THE HEAVEN EXPLAINED BY MAX HEINDEL

On this subject, Max Heindel explained the following:

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THE FIRST HEAVEN

When the purgatorial existence is over the purified spirit rises into the first heaven, which is located in the three highest Regions of the Desire World, where the results of its sufferings are incorporated in the seed atom of the desire body, thus imparting to it the quality of right feeling, which acts as an impulse to good and a deterrent from evil in the future.

(This is false, because the first heaven is located in the mental plane and not in the plane of desire, as Max Heindel affirms. And the seed atoms do not exist, since it is a lie invented by Leadbeater.)

Here the panorama of the past again unrolls itself backward, but this time it is the good acts of life that are the basis of feeling. When we come to scenes where we helped others we realize anew all the joy of helping which was ours at the time, and in addition we feel all the gratitude poured out to us by the recipient of our help.

When we come to scenes where we were helped by others, we again feel all the gratitude that we then felt toward our benefactor. Thus we see the importance of appreciating the favors shown us by others, because gratitude makes for soul growth.

Our happiness in heaven depends upon the joy we gave others, and the valuation we placed upon what others did for us. It should be ever borne in mind that the power of giving is not vested chiefly in the monied man. Indiscriminate giving of money may even be an evil. It is well to give money for a purpose we are convinced is good, but service is a thousandfold better.

As Whitman says,

“Behold! I do not give lectures, or a little charity; When I give, I give myself.”

A kind look, expression of confidence, a sympathetic and loving helpfulness — these can be given by all regardless of wealth. Moreover, we should particularly endeavor to help the needy one to help himself, whether physically, financially, morally, or mentally, and not cause him to become dependent upon us or others.

(This is also false, because the masters explained that when humans ascend to heaven, they fall into a deep sleep where they will dream with what made them happier during their stay on earth: his couple, his children, music, travels, etc.

And humans will experience a whole story of happiness around that theme. And although it will only be a dream, this dream will be so intense, that the person will feel it more real than if she were living it in the physical world.

So, what we experience in heaven has nothing to do with the good we have given or received, as affirm Max Heindel, but with what made us happier.)

The first heaven is a place of joy without a single drop of bitterness. The spirit is beyond the influence of the material, earthly conditions, and assimilates all the good contained in the past life as it lives it over again. Here all ennobling pursuits to which the man aspired are realized in fullest measure. It is a place of rest, and the harder has been the life, the more keenly will rest be enjoyed.

(It is true that it is a period of intense bliss, without any bitterness. And it is also a period of rest and assimilation of what we learned on Earth. But it is false that “the harder has been the life” influences the duration and the intensity of heavenly life, because there are other factors that intervene, and these are: the amount of knowledge, development and spirituality we have obtained, as well as the positive karma we have produced.

So, a person may have had a very hard life, but if she did not generate these factors, then his heaven will be short and tasteless.)

Sickness, sorrow, and pain are unknown quantities. This is the Summerland of the spiritualists. There the thoughts of the devout Christian have built the New Jerusalem. Beautiful houses, flowers, etc., are the portion of those who aspired to them; they build them themselves by thought from the subtle desire stuff. Nevertheless these things are just as real and tangible to them as our material houses are to us. All gain here the satisfaction which earth life lacked for them.

(They are real to the person who experiences them, but they are only a dream for those who are awake on this plane of existence.)

WHAT HAPPENS WITH CHILDREN

There is one class there who lead a particularly beautiful life — the children. If we could but see them we would quickly cease our grief. When a child dies before the birth of the desire body, which takes place about the fourteenth year, it does not go any higher than the first heaven, because it is not responsible for its actions.

(It is false that the body of desires is born at fourteen, as I demonstrated in a previous chapter.)

Therefore the child has no purgatorial existence. That which is not quickened cannot die, hence the desire body of a child, together with the mind, will persist until a new birth, and for that reason such children are very apt to remember their previous incarnation as instanced in the case cited elsewhere.

(This is false, because the child must also follow the same process as adults, and therefore the child also has to go through purgatory to ascend to heaven, and new bodies must be rebuilt when he reincarnates again. And it is only in the case of very young children who died, that they are quickly reborn without passing through heaven.)

For such children the first heaven is a waiting-place where they dwell from one to twenty years, until an opportunity for a new incarnation is offered. Yet it is more than simply a waiting-place, because there is much progress made during this interim.

(Since the child could not accumulate the factors I mentioned above, then his stay in heaven will be very short, but since the average duration is 1500 years, I doubt that the child only lives from one to twenty years as Max Heindel says.

