The north-east of Scotland is one of the remaining quiet areas of Europe. The only large towns are Aberdeen to the east, and Inverness to the west, separated by 160 kilometres of gentle, rolling farming country dotted with villages and small market towns. To the coast flow several rivers from the Highlands. The river Findhorn, as it leaves its beautiful wooded gorges, reaches the sea via a wide landlocked bay, about 40 kilometres east of Inverness. At the tip of the eastern arm of this bay lies the little village of Findhorn. It was once a small port, but now, due to silting from the sand dunes that surround it, it is an attractive summer haven for yachts and a few tourists who come to stay in local caravan parks.
Looking south from the narrow spit of land beyond the village a broad panorama of gently rising wooded hills is to be seen; a few fields are in the foreground, with the little town of Forres eight kilometres away in the centre. This countryside radiates peacefulness, and on a quiet summer evening, the dusk light colouring the ever-changing cloud patterns reflected in the bay, blessedness would describe it more aptly. Sheltered on three sides by mountains, the area has more sunshine and less rainfall than almost any other part of Scotland, and is in considerable contrast to the wild mountains and misty grandeur of the western coasts.
The local people are friendly and welcome strangers, but they are as proud of their local identity as of their Scottishness. A Scotsman once gave me a lift into Forres. "Are you local?" I asked him. "No, I've only been here 14 years," he replied. The area is quiet and law-abiding, with little crime, although a drug problem has emerged among a small number of young people in the towns. Unemployment is high, yuppies rare.
A little inland from Findhorn village, but still on the bay of the Findhorn river estuary, is a large, active NATO air base, whose roaring jets disturb the peaceful atmosphere and are a constant reminder of 'the world outside'. In between lies the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park. It was here, in 1962, that Eileen and Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean were guided to start the community which is the subject of this book, and which is at present visited by several thousand guests every year, from all over the world. The setting is appropriate for a spiritual community: the peaceful landscapes are matched by the sound of big jets taking off to scour the Atlantic for any potential threats; one lives straddled between two worlds of experience — one might say, the world that God made for us and that which man has made for himself. Indeed this contrast illustrates rather precisely the reason for and the significance of the spiritual community at Findhorn, which has expanded from the Caravan Park where it began, to occupy a large old hotel, Cluny Hill Hotel, now called Cluny Hill College, on the outskirts of Forres. Most of our guests stay here. At Cullerne, a large house near the Caravan Park, are our main gardens. Self-governing sister communities exist at Newbold House, a little outside Forres, and on Erraid, an island off the west coast of Scotland.
In 1972 the community was registered as a charitable trust, under the name 'Findhorn Foundation'. Until the early 1980s the Foundation and community were virtually coextensive, but then a community wider than the Foundation began to form.
We have co-founded and still support an independent Steiner school in Drumduan House, a beautiful old mansion which was donated to us. Independent small businesses and groups are developing, working in cooperation with us — the New Findhorn Directions group, our trading company, operates the Caravan Park An offspring, the Phoenix Shop, selling mainly organic foods, books and crafts, and a Trading Centre. Other independent small enterprises spiritually connected with us include Meadowlark, a beautiful home for old people; Minton House, a retreat and small conference centre; Alternative Data, a computer software business; and the Weatherwise solar energy and building company, as well as an organic farming business supplying the community and others. Other small, independent but connected communities exist in the area and numerous individuals have chosen to settle because of the ethos.We have exchange and networking connections with numerous other groups across the globe, now developing into the fields of alternative psychology and tertiary education.
The first part of this book reproduced on this web site) deals with the significance in the world today of the Findhorn Foundation and the community which has grown up around it, with the spiritual principles upon which it is founded and by which it can be understood. For me, the Community's day-to-day life only has meaning in the context of these more general issues.
The second part describes something of our life here and how we attempt to put spiritual principles into practice, as the core of an experiment in living together, an experiment which is itself constantly changing and developing. The third part sees the community through the eyes of a number of members and ex-members, and the fourth examines perspectives for the future. The approach is my own.
