A few months ago some friends gave me a copy of The Findhorn Garden (Harper & Row, New York, 1975) written by members of Findhorn, a spiritual community in northern Scotland. I was grateful for the gift, leafed through it, noting especially the exquisite photographs, and put it alongside some other books waiting to be read. It probably would have sat there for quite some time if I had not heard a few days later that Peter Caddy, one of Findhorn’s founders, was to be in Chapel Hill giving a series of lectures and workshops. I primed myself by reading parts of the book.
Although Findhorn has come to mean much to me, the presentation I attended was a disappointment. I wondered why Caddy had come 3,000 miles to give a pre-packaged slide show, complete with taped narration, obviously meant to inspire.
It was too slick. Emphasis was on achieved harmony; failures and missteps were obscured as past history or not mentioned at all. Not a very inclusive philosophy for ordinary folks with daily doubts and fears.
Hearing Peter Caddy say, “There are 10,000 nails in each of these ringbeams and each one is put in with love,” I wanted to ask, “How do you know? Where are the failures and the people who scream out ‘Shit!’ when they hit their thumbs while hammering in those 10,000 nails?”
So, I found myself almost looking for things to criticize, and was secretly glad, petty as it may be, that Caddy’s quietly stylish silver-grey jacket was slightly rumpled in the back. I was definitely interested in watching him: every inch a man who seems to know what he’s about. To say that he exudes self-confidence would be putting it mildly. An aura of clarity surrounds him that made some members of the audience seem positively bumbling in comparison. A good description of Caddy is found in Paul Hawken’s The Magic of Findhorn (Harper & Row, New York, 1975):
He was wearing a huge bulky sweater from which a balding and beaming russet-colored head emerged, looking somewhat like a giant beetroot . . . He seemed to represent the ultimate figure of authority, embodying every principal, scoutmaster, dean of men, and policeman I had ever met . . . There was hardly a hair out of place on his head, and one immediately suspected no hairs were out of place in his life either.
According to Hawken, there are no mistakes in Caddy’s life, only “divine economy.”
Mistakes are mistakes only until their divine meaning is ferreted out. Life’s dirty nappies come out of the Caddy wash bleached, folded, and spotless. Calamities are Godsends, personal disasters mere stepping stones on the narrow initiatory path that all tread, but few recognize. Realizing this fact gives Peter the energy and purposeful zeal to bound ahead while the rest of humanity seems to be shuffling along and stepping on each other’s heels.
On the surface, this former Royal Air Force squadron leader seems very middle class. Hawken says, “a spiritualized RAF man down to his bunions.” But the picture painted in The Magic of Findhorn shows another Peter: one who has a very strong base of esoteric and occult knowledge, who attended seances at the age of ten, who was given rigorous spiritual training with the Rosicrucians, who learned to develop his will and use his body as an instrument of his will, who made a grueling trip to Tibet only to realize that Tibet, as the world’s spiritual center, was dying and that no religion could bring peace to earth or God to man. All must be new; wisdom and understanding must come from the God within. Caddy is a man who has a sense of divine mission in life, of being chosen for a special purpose, who got rid of his occult books and learned to rely on his intuition. He was tested and retested until he underwent his “crucifixion” and simply “gave up.”
His wife Eileen, who helped start Findhorn along with their friend Dorothy Maclean, was severely tested too. She left a husband and five children to be with Peter and experienced much pain until she learned to trust the “still, small voice within” that has guided their way for many years. Hawken says Eileen’s knowledge of the esoteric and occult could be written on a teaspoon. Much of what she knows comes from simply sitting and listening to what she calls the voice of God. Some of the guidance is contained in her book God Spoke to Me:
Listen! . . . Put me first in everything, then shall all be added unto you . . . Listen! . . . Be at peace, striving gets you nowhere, it simply leaves you exhausted and frustrated because you never seem to be nearer the goal. Just learn to be. When you have ceased striving, crawl into my loving arms, feel the peace, comfort, and complete oneness with me. Feel yourself melt into me . . . Listen! . . . Walk my way and do my will. Let me show you my wonders and glories. If you seek happiness in the wrong way, it cannot be found. Seek me first and find me. That is the simple answer. Put first things first, no matter what the cost or sacrifice. Love me with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind.
Dorothy Maclean’s life became indirectly linked with Caddy’s in 1950 when she met Sheena Govan, Peter’s ex-wife, who became her spiritual teacher. She eventually began experiencing a pattern similar to Eileen’s in hearing a voice and recording what was heard. She was told that her job at Findhorn was to “feel into the nature forces” such as the sun, the wind, and vegetables. She decided to start with something small: a garden pea. Her contact with the Pea Deva (the archetypal formative force of the pea) completely revolutionized the gardens they had been directed to start around their trailer.
I can speak to you, human. I am entirely directed by my work which is set out and molded and which I merely bring to fruition, yet you have come straight to my awareness. My work is clear before me — to bring the force fields into manifestation regardless of obstacles, and there are many in this manifested world. While the vegetable kingdom holds no grudge against those it feeds, man takes what he can as a matter of course, giving no thanks. This makes us strangely hostile.
What I would tell you is that as we forge ahead, never deviating from our course for one moment’s thought, feeling or action, so could you. Humans generally seem not to know where they are going or why. If they did, what a powerhouse they would be. If they were on the straight course of what is to be done, we could cooperate with them! I have put across my meaning and bid you farewell.
Dorothy began contacting other devas and was given precise and practical information on the care of each plant in addition to more general communications, some of which are contained in The Findhorn Garden. Her link gave Peter tools he never imagined and enabled the fantastic to emerge: sixty pound broccolis, forty-two pound cabbages, sixty-five vegetables, twenty-one types of fruit, forty-two herbs, flowers blooming in the snow and all growing as far north as Juneau, Alaska and Moscow, in pure sand.
