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Guide to contents

The Times online obituary for Eileen Caddy follows standard details – the Vatican of the New Age – Eileen’s “guidance” could sound banal – the partisan theme of God as hotel manager – Peter Caddy’s middle class background – Spiritualism – Dr. Sullivan and Rosicrucian lore – Peter Caddy as Rosicrucian master and catering officer in the RAF – Eileen and Moral Rearmament – the charismatic and irascible Sheena Govan – Alice Bailey, Djwal Khul, and the new age – Eileen Caddy’s inner voice begins in 1953 – the newly married Eileen and Peter at Cluny Hill Hotel – the fate of Sheena Govan – UFO lore – Findhorn Bay caravan park – the deva lore of Dorothy Maclean – Sir George Trevelyan and the Aquarian Age – God Spoke to me – Paul Hawken and the magic of Findhorn – the Garden of Eden – David Spangler arrives – Limitless Love and Truth (LLT) – Liebe Pugh and the Universal Link – the Spangler lore of world servers – William Bloom and the money game – Eileen stops sharing guidance – the caravan site becomes The Park – Peter Caddy’s exit from the Findhorn Foundation in 1979 – Eileen’s retreat from authority figures – the Game of Transformation – attunement lore – acquisition of properties – the Cluny Hill College of alternative therapy – the Caddy Guidance slogan – economic problems commence – spiritual democracy a fantasy – the “workshop” drive of the new age – the Grof phase of Holotropic Breathwork – the 90s events contracted in partisan accounts – the 90s management teams and internal problems – NGO status ignores economic details – Eileen Caddy a puppet of the management teams – the 1994 circular for donations and the Horn of Plenty – Eileen’s confidante Kate Thomas – Craig Gibsone converts to Holotropic Breathwork as a megastar practitioner – Eileen keeps quiet in the face of wrongs and overbearing officials – Kate’s Destiny Challenge tells the truth that was so unpopular – a victim of staff hostility – Dr. Sylvia Darke reacts to the Findhorn Foundation – Judy Buhler-McAllister in high office – Eileen Caddy betrays her conscience – Dr. Darke writes to the Scottish Charities Office (SCO) – Eric Franciscus and suspect Education – Peter Caddy sides with the dissident Kate Thomas – Eileen Caddy sides with the management teams – Dr. Pierre Weil confuses institutional issues with an uncritical approach – the scruple of Kate Thomas – Eileen’s fear complex – Eileen fails in relation to Holotropic Breathwork – Craig Gibsone triumphant, despite the casualties – the teaching of Eileen Caddy and loving oneself – Stephen Castro becomes a sceptic of the inner voice – suppression of relevant reports by the management – the problem of Holistic Learning – the heretical chapter 14 of Kate Thomas – the legal interdict of unconditional love – the mistake of Alex Walker – the myth of conflict resolution – Eileen Caddy condones the total suppression of Kate Thomas in 1994 – the ordeal of Howard Whiteson – unconditional love a deceptive theme – Eileen’s fear complex ignores the SCO recommendation – Kate warns against Rajneesh and Aleister Crowley, but Eileen turns a blind eye – the very commercial Game of Transformation overlooked by UNITAR – the big debt declared in 2001 – ecobiz in the ascendant – CIFAL status a doubtful achievement – John P. Greenaway’s critical contribution – Wouter Hanegraaff’s model of new age religion – Spangler’s Revelation in query – Alex Walker’s manifesto in contention – Peter Caddy warns about increasing commercialism – Findhorn Business Partners plc – local Scottish neighbours in protest – Sir Michael Joughin confronts Judy Buhler-McAllister on behalf of the native Findhorn village – the BBC celebration and Sir Michael’s deep misgivings – the stress of Eva Haden in the therapeutic community – planetary village lore – Eco-Village Ltd and Duneland Ltd – the new ecohousing industry – the unelected administrative caste – Stephen Castro petitions the trustees for a democratic internal enquiry, which is denied – the commercial conflict resolution – the oligarchy of trustees – accounting complexities – the fashionable theme of sustainability – the glowing theme of community – high prices charged as usual – ecovillage and the Arcane School in convergence – Moray Council converts to ecobiz – conflict and transformation a joke scenario – new age affluence and luxury – the Sathya Sai Baba channelling fad – extension of the Human Potential Movement – the eco prefix arrives – elite ecohouses worth big money – the game of Holistic Learning – the City of Light – Dr. Malcolm Hollick endorses the oblivion of dissidents – ecology is a science, not ecobiz – Eileen Caddy as a puppet symbol for Margot Anand and Rajneeshi sexual magic – civil servant Stephen Castro’s retrospect – John Greenaway versus Prof. John Drane on new spirituality – INFORM and UNITAR contribute to illiteracy – Craig Gibsone’s commercial workshop in ecology – entrepreneurial ecology versus the Shinglelands Preservation Trust – CIFAL Findhorn might opt for eco-skyscrapers – Chris Coates and the analogy of Point Loma – the Consultancy Service and cover-up promotionalism – neoReichian therapy and the Aleister Crowley role model for illegal drug use, occult fantasy, and extreme behaviour – the Findhorn Foundation internet stigma of 2002 a seriously flawed tactic – an adolescent theme revived as In Search of the Magic of Findhorn – the tutelary Angel of Findhorn – the legend of the early years – the little chat God – the monastic hippie commune – Roger Doudna’s football match – Jill Rathbone and the ogres – Eileen Caddy glorified – Alex Walker and the Moray Steiner School – Jill Rathbone’s legal case – the special security victim – the consultancy magic of Robin Alfred, co-focaliser – Experience Week confusions and creative chaos – a local researcher now withdraws support for UNESCO, associated with CIFAL Findhorn, as is the Department of Public Information via NGO status – Eileen awarded an MBE – the Moray Arts Centre