And it is false that "much progress is made during the stay in the first heaven" because Blavatsky explained that only what has already begun on Earth can be developed in heaven.)

When a child dies there is always some relative awaiting it, or, failing that, there are people who loved to “mother” children in the earth life who find delight in taking care of a little waif.

(This is also false, because it is not a family member who is waiting, but a guide who takes care of the person after he dies. And depending to his development, the person will have an individual or collective guide.)

The extreme plasticity of the desire stuff makes it easy to form the most exquisite living toys for the children, and their life is one beautiful play; nevertheless their instruction is not neglected. They are formed into classes according to their temperaments, but quite regardless of age.

In the Desire World it is easy to give object-lessons in the influence of good and evil passions on conduct and happiness. These lessons are indelibly imprinted upon the child's sensitive and emotional desire body, and remain with it after rebirth, so that many a one living a noble life owes much of it to the fact that he was given this training.

Often when a weak spirit is born, the Compassionate ones (the invisible Leaders who guide our evolution) cause it to die in early life that it may have this extra training to fit it for what may be perhaps a hard life.

This seems to be the case particularly where the etching on the desire body was weak in consequence of a dying person having been disturbed by the lamentations of his relatives, or because he met death by accident or on the battlefield.

He did not under those circumstances experience the appropriate intensity of feeling in his postmortem existence, therefore, when he is born and dies in early life, the loss is made up as above.

Often the duty of caring for such a child in the heaven life falls to those who were the cause of the anomaly. They are thus afforded a chance to make up for the fault and to learn better. Or perhaps they become the parents of the one they harmed and care for it during the few years it lives. It does not matter then if they do lament hysterically over its death, because there would be no pictures of any consequence in a child's vital body.

(Here Max Heindel is telling many lies, because the masters explained that the vast majority of humans lose their consciousness and fall into a deep sleep after to die.)

ACTIVITIES IN HEAVEN

This heaven is also a place of progression for all who have been studious, artistic, or altruistic. The student and the philosopher have instant access to all the libraries of the world.

(This is false since humans are asleep.)

The painter has endless delight in the ever-changing color combinations. He soon learns that his thought blends and shapes these colors at will. His creations glow and scintillate with a life impossible of attainment to one who works with the dull pigments of Earth.

He is, as it were, painting with living, glowing materials and able to execute his designs with a facility which fills his soul with delight.

(This is also false.)

The musician has not yet reached the place where his art will express itself to the fullest extent. The Physical World is the world of Form. The Desire World, where we find purgatory and the first heaven, is particularly the world of Color; but the World of Thought, where the second and third heavens are located, is the sphere of Tone.

Celestial music is a fact and not a mere figure of speech. Pythagoras was not romancing when he spoke of the music of the spheres, for each one of the heavenly orbs has its definite tone and together they sound the celestial symphony which Goethe also mentions in the prolog to his “Faust,” where the scene is laid in heaven.

Echoes of that heavenly music reach us even here in the Physical World. They are our most precious possession, even though they are as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp, and cannot be permanently created, as can other works of art — a statue, a painting, or a book.

In the Physical World tone dies and vanishes the moment after it is born. In the first heaven these echoes are, of course, much more beautiful and have more permanency, hence there the musician hears sweeter strains than ever he did during earth life.

The experiences of the poet are akin to those of the musician, for poetry is the soul's expression of its innermost feelings in words which are ordered according to the same laws of harmony and rhythm that govern the outpouring of the spirit in music.

In addition, the poet finds a wonderful inspiration in the pictures and colors which are the chief characteristics of the Desire World. Thence he will draw the material for use in his next incarnation. In like manner does the author accumulate material and faculty.

The philanthropist works out his altruistic plans for the upliftment of man. If he failed in one life, he will see the reason for it in the first heaven and will there learn how to overcome the obstacles and avoid the errors that made his plan impracticable.

(Here Max Heindel is doing a deep jumble because Blavatsky explained that the inspirations that come from “above” come from the upper astral plane. While the World of Desire, but above all the Divine World, for the moment few people can come into connection with those worlds.)

THE SECOND HEAVEN

At last the man, the Ego, the threefold spirit, enters the second heaven. He is clad in the sheath of mind, which contains the three seed atoms — the quintessence of the three discarded vehicles.

(This is false, because the masters explained that only the most advanced humans can ascend to the second heaven.)

When the man dies and loses his dense and vital bodies there is the same condition as when one falls asleep. The desire body, as has been explained, has no organs ready for use. It is now transformed from an ovoid to a figure resembling the dense body which has been abandoned.