In 1966, a third force entered the garden through the late R. Ogilvie Crombie: the world of nature spirits or elementals ruled by the god Pan. Nature spirits are said to take the energy channelled by the devas and build up the light body of the plants. In The Magic of Findhorn, Hawken describes Crombie as the “palingenesis of an Elizabethan scholar, highly dignified, stately and precise, delighting the Queen with his humor while counselling her to be aware of the transiting of Saturn in her seventh house.” At the age of sixty-five, Roc said he had his first encounter with a nature spirit named Kurmos in the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens. He had many other similar experiences including a meeting with the “Elf King” and encounters with Pan. On the island of Iona, Pan said to him, “I am the servant of Almighty God, and I and my subjects are willing to come to the aid of mankind in spite of the way he has treated us and abused nature, if he affirms belief in us and asks for our help.” Though Crombie never actually lived at Findhorn, he and Peter became close and would travel around the country looking for places where the nature spirits would cluster. Crombie felt that the main reason for the communication was the contribution it made to the work in the Findhorn gardens. The reason he was chosen, he said, was that he responded without fear.
The Findhorn garden experiment was a focus for the first eight years. It was David Spangler, author of Revelation: The Birth of a New Age and The Laws of Manifestation, who led Findhorn beyond the garden and into the community it is today. Experiencing expanded states of awareness from an early age, his role became that of a visionary. In The Findhorn Garden, Spangler writes of his first impression of Findhorn: “Here was a garden, to be sure, but its gardenness did not stop with the plants. The garden was everything and everyone.” When he first visited the community in 1970 with his friend Myrtle Glines, they intended to stay five days. They stayed three years, during which time the community expanded from twenty-four to one hundred and seventy members. Spangler sees Findhorn not solely as a group of people working and living together, but as a “working organism seeking to accomplish what no human group has yet accomplished in the history of mankind.”
Today Findhorn sees itself as a “University of Light, a place of training people for world service, a demonstration of what happens when God is really put first.” Findhorn stresses education in transformation through meditation in motion. Your lessons are your reactions to whatever situation you find yourself in. “You can always choose to sweep the path with love.”
The community shelters about three hundred members, including forty children. Income comes from donations from members, guests and friends, and from the sale of their crafts and publications.
More esoterically, Findhorn sees itself as a “light center” located on a “power point,” through which universal energies flow. Similar pioneering centers on the planet “form points of light, a network of light, which leads to stability and inspiration in form . . .” “These points of light are a chalice through which the energy of a new consciousness can pour . . . Our lives will benefit life itself. Evolution depends on us.”
The following is an edited transcript of lectures Caddy gave in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, N.C. last June. Caddy was accompanied by a panel of Findhorn community members: Michael Shaw, Gail Neemy, Warren Wright, and Sprague Chesire. Michael Shaw, a Scot, worked as an engineer and manager of an international company, both in Britain and overseas until joining the community three and a half years ago. He now does construction work and takes some responsibility for finance and legal matters in the community. Gail Neemy, originally from Massachusetts, was a social service worker before visiting Findhorn with her mother two years ago; she never left and has worked in the bookshop and publications department. Warren Wright, originally from Raleigh, N.C., got to Findhorn with insurance money after being hit by a car while bicycling. He’s back in Raleigh now, along with Sprague Chesire, who spent two and one-half years at Findhorn working in the bookstore and publications department, and sometimes baking cookies.
— Priscilla Rich Safransky
It’s really good to be here and see such a crowd of eager people. This evening is all about community and communion and communication. Of course, Findhorn is really only one center, one community on this planet, where a new consciousness, a New Age consciousness is emerging, a consciousness of oneness, wholeness, cooperation, of love and of service. I think many people realize that we can’t go on on this planet as we are without destroying ourselves in one way or another. There has to be a change, a change in consciousness. And Findhorn is one of those centers that is demonstrating that change.
Findhorn is situated in the far Northeast of Scotland. It’s quite a ways away from the main centers of population, but that’s good. It thins people out. We only get those that are really keen. Of course, if they’ve come all the way from Raleigh, they’re keener still. The river Findhorn rises in the Cairngorn mountains about fifty minutes away from Forres. It’s a lovely river that comes tumbling down through narrow rocky gorges, past places of natural beauty, such as Randolph’s leap, past the ancient royal barrack of Forres four miles from Findhorn. In the back of Forres is the Cluny Hill Hotel.
This is where the story of Findhorn really started. Eileen and I and our colleague Dorothy Maclean were led there in 1957. When I say we were led there, it came about that Eileen was going through a very difficult time in her life. We were in a small sanctuary in Glastonbury having a time of quiet, meditation, when she heard an inner voice that said “Be still and know that I am God.” It went on to say that all would be well if she followed this inner voice. And that’s what we’ve done ever since, how we were led to Cluny Hill Hotel, how we were led to Findhorn, and how we were guided in the starting of this community. In fact, she received about 30,000 pages of guidance on all kinds of details about the community until seven years ago she received that she wasn’t going to get any more for the community because people were leaning on her instead of turning within. And that’s what we all have to do now, including me.
It was a luxury hotel. We only allowed Rolls Royces and Bentleys to park in the front. It accommodates about 160 people and each one of the bedrooms are different, which is a change from some of the hotels in this country. We had to leave Cluny Hill after five years there and that’s a long story. But Eileen’s guidance was that we would return. We thought that would be in a few weeks or a few months, but it was fifteen years before we returned. Two years ago we bought Cluny Hill Hotel and now it’s a college within what we see as a University of Light. After we left, the first thing that I did was to collect our caravan from the south coast of England and tow it up to Scotland. And we put it on this narrow strip of land of sand and gravel surrounded by sea on three sides. It’s certainly open to the winds that blow all the year round. It’s as far north as Moscow. Here is Findhorn Bay Caravan Park, the last place that you would ever expect to find a spiritual community. In fact it’s the last place that we would have ever have chosen. We used to go by there for a swim when we were at Cluny Hill and say “Fancy living in a dump like that. Cheek by jowl with a lot of other caravans.” So you see, we wouldn’t have chosen it. We were led there on one snowy November day in 1962 with our three boys and our colleague Dorothy Maclean. And we put our caravan up off the snow near a rubbish dump of old tin cans, broken bottles, beside a broken down old garret with broken windows. As I said, we thought we’d only be there for a few weeks or a few months, but it was fifteen years. I had no job and we had no money and that’s where it all started. The first thing that we did was to thoroughly clean and paint the inside of the caravan and then the outside of the caravan. By March of 1963 I still hadn’t gotten a job. So I thought we’d grow a few radishes and lettuces and create a small garden. This is all that will grow in that climate and that soil of tough grass and gorse bushes. First of all we had to put a fence around to keep the winds off. Inside that fence was a little piece of sand and gravel, just five feet by eleven feet. It’s where the Findhorn garden started. If I had known that we were going to create a garden of several acres in that sand and soil, if I’d ever used the word impossible, I might have used it then. But we were led gently, step by step. By the end of the first year, a garden had been created around that first caravan. It started to attract a lot of attention, because it was full of light and vigor. We started to be known for our forty-two pound cabbages and large vegetables.
