner’s Naivete . .94 Questions from an American Reader . .94 Responsibility to the Spiritual World . .95 Heindel’s Response to an Unresponsive Steiner . .95 A Consideration of Heindel’s Letter . .96 The Cosmo Dedication and its Retraction (Facsimile Pages, 1st and 2nd Editions) . .97 Comments on Heindel’s Withdrawal Statement . .99 Concluding Remarks . .100 ADDENDUM . .103 - iii - SECTION 1 Statement of Purpose This study has been prepared to enable the student of Rosicrucian Christianity to expand upon the range of wisdom resources that have been available to him through the work of Max Heindel. In doing so, we come, as it were, full circle, by once again encountering the name of Rudolf Steiner, whose voluminous public dis- closures on the science of spirit and Rosicrucian Christianity once served as (at least) a collateral source for Max Heindel’s enlightening books, most notably The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception. Many persons who are familiar with the Rosicrucian teachings as presented by Max Heindel have never heard of Rudolf Steiner. Some have passing awareness of the name and may even connect it with one or more of the movements and institutions Steiner initiated, including the Waldorf schools, Biodynamic farming, the Camphill.