Each member of the Findhorn Community would write a book about their experiences and their understanding of what they are living through in their own personal way, with their own emphases. However, I believe my ten years at the Foundation — the most inspiring years of my life — have given me a viewpoint that is not greatly at variance with its collective consciousness.
I suppose that I have always been a seeker — in search of understanding of the contradictions in my own identity as well as those of society. In earlier years I sought to change the world through left-wing politics and feminism; and had to transform my own identity in a dramatic and unusual way. It all taught me a great deal, but my first real sense of a spiritual integration of the personal and the social came when I learned Zen Buddhist meditation in the early 1970s. Three years of Re-evaluation Co-counselling, Gestalt and Bioenergetics assisted the rearrangement of my psychology and gave me the strength to give up my job and trust in a then uncertain future. I cashed in my pension in order to study in California for three years, learning techniques to open for myself the intuitive faculties we all possess. Only then was I ready to be drawn to the Findhorn Community. I came to Findhorn in 1983, having given up my job as a sociologist five years previously.
For three and a half years I worked in the gardens, then for a year in the Phoenix shop. After another year directing ('focalizing') the Personnel department with Cally Miller, came the time to write this book. At the Findhorn Foundation I was able to live, for the first time in my life, in inner spiritual harmony, and found a genuine happiness, of a kind that is very close to bliss. In 1985 another Foundation member introduced me to the teachings of Sathya Sai Baba, and He has become the perfect spiritual instructor for me. This book is a small way of giving thanks for these incalculable gifts. Most of the examples used come directly from my personal experience in the community.
I was supported by the Foundation to write this book as an independent, individual statement about the community, a trust which I deeply appreciate.
Nowadays we are constantly featured on television programmes, but no book about the Findhorn Community has been written for several years. Eileen Caddy, who still lives at Findhorn, has published several volumes containing the channellings she has received and an autobiography. They provide a wealth of authoritative guidance on how to live a meaningful and joy-filled life. In them is given the spiritual purpose of the Findhorn Foundation. David Spangler's writings situate the community in a world context, but he withdrew his earlier books from publication. An account in journalistic style of the first years of the community was given in The Magic of Findhorn (1975), by Paul Hawken. This book has introduced thousands of people to us, but it no longer accurately reflects the balance of our daily lives here. He also has indicated that he does not wish republication. Faces of Findhorn (1980), now out of print, showed something of our life in the 70s through pictures, while other books — The Findhorn Cookbook and The Findhorn Garden — have related to particular aspects of our work. Peter Caddy's memoirs have been posthumously published. They form an invaluable complement to Eileen's autobiography in understanding the history of our community.
Among other things, this book examines the significance of the Findhorn Community in the contemporary world. Its story is not just that of another utopian community. It is urgently relevant to the problems of modern civilisation. The community does not exist in isolation. It is part of a world-wide movement for personal and social transformation, expressed in channelled writings such as A Course in Miracles; in the teachings of contemporary spiritual Masters, like Sai Baba; and in the strivings of a multitude of individuals and small communities the world over for a change in consciousness. We are part of a gentle wave of transformation that is moving across our planet.
Before proceeding, it is necessary to make a note about the use of the word 'Findhorn' in this book. To the yachtsmen, the villagers and many local people, Findhorn refers to the village and the bay; to the anglers who yearn to snare the salmon that each year enter the bay, it refers to the river; but for the thousands of spiritual seekers who visit us and the millions more who see the frequent television presentations, or read articles in the mass circulation magazines of many lands, Findhorn refers to the spiritual community which, as I write, has existed here for 27 years. Thus it means no disrespect to the village, or the river, or the bay, when I use the term Findhorn about the Foundation — it merely recognises the area's internationally most widely-known feature. Perhaps it would have been better if there had been another name, but it is normally clear which identity named 'Findhorn' is referred to. Some local villagers would prefer that we always say 'Findhorn Foundation' when talking about ourselves but, with the flood of visitors and international presentations about us growing, we can no longer control what name is used. Furthermore, the Findhorn Foundation only came into being when we were already ten years old and the Foundation is now just part of a growing Findhorn Community. It seems better to accept the inevitable. For spiritual seekers, the Findhorn Foundation or the Findhorn Community is just 'Findhorn'. Generally I have spoken of the Findhorn Foundation or the Findhorn Community in this book, only using Findhorn on its own where the context is absolutely clear.