Six of us lived in that small caravan for seven years. There’s nothing like living in a small space for getting one’s corners rubbed off and sometimes knocked off, or, as blended. It’s really where we learned to work as a group, where the foundations of Findhorn were laid, where we learned to balance the energies of Light, of Love, and of Wisdom. Then three years later Eileen was given a vision of seven mobile cedarwood bungalows surrounded by beautiful gardens and lovely banks of flowers. At that time there were other caravans that belonged to other people with garages, greenhouses, sheds but soon they miraculously just went. I measured out and found that we could get seven bungalows there and so they were ordered in faith. We’ve never had the money for anything at Findhorn. But when we’ve known that something was right, a part of the divine plan, we’ve gone ahead and always our needs have been met and met perfectly. So I went ahead and got trenches to put in drains, water, electricity and the bungalows started to arrive on the backs of lorries in two halves. First one half would be lowered and then the other half and they’d be put together.
Of course, it’s all very well for Eileen to have these visions but they don’t just drop out of the sky. Somebody has to do the hard work to bring it down into manifestation and that was my responsibility. And then when the bungalows were in position, the hedge was planted round about the outside. And the garden was laid out.
Now this garden, as many of you know, is an experimental garden in the cooperation between three kingdoms. Man was the creator of the garden and that was me for the first eight years. Now there’s a group responsible for the garden. Dorothy Maclean was aware that for the first two months, it wasn’t very successful. I hadn’t sown a seed before coming to Findhorn. She was told in her meditations to try and contact the devas democratically. The devas are the angelic archetypal formative forces. Deva is a Sanskrit word for a being of light. There are devas of mountains, of streams, of lakes, but also for each species of trees, shrubs, plants, herbs, vegetables. She found that she could. This was very exciting for me. I’m a down to earth, practical person and these messages need to be practical and make sense and they did. I acted on those messages that Dorothy received. In fact, from over a thousand messages. This whole story is told in The Findhorn Garden book.
Then we were brought into contact with the man who was our link with the nature spirits. He was known as Roc; his name was R. Ogilvie Crombie. He was trained as a scientist. He was a psychologist. He had a wonderful library of about 7,000 books. And after about sixty-five years of preparation he found he was able to see the nature spirits: the fairies, gnomes, elves, sylphs and communicate with them. And so started man’s cooperation again, conscious cooperation with the nature spirits. But this, of course, is nothing new. Many who have lived near to Mother Earth — on our last trip we contacted the Hopis, the Mauris, the Hawaiians, and the Aborigines — they’ve all been able to see and communicate with the nature spirits, though they may have known them by different names and seen them in different forms. It’s only modern man, western man, who has developed the mind and science, who has lost that sensitivity. But now that he’s emerging out of that materialism, he’s once again becoming aware of these other kingdoms. And this was what was created, just as Eileen was shown in her vision.
We were fortunate in having a friend of the community’s in Donald Wilson, the founder-secretary of the Soil Association. He would come up about three times a year to show us how to make compost. In fact when he was there nobody was allowed to think of anything but compost. To him it was the be all and end all of life. Soon after that we had a visit from Sir George Trevelyan who pioneered adult education in Britain. I thought he was going to be interested in the community, but it was the garden that attracted his attention, because he knew I was no gardener and that a garden shouldn’t be growing in that soil. And so he asked me what was the secret. Well, we hadn’t told anybody then about the fairies in our garden. But he twisted my arm and finally I spilled the beans. He was really excited because he’d been a student of Rudolph Steiner and knew all about the elementals and the angelic archetypal forces. So he wrote a memorandum for Lady Eve Balfour who founded the Soil Association. She sent out to investigate the garden Professor R. Lindsay Robb, a consultant to the Soil Association and probably the world’s expert in organic gardening. And in his written report he said that this was the worst possible soil we could have chosen and that there was no method of organic husbandry that could account for the growth in this garden. There were other factors and they were vital ones. So when such an eminent authority as that had made such a statement in a written report we had many well-known people up to see the garden. One of those was Richard St. Barbe-Baker, the man of the trees, founder of the Men of the Trees. He had long been aware of the presence of the devas and the help that he’d received from them.
Our vegetable garden is grown without any artificial fertilizers or insecticides but with the help of the nature forces and with love. We pretty well lived off the produce of this garden. You see, I had no job and no money, just unemployment benefit which was just about sixteen dollars a week for the six of us. And we were told to count our blessings, when we lacked a good job in a hotel, etcetera. I think that it’s so important one sees the best in life, because whatever you see and whatever you think, you’ll draw to you. We could have been very depressed and negative in which case we’d have only drawn negative things to us.
Our sanctuary is the heart of the community. Eileen was given these words to go on the door of the sanctuary: “Peace be unto all who enter this sanctuary. May my peace descend upon you. May my love fill you. May my light guide your every step. Cast all the old aside and become new in my spirit.” There are no symbols of different religions round the walls, so people of all different paths can be united in the silence of the One. And we start the day by words or music of inspiration and then a time of meditation. We can’t get everybody in the sanctuary now, so we have two sanctuaries at half past seven and at eight o’clock. And then again in the evening at six and eight.
