Some years ago W. H. Auden, in speaking of Yeats’ death, wrote that “all the instruments agree: the day of his death was a dark cold day.” As the old world now begins to fade, the new one rises with just such a pronouncement on its predecessor. This culture is made with instruments — news media, movies, books — that measure every syllable, every speck of dust in the material world. Nothing is left to wonder at.
So that deep in the recesses of our consciousness Peter Caddy and the others were much anticipated. Their instruments were not those of the mind but of the spirit. There was no despair in these people. There was none of the grasping idealism about them which has characterized other groups pointing to change in our culture. There was only peace and a simple acceptance of the rightness of each moment spent in attunement with God.
It was very moving to hear the visitors from Findhorn “live,” but most people who were at the lecture already knew the facts and the information before. Findhorn was a bright, sunlit place in their consciousness, protected and half-hidden while they moved about in the world.
Though much of the information was old hat — it was like hearing the same account of an event as a child over and over to recapture the excitement — those who were at the lecture seemed high with something that went beyond the words the speakers were saying or even the slides they were showing. There was an energy in the Community Church that seemed to lift those who were attuned to it to another space, almost a harmony on another level. It was a communion of those in the auditorium seeking something much higher. For me this was a glimpse into group consciousness, and it was beautiful.
The fiddlers in the balcony, the festiveness, the excitement of being at a lecture by messengers of another, happier age — all that was there, but there was something more, unnameable, which seemed to go beyond expectation and personality into the very meaning of oneness, a sharing beyond attempting to share but by simply being. It was as if the audience, Findhorn folk included, had come together to form an entirely different being, one that included each individual but collectively was greater, higher, and more cognizant than any one there.