The Findhorn Community plays a significant part in a revolution that is gently changing the world. It is not one of the noisy revolutions or 'isms', of which there have been many in our turbulent times; we do not stridently seek converts for a new ideology. We are in the mainstream of and contributing to an older, an age-old, way of experiencing the world, whose time has now come, and without whose ascendance humanity cannot survive the challenges of its own civilization. It is, simply put, a revolution of love, whose aim is to put spirituality back into the centre of human identity where it belongs, so the world can enter a new era based on mutual understanding, cooperation and harmony. This revolution does not 'do' anything; it does not normally make headlines in any of the news media, but it creates the conditions in which the above qualifies can flourish among human beings. Perhaps it is responsible for the rather extraordinary changes that, at the close of the 80s, have laid the basis for the end of the Cold War and the transformation of Eastern Europe. But it has much more still to do....
The Findhorn Community is not based on dogma. Yet its practices express a simple theology, one which underlies all major religions:
God is Love; God is omnipresent. God is therefore our essential Self. Seeking to make this essential Self our experienced reality is the spiritual approach to life.
By taking this approach, life's meaning is discovered, and our awareness, creativity and vitality begin to be released.
The philosophy of life that has evolved at the Findhorn Community differs from that of established religions in that, like their own mystics, we do not place emphasis on outer form, ritualistic observance or customary obedience to revealed codes of behaviour. We seek to discover Self behind self; as we become Self-oriented, we become selfless. Unlike most earlier mystics we do not withdraw into caves or hermitages, but see ordinary life as the setting for our Self-discovery. Thus life in the community is not monastic. It is relevant to people in any situation, of any religion, class or colour. The most important thing is that the 'theology' works, and even with our modest degree of commitment to the spiritual, it works rather well. There is a famous saying that if you take one step towards God, He will take ten towards you. But in which direction do you take that one step? It is towards your own loving essence.
The world in which the Findhorn Community exists has become more and more secular. Materialist civilisations in the past have justified themselves in the name of imperial power, banditry or cultural or racial superiority; but all have come, after a while, to nothing. The driving force of our current civilisation is material gain. During the past century a world civilization has emerged, one of great cities and ever-accelerating technological change. Communism is only a rather unsuccessful variant which substitutes state for private accumulation. Materialist civilisation has, in the West at least, made traditional religion marginal, but it has not created human happiness.
Is it possible to create a fulfilling civilization which is not dominated by material acquisitiveness, but which does use human technological inventiveness sensibly? At the Findhorn Community we believe it is possible. Our own practice over the years is like a workshop preparing for such a civilisation. A spiritual civilisation is in the making here and in other similar centres, with a spirituality appropriate for human beings brought up in the pell-mell world of the twentieth century.
It is actually essential for an alternative civilisation to become predominant. A large number of people in the West and a few elsewhere are, in material terms, doing very well, but from a global and historical perspective we are living in a very dangerous situation, perhaps the most critical humanity has ever faced. Major changes of perspective are not only beneficial to individuals. They are necessary and urgent for humanity's secure future. Although the new technologies have created one world and undermined all old national and cultural boundaries (globalisation), human attitudes have remained age-old. Greed, envy and suspicion are promoted —under other names, of course — to stimulate our chaotic civilization. They have fed enormous social problems — of alienation, resentment, criminality and drug taking. Underlying them are three great challenges of our times: the arms race, ecological destruction, and world poverty and debt.