So I said Findhorn is a center of demonstration of spiritual law. One of those laws is the law of manifestation. We live by faith. Of course, many people have done that before; it’s not new. For example, in January 1970, we were only ten permanent members. We had our meals in a bungalow. But Eileen had guidance for the time to come to have a central kitchen and dining room. So I designed one in one day and without any money we went ahead in faith, cut the first turf and up this building went. This of course doesn’t make sense to the mind. What would we want a building of that size, costing nearly 10,000 pounds for? But our needs were met financially, very often just in a nick of time. Also with people. For example, one man was a heating engineer, and a plumber and electrician. At that time we had plenty of spiritual poets, but very few spiritual heating engineers, so he was worth his weight in gold. When I asked how big the kitchen was to be, I was told for two hundred. What did we want a kitchen that size for? Furthermore, Eileen’s guidance was that it was to be equipped with the biggest and best equipment, and that all our needs would be met from God’s abundant supply. It was marvelous, going shopping, getting the biggest and best of everything, knowing that the bills would be paid and they were. But within a year it was too small and we wanted to double the size and do the building ourselves, but again Eileen’s direction was that we were not to do it until we had the skilled people to do the work. We had an architect, so I asked him to design the building. We had a quantity surveyor, so I asked him to order up the materials in faith. But we had nobody to do the building, until a girl arrived on our doorstep from the United States without warning. I said, “Why didn’t you let us know that you were coming?” She said, “Well, I felt I just had to come.” “Well, haven’t you got a husband or something?” She said, yes, she had. “Didn’t he want to come?” “No, he didn’t want to come.” “What did he do?” “He’s a builder in wood.” So, I knew then that she was the sprat to catch the mackerel; it wasn’t long before he responded to her letters and came for six months to take charge of this building. And three other joiners and carpenters arrived that same week with equally remarkable stories to tell. And we built our own furniture. And then completed not only the furniture but the candles, the pottery, the curtains, etcetera.
We’ve got about fifty children in the community. Down at Pineridge, an old army camp, was a toilet block which we’ve transformed into a kindergarten school for the children. We had sixteen children between the ages of two and one-half and five in this nursery school. Then for the younger children between the ages of six months and two and one-half years, we have a creche or a nursery school. We usually have between fourteen and fifteen pregnant mums in the community at any one time. The children after the age of five go to the local primary school — Forres Academy and then on to university. And so there’s a balance in education between the family, the community, and the outside world, so they’ll be able to relate to that. I suppose we’ve had about seventy weddings. The weddings and the christenings are times of celebration and ceremony and ritual within the community.
There are a variety of people at Findhorn — about three hundred permanent members now. And they’re usually between one hundred and one hundred and fifty-five visitors that stay a week or more. They’re of all ages from a few days to eighty-seven, come from about twenty countries, from almost every spiritual path you can think of, from different cultures, different classes, different races, different backgrounds, different trades, different professions, all come together into a oneness, a wholeness, a synergistic community.
There’s a lot of energy in the community, and therefore we feel it’s important that there is a structure, a formal organization to safely channel those energies. Of course, there’s one constant thing at Findhorn, and that is that it’s a place of change. The form is always changing as the energies change. We have twenty-five different departments. Each department has what we call a focalizer, a coordinator, someone who focuses the energies, rather than the boss, manager or leader. In the center we have a core group. To begin with it was quite simple. Eileen and I were responsible for the policy. I would have an intuition confirmed by her guidance or she would have guidance or a vision and I would carry it out, since I was the leader of the community. But then when she stopped getting guidance for the community, and we realized that we would need to travel, to be about our universal work, linking with other communities, other groups, other movements, we formed what we called a core group, first of seven and then of twelve to be the central policy-making coordinating body for the community. And we found they were handling too much detail of administration, so we’ve now gone off to having three main branches: the administrative branch, the educational branch, and the community branch.
Q. Within each department how are decisions made?
A. All decisions are made with a group. When the core group has a policy decision to make, they’ll discuss it and when there’s not agreement, because they’re all strong people in the core group with experience in different parts of the community, they’ll have a time of silent meditation and attunement, about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. Then go round to see what each person has got. Invariably it’s the same. It comes from the same source from which Eileen would get her guidance, but it may be through visions, through inner voice, inner knowing or inner intuition. Sometimes someone gets something totally different and they recognize that they must be off beam today.
Our income comes from our guest program, from our members’ contributions. We ask people to join the community for at least two years and to contribute one hundred and fifty dollars a month for the first year. When they run out of money, we support them, then, from our businesses, from our publications and royalties from books and from donations.
We see ourselves as a University of Light. Cluny Hill College is now a college for the education of our guests, our new members, for workshops and conferences. And this is the college used for the ongoing education of the community, particularly in winter. Here we have a library of books and tapes.
We’ve now bought Cluny Hill Hotel. And that was quite a story because remember we thought we were going back there within a few weeks or a few months and as the years went by we couldn’t understand what had happened to God’s promises because they usually come about. And we’d almost forgotten about it. Then, nearly three years ago, we had a lecturer from California and she brought with her her promoter. I had never met an American promoter before. An interesting experience. Anyway, people wondered what he was doing in the community, but nobody comes by chance. We asked him to have tea with us. He saw Paul Hawken’s The Magic of Findhorn and The Findhorn Garden book. He’d heard about the two films that had been made on Findhorn. He said, “You know what’s going to happen? You’re going to be inundated with Americans. It’s going to become the in thing to visit Findhorn. And nothing short of machine guns and barbed wire is going to keep them out.” I said, “Well, you’d better talk to our planning and finance group.” So we had a special combined meeting the next day and he gave his professional opinion. And then he said, “And what are you going to do about it?” And in that moment I knew exactly what to do about it — Cluny Hill Hotel.