We can easily understand that there must be an interval of unconsciousness resembling sleep and then the man awakens in the Desire World. It not infrequently happens, however, that such people are, for a long time, unaware of what has happened to them.

They do not realize that they have died. They know that they are able to move and think. It is sometimes even a very hard matter to get them to believe that they are really “dead.” They realize that something is different, but they are not able to understand what it is.

Not so, however, when the change is made from the first heaven, which is in the Desire World, to the second heaven, which is in the Region of Concrete Thought. Then the man leaves his desire body. He is perfectly conscious. He passes into a great stillness. For the time being everything seems to fade away.

He cannot think. No faculty is alive, yet he knows that heis. He has a feeling of standing in “The Great Forever;” of standing utterly alone, yet unafraid; and his soul is filled with a wonderful peace, “which passeth all understanding.” In occult science this is called “The Great Silence.”

Then comes the awakening. The spirit is now in its home-World—heaven. Here the first awakening brings to the spirit the sound of “the music of the spheres.” In our Earth life we are so immersed in the little noises and sounds of our limited environment that we are incapable of hearing the music of the marching orbs, but the occult scientist hears it. He knows that the twelve signs of the Zodiac and the seven planets form the sounding-board and strings of “Apollo's seven-stringed lyre.” He knows that were a single discord to mar the celestial harmony from that grand Instrument there would be “a wreck of matter and a crash of worlds.”

(In reality, the opposite happens, since when the physical body dies, the emotional body takes the form of a sphere.)

The work done by man in the Heaven World is many-sided. It is not in the least an inactive, dreamy nor illusory existence. It is a time of the greatest and most important activity in preparing for the next life, as sleep is an active preparation for the work of the following day.

Here the quintessence of the three bodies is built into the threefold spirit. As much of the desire body as the man had worked upon during life, by purifying his desires and emotions, will be welded into the human spirit, thus giving an improved mind in the future.

As much of the vital body as the life spirit had worked upon, transformed, spiritualized, and thus saved from the decay to which the rest of the vital body is subject, will be amalgamated with the life spirit to insure a better vital body and temperament in the succeeding lives.

As much of the dense body as the divine spirit has saved by right action will be worked into it and will bring better environment and opportunities.

This spiritualization of the vehicle is accomplished by cultivation of the faculties of observation, discrimination and memory, devotion to high ideals, prayer, concentration, persistence and right use of the life forces.

The second heaven is the real home of man — the Ego, the Thinker. Here he dwells for centuries, assimilating the fruit of the last earth life and preparing the earthly conditions which will be best suited for his next step in progress.

The sound or tone which pervades this Region, and is everywhere apparent as color, is his instrument, so to speak. It is this harmonious sound vibration which, as an elixir of life, builds into the threefold spirit the quintessence of the threefold body, upon which it depends for growth.

The life in the second heaven is an exceedingly active one, varied in many different ways. The Ego assimilates the fruits of the last earth life and prepares the environment for a new physical existence. It is not enough to say that the new conditions will be determined by conduct and action in the life just closed.

It is required that the fruits of the past be worked into the World which is to be the next scene of activity while the Ego is gaining fresh physical experiences and gathering further fruit.

Therefore all the denizens of the Heaven World work upon the models of the Earth, all of which are in the Region of Concrete Thought. They alter the physical features of the Earth, and bring about the gradual changes which vary its appearance, so that on each return to physical life a different environment has been prepared, wherein new experiences may be gained.

We have spoken of the forces which work along the positive and negative poles of the different ethers. Man himself is part of that force. Those whom we call dead are the ones who help us to live. They in turn are helped by the so-called “nature spirits,” which they command.

Man is directed in this work by Teachers from the higher creative Hierarchies, which helped him to build his vehicles before he attained self-consciousness, in the same way he himself now builds his bodies in sleep.

During heaven life they teach him consciously. The painter is taught to build an accurate eye, capable of taking in a perfect perspective and of distinguishing colors and shades to a degree inconceivable among those not interested in color and light.

The mathematician has to deal with space, and the faculty for space perception is connected with the delicate adjustment of the three semi-circular canals which are situated inside the ear, each pointing in one of the three dimensions in space.

Logical thought and mathematical ability are in proportion to the accuracy of the adjustment of these semi-circular canals.

Musical ability is also dependent upon the same factor, but in addition to the necessity for the proper adjustment of the semi-circular canals, the musician requires extreme delicacy of the “fibers of Corti,” of which there are about ten thousand in the human ear, each capable of interpreting about twenty-five gradations of tone. In the ears of the majority of people they do not respond to more than from three to ten of the possible gradations.