Everyone is gradually becoming more and more aware of these problems, but attempts to solve them are still piecemeal. Each individual, company or government tends to put material progress' first, while hoping others will deal with the crises that gives rise to. At the Findhorn Community, however, we explore a human consciousness based on love, trust and inner sufficiency; we recognise and care for each other as part of one human family; we live modestly, and try to take loving care of what we have; and we care for the earth which sustains us. Simple enough, but unless international civilisation too bases itself on these values, can humanity survive?
Our great materialist civilisation has created devastating weapons systems. It is destroying our global environment, and it has damned two thirds of the world's population to searing poverty and indebtedness. At the Foundation we do not feel despondent in the face of these challenges. We are optimistic that they will be resolved. But we do not try to pretend that they do not exist.
In 1986 I visited my daughter, who lives in Japan with her Japanese husband. It was only a short train ride from their home to Nagasaki, and I wanted to make a pilgrimage there. I was not quite nine when the atomic bomb was used on Nagasaki. I cannot remember my reactions at the time. Probably I accepted what we were all told, that it shortened the war. Perhaps it did. The nuclear explosion took place in the air over the city. At its epicentre on the ground stands a simple marble monolith, surrounded by a small garden with paths and neat hedges. Coloured streams of paper — prayer symbols — are piled to one side, and local children, brought to see the site as part of their education, crowd the garden. Above this point an atomic nucleus was split, and seventy thousand people died in a matter of seconds.
I sat down at the monolith and tried to meditate — a typical Findhorn Foundation reaction. As soon as I closed my eyes, uncontrollable tears started to flow, and my body was shaken by deep sobs. Embarrassed to be seen weeping so in front of all the children, I stood up and opened my eyes. The tears subsided. It was as if the agony of that instantaneous extinction still hovered as energy in the atmosphere of the place, waiting to find catharsis through compassionate hearts.
It would be good not just to have disarmament agreements while retaining our fear and mistrust of others, but to have peace. I cannot do much about the twists and turns of negotiations about each current crisis, but as a member of the Findhorn Foundation I work, with considerable success, to develop inner peace. I do not think I can legitimately harbour great expectations about negotiations between statesmen and states, if I cannot in my own personal life find some inner harmony and express it in my immediate surroundings. It is empowering to work in this way, for I am no longer an alienated spectator of decisions I cannot control. I have something practical to do, and one is also happier if peaceful. I believe our collective attempts at acquiring personal peace, which is part of the divine reality within us, contribute to an atmosphere in which disarmament negotiations can begin to succeed, till the only remaining mega-weapons are models in museums.
For the first time in my life l saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light — our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.
(Ulf Merbold, astronaut from the Federal Republic of Germany, and Vladimir Kovalyonok, cosmonaut from the USSR, quoted in The Home Planet)
We may no longer take for granted the natural environment in which we live. Our civilisation gives material benefit to only a few of the world's inhabitants, but in its destruction of the environment it knows no boundaries. In spite of scientific enquiry, nobody really knows the extent of the damage that is being done, how dramatic it is, or how long its effects will last. Multiple pollution of earth, seas and skies; holes in the ozone layer; ever more toxic chemical waste to dispose of; radioactive waste; pollution from gigantic accidents; destruction of forests for cash crops; desertification; global warming, the extinction of animal and plant species; the potential exhaustion of mineral resources — the list is long and frightening.