We had a friend who loved Cluny Hill. He used to go there about three times a year and he was a solicitor with an interest in hotels. So I phoned him up and told him what had happened and said, “What about you buying the hotel and running it and we’ll provide the people?” So he said he’d phone the chairman and managing director. Two days later I telephoned him. He said, yes, he’d phoned the director who said “Either you’ve got spies among our directors or you’re psychic,” because that very morning they had a director’s meeting and they’d decided to sell Cluny Hill Hotel. So I knew then that the time had come for us to buy it. And to cut a long story short, that hotel was valued and insured for 1,490,000 pounds; that’s about three million dollars. We got it lock, stock and barrel — grand piano, teaspoons, sheets, a going concern, for 60,000 pounds. That’s $120,000. A wonderful example of God’s perfect provision and of His perfect timing. If we’d gone back there a year before, we wouldn’t have had the strength to take it over, to restore it and run it. If it had been a year later, we’d have been in real difficulties because of all the people that were wanting to come to Findhorn. When we’d gone back there eleven years before, to this place that we’d really loved and put so much of ourselves into, we were very depressed because it had gone down, down, down. But Eileen’s guidance was that all was very well. We were told that it had to go to rock bottom before we returned. You see the company was glad to get rid of it, they were losing so much money. It had gone to rock bottom. And so at Christmas we took it over and about thirty or forty would go over there each day, have a time of attunement outside before getting to work to restore the building, taking out all the old rubbish, deciding what was going to be restored and what was going to be burned, clearing out all the rubbish in the garden as well, while bringing in the vibrations of love and light. The gardens are being brought to life with compost and the nature spirits are returning there. The kitchen was thick with grease. It took two weeks to steam clean it. The whole place had been unloved and uncared for. The whole place needed a lot of love. We see that work is love made visible. Everything we do is done with love. When you do a thing with love, you want to do it perfectly and you don’t get tired and it’s a joy. We had a lot of enjoyment and a lot of fun transforming this hotel.
Last Christmas we were given the lovely present of an island, just a mile from Iona, on the west coast of Scotland. It’s five hundred and twenty acres. It was bought by a Dutchman and we’ve got custodianship of it for eleven months of the year, to make it an ecologically balanced self-supporting island. It accommodates forty to fifty people. The cottages are completely equipped, but we haven’t got sheets this time. A boat house, with four boats. A workshop. Gardens with tall granite walls. Our son Jonathan who’s got his degree in ecology and biological sciences is now over there putting what he learned into practice. So this will be a different type of community.
Some years ago we were given a house on Iona. It was to Iona that St. Columba came in 500 A.D. and from this tiny island Christianity spread to Scotland and to England. Every Saturday seven or eight go over there for a week’s retreat. With boats we’ll be able to link our two centers.
Moving out in other ways, a year last Christmas two girls went for a walk in the snow and they came to a small farm called Markessey where the owner allowed us to cultivate the land. But he was almost in tears because he knew he had to sell it. He knew it should go to Findhorn, but we hadn’t got the money then. And these girls ended up in buying it. One of them had a farm in the States which she sold and the other one got married. Now there are three of them there. They’re all three sensitives and they are in communication with animals and insects. They’ve been told their work is to communicate with the animal kingdom in the same way that Findhorn has with the plant kingdom. And so there will be cooperation between the human and the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms.
This last year we’re bursting at the seams. We rent five flats in Findhorn and we’ve been given half a house there. This house is about six miles away from Cluny Hill. Twenty years ago Eileen had guidance that it should be an annex to Cluny Hill and it didn’t come about then, but it has come about now. It was empty for some six years. It’s in a very dominating position and we really wanted it. It was a need for our workshops. We just are pushed for accommodation. The owner wanted 125,000 pounds for it. But Eileen had guidance that it wasn’t to be more than 50,000 pounds. Then just before Christmas, I had an intuition that if we didn’t acquire it, and occupy, vandals would break in. A few days later I found that this is just what had happened. Done a lot of damage. Tore off doors. Pulled off fittings from the walls. I was very upset. Later I was holding a class for new members in the evening and reading some of Eileen’s guidance, which said that everything that happens is really part of the divine plan. I realized then that so were those vandals, because the house now was not worth more than 50,000 pounds, but, at first, the owner didn’t quite see it that way. When we went to Australia I had a telegram on my birthday to say that the house had been bought. An anonymous donor had given us 50,000 pounds and now we are getting to work to restore that beautiful building for our workshops. They had lit a fire in the basement that nearly destroyed it and every room was blackened. We found that the worse a building is, the better, before you take over, because you’ve got to put in a lot of love and light to restore it. And that fire insured that everything had to be scrubbed, washed, and repainted, and a lot of good vibrations put in. You see, you can always look at a thing positively or negatively.
We’ve had a time of consolidation after acquiring Cluny Hill. We’re fully booked up until September. We need to expand. We need to buy the caravan park. The only trouble is that the owner wants half a million pounds for it and Eileen’s guidance says we’re not to pay more than 300,000 pounds. So, there’s a little disagreement at the moment. But we know at the right time with God’s help and other people’s help that that caravan park will be bought, so we can turn it into a place of beauty and expand there.
Remember we started with just three of us with no job, no money, in a caravan park on sand and gravel. We had the faith to follow this inner guidance, step by step, and we know that in the future the whole community will continue on in that way, so that we can fulfill our part, play our part in the transformation of this planet. The bringing in of the New Age.
Q. I wonder if each of you could express how you know your guidance?
PC: I don’t always, but when I know, I know. I wake up very early in the morning with something burning within me and until I take action on it, I get no peace nor does anybody else in the community. So, they’ve learned it’s fruitless to try and stop that. But I think the best thing is to try it and see. Follow that intuition, that still small voice, that flash, that prompting. Don’t listen to that lower mind, that will give you all the reasons why you shouldn’t follow it there. So, it’s immediate action. Try it out. At first there are two voices — a higher voice and a lower voice. Keep on until there’s only one voice.
WW: I’m not quite that intense in my guidance. I feel the experiences around me. We’re all like magnets drawing experiences that are right for us in this time. I really believe that we pretty much have a strong hand in the sort of things that our situation confronts us with. I go with that and that’s my guidance. There’s a point when a decision must be made. Be open for it to come.
MS: I believe that we all know what to do. It’s only a matter of uncovering that, of revealing the divinity that’s within us all. It’s a process of emergence of the truth for us. So, I don’t hear voices or have that type of experience at all, but sometimes I just know what the right thing to do is — a little bit like Peter. I feel a strong intuition and other times I have to work really hard and try to get rid of all the emotional stuff, and the mental stuff, and the physical stuff, that’s obviously clogging me up and getting me down. Once that’s done, then it’s usually pretty clear. But sometimes that takes a bit of an effort. Peter does something called “Foundations of Findhorn” every Monday night for new members in the winter time. Many old members were needing a bit of a shot in the arm. And somebody asked him this question and he said that you can always ask for confirmation. There’s no harm in getting up and doing it and ask for confirmation as you go along. I think that once you get on the road and are actually following what you feel is the right thing to do, but you’re really not quite sure, very quickly, it’s pretty clear to you.