Among ordinary musical people the greatest degree of efficiency is about fifteen sounds to each fiber; but the master musician, who is able to interpret and bring down music from the Heaven World, requires a greater range to be able to distinguish the different notes and detect the slightest discord in the most complicated chords.

Persons who require organs of such exceeding delicacy for the expression of their faculties are specially taken care of, as the higher state of their development merits and demands. None other ranks so high as the musician, which is reasonable when we consider that while the painter draws his inspiration chiefly from the world of color (the nearer Desire World) the musician attempts to bring us the atmosphere of our heavenly home world (where, as spirits, we are citizens), and to translate them into the sounds of earth life.

His is the highest mission, because as a mode of expression for soul life, music reigns supreme. That music is different from and higher than all the other arts can be understood when we reflect that a statue or painting, when once created, is permanent. They are drawn from the Desire World and are therefore more easily crystallized, while music, being of the Heaven World, is more elusive and must be re-created each time we hear it.

It cannot be imprisoned, as shown by the unsuccessful attempts to do so partially by means of such mechanical devices as phonographs and piano-players. The music so reproduced loses much of the soul-stirring sweetness it possesses when it comes fresh from its own world, carrying to the soul memories of its home and speaking to it in a language that no beauty expressed in marble or upon canvas can equal.

The instrument through which man senses music is the most perfect sense organ in the human body. The eye is not by any means true, but the ear is, in the sense that it hears every sound without distortion, while the eye often distorts what it sees.

In addition to the musical ear, the musician must also learn to build a long, fine hand with slender fingers and sensitive nerves, otherwise he would not be able to reproduce the melodies he hears.

It is a law of nature that no one can inhabit a more efficient body that he is capable of building. He first learns to build a certain grade of body and afterwards he learns to live in it. In that way he discovers its defects and is taught how to remedy them.

All men work unconsciously at the building of their bodies during ante-natal life until they have reached the point where the quintessence of former bodies—which they have saved — is to be built in.

Then they work consciously. It will therefore be seen that the more a man advances and the more he works on his vehicles, thus making them immortal, the more power he has to build for a new life. The advanced pupil of an occult school sometimes commences to build for himself as soon as the work during the first three weeks (which belongs exclusively to the mother) has been completed.

When the period of unconscious building has passed the man has a chance to exercise his nascent creative power,  and the true original creative process — “Epigenesis” — begins.

Thus we see that man learns to build his vehicles in the Heaven World, and to use them in the Physical World. Nature provides all phases of experience in such a marvelous manner and with such consummate wisdom that as we learn to see deeper and deeper into her secrets we are more and more impressed with our own insignificance and with an ever-growing reverence for God, whose visible symbol nature is.

The more we learn of her wonders, the more we realize that this world system is not the vast perpetual motion machine unthinking people would have us believe. It would be quite as logical to think that if we toss a box of loose type into the air the characters will have arranged themselves into the words of a beautiful poem by the time they reach the ground.

The greater the complexity of the plan the greater the argumental weight in favor of the theory of an intelligent Divine Author.

(All this Max Heindel’s explanation is an invention, because few humans ascend to the second heaven, and the requirement is achieve the universality, that is, for example, no longer loving only one person or some people, but love all mankind, because then the human experiences love in a universal way and that is what allows you to ascend to the second heaven.

And it is also false that in heaven, humans are preparing their bodies for their new reincarnation because that is not something that humans themselves take care of.)

THE THIRD HEAVEN

Having assimilated all the fruits of his last life and altered the appearance of the Earth in such a manner as to afford him the necessary environment for his next step towards perfection; having also learned by work on the bodies of others, to build a suitable body through which to express himself in the Physical World and having at last resolved the mind into the essence which builds the threefold spirit

Then, the naked individual spirit ascends into the higher Region of the World of Thought — the third heaven. Here, by the ineffable harmony of this higher world, it is strengthened for its next dip into matter.

(This is incorrect since only the highest initiates can ascend to the third heaven.)

After a time comes the desire for new experience and the contemplation of a new birth. This conjures up a series of pictures before the vision of the spirit — a panorama of the new life in store for it. But, mark this well — this panorama contains only principal events. The spirit has free will as to detail. »

(The Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception, chapter 3)

CONCLUSION

Max Heindel's account of what happen in heaven is much distorted, because he adopted many of the lies invented by Leadbeater, as well as others he has added himself. And his explanation has little to do with the true explanations given by the masters of wisdom and their true disciples.