At the Findhorn Community we live beside an early example of the ecological results of commercial greed. As the tribal chiefs and landlords of the 18th-century Scottish Highlands discovered the potential financial return of sheep farming, they destroyed the remaining natural forest cover of the land, and drove the population out. The wild, highland wilderness is actually a man-made northern desert. Once the main forest stands had been destroyed, the mineral content of the soil was quickly leached off, and grazing by sheep and deer made sure the forest could not regenerate. The land ownership structure eliminated peasant farming, except in far-flung corners of the worst land. The population of the northernmost county, Sutherland, was 300,000 in 1830; today it is only around 25,000. The devastation of the Highlands is often ignored, as it has become a paradise for wanderers gasping for solitude in our overcrowded, overstrained civilisation. But it is an unnatural wilderness. Among our community's current activities is a project to regenerate regions of the old Caledonian forest.
During the early years of the Findhorn Community, in the 1960s, well before the appearance of the Green movement, ecological consciousness developed in a rather unusual way. Through their meditation work, the founders of the community rediscovered that it was possible for humans to contact and communicate with the energy forces controlling the growth of plants, and that these forces respond. The extraordinary organic gardens of the early community were the result. Some of our current, similar work with nature energies is described later in the book. We have practical experience, on a small scale, of how to co-create with nature to make a desert flower! It may well be very helpful later when humanity has ceased to destroy its own environment and is beginning to repair the damage.
In recent years, the community has developed a more conventional ecological programme. In doing so we have found that one of the deepest wounds that industrial civilization has inflicted on us has been a reduction of sensitivity to nature itself. Everyone is horrified by stories of city children who have never eaten anything other than tinned or frozen vegetables. However, if we are really going to save our planet and become co-creators with nature rather than its attempted conquerors we are going to have to do more than eat fresh vegetables. A new humanity will have to fall in love with the wonder of God's expression in the natural world, as St Francis once did. If we can reconnect with the sacredness of the natural world that the native Americans and other 'earth' peoples know, its rapine in the interests of greed will be unthinkable. Even the Foundation's very-willing guests and members often have to be retrained to make this loving connection.
Attempts at ecological regeneration without a sensitivity to the delicate balance of nature can be more disastrous than the problems which stimulate them. The Hopi Indians say that every problem the white man solves with his technology creates a worse one, an observation it is sometimes hard to deny.
The great ecological crisis of our times has been well documented. Already it is probable that drastic collective action crossing all national frontiers is required in order to reverse the process. The root cause is a gross distortion of the human relationship with the earth we live on, caused by the unceasing stimulation of material desire. Thus the real solution requires a major personal and collective re-evaluation of the meaning of human life on earth, and of the source of happiness. More sensitive, inwardly directed people make less demands on natural resources and have a much greater appreciation of the wonder of human interaction with the planet. A new lifestyle is needed.
Without this re-evaluation there would be a steady deterioration of conditions of life, expressing itself in a disaster here, a chronic problem there, till the pollution and destruction of the environment and the ability of the human body to resist it reached a crossroads of no return. The Findhorn Foundation provides a working alternative lifestyle, spiritually based and holistic, which demonstrates the direction humanity must take, and some of the problems we must solve if humanity is to survive.
Yet the historical study of relationships between nations shows quite clearly that, as some became richer, others became poorer. For instance, Australian aboriginal and Native American peoples were decimated in the take-over of their land for farming. Dutch commercialism was fuelled by pillaged wealth from Central and South America, passing through Spain. Indian wealth provided much of the capital for the first British industrial revolution and so on.
At present, the poverty of the Third World is not merely alleviated by charitable aid, but also maintained by international relations between rich and poor countries, as Third World leaders constantly complain. Extensive foreign ownership of land and industry exports profits. The best land is used for cash crops purchased by the West, expropriating peasants to hopeless shanty towns. The terms of trade are dominated by the rich nations, so raw material prices are very low. Debtor nations cannot repay the interest, let alone the capital, on their debts, which swallow up huge proportions of national wealth. Transport is monopolised by the wealthy nations, who reap its profits. Wage differentials are so huge — up to 15 to 1 — that educated people are constantly tempted away.
As a result, the rich nations monopolise the world's resources. At present their political strategies depend on an ever-increasing material standard of living. Yet Third World populations are more and more beginning to demand similar standards, as are the peoples of the ex-communist world. The tendency is to fall deeper and deeper into debt.