GN: I think I usually realize I should have followed my gut feeling after I didn’t follow it. One of the techniques or tools that I’ve learned just lately was using a seven part meditation and moving into a space where you’re able to ask questions and get an answer supposedly from the Akashic Record. I feel I am putting something out into the universe with the expectation that I will get an answer. I kept going through this meditation and I’d get up there and play around. One of the keys to this space is that you’ll only get the answers that you really have need of. So finally one day I really had need of an answer and as soon as I asked for it a whole feeling of total knowing came over me and of peace. This has only happened to me one time, but I have the feeling it will come through me or to me again. At that moment, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that that was the kind of answer I had been looking for.
SC: I don’t have any profound words of wisdom. I think like most people I’m just a pretty normal person and try to feel within myself what’s right and act on that. And I think it’s really important to try to be balanced in all we do and to take time to be silent and reflect on what we’re doing. I try to do that. Sometimes I’m right; sometimes I’m wrong.
PC: Of course, one learns by mistakes. If you’re going to make a mistake, make a really big one, so that it hurts and then you’ll remember and you won’t do that again.
Q. In working with the nature spirits, is it enough to bless the seeds, and bless the ground and try to send out loving friendly vibrations to the devic spirits?
PC: I think that in cooperation with the forces of nature that love is the key, just as it’s the key in cooperation between people. So, love your flowers, love the soil, tune into the plants and follow those inner promptings as to what the plants need.
Q. I spoke to Don Wells the other night and he said that you were going to the Shenandoah Valley. Could you elaborate on your feelings about the valley and the land to be purchased?
PC: I’m asked about the community that the Fellowship of the Inner Light are going to establish in the Shenandoah Valley, where they’re buying about 1,300 acres. The whole thing is unfolding in a God-guided way. One can see the hand of God in all that’s happening there. We flew out to see it with Paul Solomon. That was the first time that Paul Solomon went. We saw just what they’ve got on their hands and they’ll need an army of people to establish that community. It’s to be known as Carmel in the Valley. Just a beautiful place. Those that are interested should get in touch with Don Wells of the Fellowship of the Inner Light. He’s the administrator, the driving force, there. The address is Fellowship of the Inner Light, PO Box 206, Virginia Beach, Va 23458. I felt very good about this community and I’m sure Findhorn will have a lot to do with Paul Solomon.
So all the time we cooperate and work together with other communities, other centers, other movements throughout the world, because this is a time of cooperating. Each center has got something different to give to the whole. Findhorn hasn’t got all the answers. Findhorn can learn from other centers. We can help other centers. It’s a cooperative thing like organs in a body. People are like bees going around sucking pollen from different flowers, making a nice blend.
Q. I have a question about how you relate to the state outside your own community. We’re in a community now where we’re attempting to establish some sort of legal corporation or some way of relating to the state government. Also, how do you deal with the question of the ownership of the property?
MS: Findhorn is called The Findhorn Foundation. It’s not the same thing as a U.S. foundation, but what in Britain is called a charitable trust. And that has a trust deed that was drawn up by a very good set of lawyers. The original deed was drawn up by a rather country lawyer and it was not well accepted by the government of Britain. Very wisely, the community back in 1972 went to some top lawyers and got some excellent legal advice and a very, very good trust deed drawn up that not only satisfied the law of the land and the inspector of taxes, but also, in fact, had a clear note about what the community is about. That it’s an educational community, it’s a spiritual community, and we’re involved in the transformation of man. So, many people feel a total resonance with that as a legal document as well as an expression of where we’re actually at. That trust deed then is approved in Britain by what’s called the inspector of taxes, similar to the I.R.S. You then can get your tax-free status. That doesn’t mean to say that everything is free of tax. Any trade operation like selling of our pottery or operating our shop is a straight trading operation and we pay taxes the same as every other organization in Britain, although there are certain set operations between capital investments and the tax is exempt, the same as you have in the United States. What I would recommend is getting a really good lawyer and a really good accountant, unless you have these skills in the community. It’s money well spent. What happens is that this trust or this foundation owns all the community property in trust for the community. That doesn’t mean to say that everyone coming to Findhorn gives away all they have. In fact, Findhorn is a mixture of capitalism and socialism or communism or holding things in common — whatever you’d like to say. But in fact, much of what Findhorn has, has been given or has been earned through community effort. All these things are held for the community by the trustees in trust for the community. There are certain laws of Britain about how the trustees can operate, exactly the same as there are in the States. We feel that this is a really good way, because people are drawn to the spiritual life and to community from many walks of life. To some people it’s really natural to live in a very simple, very fundamental way and others find this really difficult. At Findhorn it’s perfectly OK to buy a nice house in the village of Findhorn and live in that lifestyle that you feel OK about, once you’re accepted into the community by the normal means. Or it’s fine to come and live in a very simple cabin. It’s really up to the individual. The caravan plot itself — the plots where the caravans are situated — some are on leased land from the owner, some are just on weekly rented land.
Q. So you have a little of this and a little of that. The foundation has all the common property?
MS: It has all the common property. For example, my own double caravan is on a bit of land that’s leased by the foundation. I own the actual mobile home. These things vary all the time. I think the main thing is flexibility, what suits the person’s own income, own capital, and their own way of doing. Obviously, most people coming from this country like to have their accommodations supplied. And the community owns about forty or fifty trailers as well as some houses.
Q. I became acquainted with the writings of William Irwin Thompson. The question that bothers me relating to his ideas and central to his two recent books is what he calls routinization of charisma: that anything in human affairs that starts out with a dynamic vision — after the mind of the visionaries, organization, process — routine takes over. Then, over time the original charismatic idea becomes routinized. A cycle occurs in which the beauty and the synthesis inverts and we have then demise, organizations, institutionalized values, etc. I believe he is a very staunch advocate of Findhorn still, but I see a conflict here. What precautions can you take to prevent routinization of charisma from settling on Findhorn and having it become another institution?