This demand for more is insatiable, a false dream of happiness. There is an inherent global economic instability. Banks are trying to write off Third World debts because they realise they will never be paid. Yet more and more people and governments become caught up in the dream.
Debt is not confined to the Third World. The level of debt in the wealthy nations themselves is already astronomical, and a default in Third World debt payments could trigger the kind of economic crisis the thought of which makes stock market analysts jitter. On my recent workshop tour in Germany I saw a bank advertisement — 'How to spend your next year's income this year!' Our much-vaunted market economies are a house of cards, but in order to stop the progression of the dream, there has to be a viable alternative to a greed-based economy.
Uneven socio-economic relationships between rich and poor groups of nations are not merely unstable and destabilising. As the communications revolution brings us all closer and closer together, gross distortions of wealth and poverty are reflected in all kinds of moral and ethical problems. Those who have may become unconsciously guilty, developing insecurity and reactive behaviour patterns. Those who have not may envy those who have and exhibit even more exaggerated materialism; or they may turn to crime to achieve what legitimate business seems to deny them. These problems occur not only between societies but also within them, for wealth is unevenly distributed here too. Another reaction, from wealthy and poor alike, is to turn to drugs to 'blot it all out'. And, finally, terrorism uses usually religiose, excuses to spread violence and mayhem.
Frankly, a piecemeal solution is hardly likely. As one poor nation recovers from a debt crisis through some manipulation or rescheduling of loans, another falls into one. A fragile advance is destroyed through some natural disaster, crop failure or political instability. Each individual manufacturer seeks the cheapest of raw materials for his products to maintain his profit margins. In an extremely competitive world economy, he is forced to create the crisis he may personally deplore.
A spiritually oriented life attacks this problem at the root. If we realise that the basis of happiness is within us, not in material things, material goods become less important, not an end in themselves. In the Findhorn Community we try to live frugally and comfortably, taking care of what we have as an expression of love. In my view it is probable that the earth as a whole could sustain its population at the level of our current lifestyle. One can hardly expect people to give up the frenetic search for happiness through material possessions unless we can demonstrate something else which works better. But we can. In the community we live a lifestyle which teaches us the harmony and balance between individuals and groups. We become more and more aware that other people's interests are, ultimately, our own. We are a laboratory where solutions fundamental to the problems of poverty and affluence are being explored.
Added together all these problems are pretty overwhelming. Humanity just has to re-examine its motivating principles. For 27 years the Findhorn Community has been doing this by practising a different way of life. We continue to do so, expanding our community and seeking to share the resulting experience more and more widely. Thankfully, we are not alone in this task. Many other groups and individuals have reached similar conclusions and are following a comparable path. We are all interacting, generating and sharing energies which indicate the way to overcome the crisis that the whole of humanity faces.
Mere adjustment of external conditions won't solve the problems. The crisis of humanity is too severe for that alone to succeed. We need a reorientation of the motivation for living — from an external, materially directed, extrinsic search for fulfilment, where action results from the stimulation and satisfaction of material need, to an internal, spiritually oriented, intrinsic search for fulfilment. In the latter, action results from the discovery of love and wisdom within.
One day, the air base down the road, our alter ego, will either be eliminated in an apocalyptic denouement, together with the rest of us, or it will be quietly dismantled, as a transformed consciousness on the planet becomes dominant. At the Findhorn Foundation we are exploring this transformation. If humanity succeeds it will reach a new stage of development, one in which war and the threat of war is made redundant, the environment is cherished, and people live sustainable and mutually-caring lives. After living in the Findhorn Community for ten years, I am confident that the necessary transformation will take place.
In the next chapter we turn to a more philosophical discussion of the crumbling basis of materialism, and of the alternative that is being asked of us now, introducing the basic spiritual ideas of the Findhorn Community.
LINK to Chapter 2