MS: It’s a really good question and Bill Thompson, in fact, every year comes to the community and gives us a large kick up the backside, because he does call us on many things. And sometimes when Peter’s away, he writes us a long letter telling us that we’re losing our vision. It’s very good to get input from people like him. It reminds me of Chairman Mao and his continuous revolution. To some extent any organization will tend to stabilize unless it’s got a vision of change. And the vision of Findhorn as described by David, for example, is one of transformation, of transformation of the individual, of transformation of the group, the community and the world. The transformation of man is a fundamental theme of the New Age and of Findhorn, and as such I think that as well as we maintain that vision, then that involves change, a lot of personal change and change in the community. I think that creates its own dynamism. I think also that from a straight bureaucracy point of view we really try hard not to institutionalize things too much. We try and trust one another’s intuition; we try and release our own structures or wish for structures to have our own groups without creating a mass of rules. There really are only two rules. No smoking in public places and no drugs. One thing that somebody in the community said recently which I really liked was that the Aquarian symbol is wavy lines, which are in fact representing ever changing forms. In a new age we won’t be able to rely on structures that will be stable. We should be developing free-flowing forms, that all the time have the built-in ability to change within them. I believe that moving from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age, we’re always dealing with this question of not being able to rely on organizations and structures and institutions, but to rely on our own attunement and our own ability to transform ourselves and change and be open to the moment. Hopefully, that’s what we’re working on, but it’s also really good that Bill Thompson keeps reminding us of that.
PC: Could we be sure that each person turns within so that they’re in the right place at the right time doing the right thing, we wouldn’t need a structure or a formal organization. But we haven’t reached that stage yet, so it’s needed in the meantime.
Q. Did you have many problems in setting up an administrative plan?
PC: Well, we had the vision of the core group and three major branches, but at that time we had nobody to fill the places. So, at that time I was focalizer of the core group, focalizer of the administrative branch, focalizer of the education branch and focalizer of the focalizers. That was a bit of a struggle, but gradually more people emerged. Now I’m not focalizer of anything. I attend all these meetings when I’m there; when I’m not it will still go on without me. But in the end Eileen and I are ultimately responsible and therefore have final authority whether we’re there or not, because whatever you start, you are responsible for. I think people didn’t want their own will; they wanted the divine will, what was best for the whole. So this has evolved and it’s changing all the time. New departments emerge fairly painlessly.
Q. How do you relate to standard Christianity?
MS: My brother is an Episcopalian clergyman. He and I and the rest of our family always have a good time on this particular one. The community is non-denominational and irreligious to the extent that there are people at Findhorn from many varying backgrounds: conventional Christianity varying from the Charismatic movement right through to a number of clergymen — Wesleyan, Presbyterian, Episcopalian. Also, there are people who come along a Sufi path. Many people have been to India and have been very much into an Eastern path of some kind. Lots of people do yoga and martial arts and t’ai chi and all these types of things. Findhorn’s a place of synthesis of many spiritual paths. People come to the community having already been on a path for some time. And they find in the community that there’s no inhibition against doing your t’ai chi, or going to Mass on a Sunday morning, but, in fact, there’s a way of integrating your spirituality with your day to day life. And so, Findhorn’s a place where you can “practice the presence,” as Brother Lawrence has said. Many conventional Christian people in Scotland particularly find the community rather difficult because they don’t understand how people can be spiritual without being members of the Church of Scotland. All we can do is embrace all our brothers in love. In fact, once one gets into theology, we’re on very sticky ground, because many people say that Findhorn is pantheistic or gnostic or all these terms. And that’s OK. If people want to put us in these pigeon holes that’s fine. We wouldn’t know what pigeon hole to put ourselves in.
Q. You have no emphasis on Jesus Christ, then?
MS: There’s a great deal of emphasis on the Christ. And that’s why people say we’re gnostic. There’s a little book that we’ve published recently by David Spangler called Reflections on the Christ. We see the Christ energy as very much that energy that links our personality and our soul and that which draws us all to the highest level of our evolution, which puts us in touch with the highest aspects of ourselves. We see that as the Christ consciousness and we see that as being born within each of us. Of course, Jesus was a great manifestation and led a totally archetypal life, which we can all follow in that way.
Q. When people come into the community and have had a particular identification with a role, how is it that very often they end up doing a different job or task when they become members of the community?
GN: I believe that part of the philosophy when you come to Findhorn is to learn to serve and our way of service is definitely for the needs of the whole, so that during our orientation program, which is a six week program for new members, you’re then asked to fill in according to where the community needs you, which is very often far different from where you have come from. Michael, for example, was a business man and manager of an international company, went into the maintenance department and was emptying dustbins for a year and wondering, perhaps, why he was doing it. At the same time, he was meeting a community need as well as learning that you can empty dustbins and have the same amount of love and respect and values for the job and service. And it’s very much the same way with me, having always worked in traditional social service areas with families and children, I had the experience of working in business and learning how to handle money. I think it’s a process of rounding out the individual as well as helping the person to center on what is real and on the God within, rather than on our usual role of status identification.
PC: You asked how did it come about. Like so many things at Findhorn it emerged, when it was very apparent that some people needed to become more balanced. It’s to get a balance of the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical levels and to gain experience of other areas of life that that person may not have had the opportunity to do. But later, after they’ve got balanced, then they’re going to be asked to serve the community with the skills and the knowledge that they have, but with love and service to the whole rather than for self-gain and service to the self.
Q. When a person enters the community, who decides where he or she will work?
PC: Well, we have a personnel group who is responsible for who joins the community, where people work and where they’ll be accommodated and these things are really decided by intuition and in discussion with the person concerned. So it’s not done from a working it out with the mind so much.
Q. What’s your relationship with the elves, gnomes and fairies now? Do you still work with them or have they moved to a less inhabited area?
PC: At the beginning the whole group was focused on the garden, but it was only a small group of five, six or seven people. As we’ve grown, there are now twenty-five or twenty-six departments. Proportionately, there are fewer people involved in the garden though there are more people actually working with the garden. Whereas to begin with it was Dorothy, Roc and myself as the principal channels of the garden, now there’s a larger group that’s attuned and aware of them. You know, wherever we’ve been around the world, it’s been quite surprising the number of people who have seen and communicated and been aware of the nature spirits and the devas. It’s not just isolated to a few. Far more than you would think. Ever since The Findhorn Garden book was published with a foreword by Sir George Trevelyan and William Irwin Thompson, it became sort of acceptable and we had hundreds of letters from people sharing their experiences, particularly as children. So, people in the community are aware of the garden. They realize it’s the foundation on which the community has been built. But the focus has shifted somewhat to the growing of people as well as plants and vegetables.
Q. Are there any conscious invocations or group invocations to these nature spirits to assist in the growth of the garden?
PC: The garden group attunes before they start work, attune to the forces of nature and the God within. After that, it’s an individual attunement.
Q. Does the community try to exert any political influence?
PC: No, none. You know, there’s not a focus on politics. I don’t even know what party Eileen votes for.
Q. How do people join the community and support themselves and do you take anybody?
PC: No. We ask people who write in and want to join the community to come and visit us for two weeks and attend the “Findhorn Experience” program in which they take part in the life of the community, work in the different departments of their choice, attend lectures, workshops, discussion groups. If they still want to join after that, because Findhorn’s not for everybody and everybody’s not for Findhorn, then they would have an interview with two members of the personnel group, that would really go into their motives, find out where they were at in their lives. And if they were successful in that interview, they would then be asked to come back for an orientation program lasting six or seven weeks in which the vision of the New Age and of Findhorn is really shared in some depth. If they pass that, then they’re admitted as members of the community. We do ask them to remain in the community for at least two years, and to contribute $150 a month for the first year. After that, we support them with accommodation, food; we have a boutique for clothing; they have their education, recreation, sport; and to meet their needs. $10 a week pocket money, if they need it, for toothpaste, etc. And they do learn to put into practice the laws of manifestation and look to God as the source of their supply.
Q. What if they don’t have $150 a month?
PC: We don’t make it easy for people to join us. We put all kinds of obstacles in the way and that’s one of them. I don’t think money’s ever stopped anybody from coming. If they’re meant to come, they will manifest that money in some way.
Q. Will you say something about your vision of the New Age and what you feel is the role of Findhorn and other spiritual communities that are coming up throughout the world and how you see the next ten years on the earth plane?
PC: Good gracious! You see what’s happening at this time as we move from the Piscean Age to the Aquarian Age, that two worlds are merging. There’s the old age that is disintegrating and the new one emerging. I think many people can see that if we go on as we are, then we’ll destroy ourselves one way or another. And so a New Age consciousness is one of love, service, wholeness, oneness, unity in diversity and it’s building on the best of the old. It doesn’t mean you chuck out everything. This consciousness, that young people are particularly aware of, is emerging at many points of entry on the planet, many communities around the world. And they’re linking together. That’s why we spend more than half our time travelling, linking different centers, groups, movements throughout the world into a wholeness. Findhorn hasn’t got all the answers. It has only a facet of the diamond of truth, but together they make the whole. In the past two thousand years, so often there’s been a focus on individuality, separateness and some groups and movements and churches have felt that they’re the only ones who have got the truth and all who differ are out. Now in the New Age, it’s unity in diversity. All these different facets cooperating, working together as a whole, seeing the best in each other, focusing on the best and ignoring that which divides.
Q. Could you say something about what is involved in starting a light center, especially with regards to what I consider to be important and that being that a light center can be two or three people getting together on a Sunday evening and meditating and perhaps being patient about waiting for the purchase of a four-star hotel?
PC: People come to Findhorn and see how it’s working now and think they can start where Findhorn is now. But it just can’t be done. They forget the long time of preparation that Eileen and I and Dorothy had before we started Findhorn. They forget the early years of putting down foundations, of how each of us had to give up everything on all levels: physically, emotionally, mentally and even ideals. So one was left with nothing but God. Then, of course, you have everything. These times of testing in the early years. So, I’m very much aware of the points that you made and we do run a workshop at Findhorn on creating a New Age community. I hold workshops as we move around the world on the subject: what are the principles involved in starting a community? Because they’re very different from when a community is already functioning. There are two basic points: One is the importance of being able to be still and turn within to get one’s inner direction. In other words, you don’t think with the mind, “Oh, what a good idea to start a community. Let’s put an advertisement in the local paper.” You really need to know within yourself that that is the thing you’re called to do and are prepared to be really dedicated to that. And then to follow that inner direction that you get, to back up. And it’s getting easier as the signposts and laws are becoming better known. But anybody can have a New Age consciousness of love and working with love, loving where you are, loving what you’re doing, loving whom you’re with. A consciousness of being really positive, because whatever you think, you draw to you.
Q. Could you enlarge upon the term “vision” and the importance of that in starting a community?
PC: People have different ideas, but I would say what is the note that’s going to be sounded? What is the purpose? What is the goal of the community? Of course there needs to be a clear vision, because unless there is clarity over the confusion, all different kinds of people will be drawn.
Q. I’m glad that Findhorn exists, but, for me, it’s quite a distance away. You mentioned some other things that are going to be taking place in the Shenandoah Valley. What are things that are close by that are parallel and accessible?
PC: The Farm in Tennessee. Stephen Gaskin. That is a large community with a similar consciousness but with a very different form. Twin Oaks. Louisa, Virginia.
SC: I just found in coming back to this area that there are a lot of individuals who are emerging this consciousness, like the Lindenself Foundation (Box 2321, Chapel Hill, NC 27514) who are coming together in form. I think things do come together in form once the consciousness is there.
WW: I’m always running into people who are tremendously interested in Findhorn and the work that Findhorn has embraced. I’ve often found an enormous glamour built around Findhorn. Glamour is real, but once you cut through the glamour, it’s not that powerful of a pull. You come down to being right there with yourself walking on the street and you’re a community in and of yourself. Findhorn’s not in Scotland; Findhorn’s here with you. And the people you’re with. And there’s your community. It becomes real and that’s the only reason I can be here and not in Scotland. Findhorn’s universal.
PC: Findhorn’s being able to express that universal consciousness wherever you are.