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Part One: The early years, conceptual influences, the “magic of Findhorn” promotionalism, and anomalies

The Times online obituary for Eileen Caddy (1917–2006) was of interest to those with a critical angle on the co-founder of the Findhorn Foundation. See http://timesonline.co.uk. Caddy is here described as an “unconventional spiritualist” who helped to found the “Vatican of the New Age,” which is a nickname that has been conferred upon the Findhorn Foundation (existing in Moray, north Scotland). The overtones of orthodoxy suggested by the nickname may be significant in a manner not intended by the glorifiers, as certain strong repressive measures associated with religious orthodoxy adhere to the unofficial history of the Findhorn Foundation.

Beginning in 1962, the genesis of the Findhorn Foundation was a caravan site in the dunes alongside the Moray Firth. It first became known as the Findhorn Community, not to be confused with the village of Findhorn nearby, whose inhabitants came to resent the conflation of identities which occurred. Three and a half decades later, the Findhorn Foundation gained the status of an NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation, associated with the United Nations). The Times obituary states that this community has “about 450 residents and staff,” and receives more than four thousand guests each year (though higher figures have been given elsewhere). A basic problem is that the history of these developments has not been comprehensively charted, despite the various popular treatments of the subject by partisan writers like Carol Riddell and Alex Walker. The Times online version settles for some beaten track details along with one or two phrases that are perhaps slightly cynical.

The other major co-founder was Eileen Caddy’s second husband Peter, who was appointed manager of the Cluny Hill Hotel at Forres prior to the more famous caravan site phase at nearby Findhorn. Peter Caddy “turned to Eileen for guidance that seemed sometimes absurdly banal: for example, her inner voice advised him to charge £10 extra for an extra bathroom and to give the Duke of Bedford the best room” (Times online).

Critical analysts are not obliged to credit the partisan statement that “for five years God, one might say, via Eileen’s [inner] voice and Peter’s administration, became a hotel manager” (C. Riddell, The Findhorn Community: Creating a Human Identity for the 21st Century, 1991, p. 73). The theme of God as a hotel manager is one of the many superfluities in the enthusiast reports promoted by Findhorn Press, the Foundation publishing arm. Riddell joined the Foundation in 1983 and subscribes to the notions and jargon of the canonical format

Peter Caddy (1917–1994) was born into a middle class Methodist family in Middlesex, and attended public school. He was introduced to Spiritualism during boyhood, his father being a sufferer from rheumatoid arthritis and attending the weekly séances of Lucille Rutterby in the hope of a a cure. Rutterby was a Spiritualist medium and “healer” who claimed to transmit messages from a spirit guide named Silver Deer. The dominant craze amongst Spiritualists at that time was “North American Indian” spirit guides, who always spoke in English. In his late teens, and after obtaining an apprenticeship with a catering firm, Peter contacted an organisation which exerted a strong influence upon him. This grouping he believed was “a fellowship of the original Christian Rosenkreutz Rosicrucians.” That belief amounts to a popular occultist misconception. The original group of “Rosicrucians” were Lutheran radicals associated with the pastor Johann Valentin Andreae, and are discussed in recent scholarly literature. Those religious radicals were not as the later occultist grapevine chose to depict them some three centuries later. (Shepherd, Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals, 2004, pp. 218–19.) An enthusiast report states that Peter Caddy came “under the tutelage of one Dr. Sullivan” (P. Hawken, The Magic of Findhorn, 1975, p. 52). This entity was the amateur actor and playwright George A. Sullivan (1890–1942), who used the pen names of Alexander Matthews and Aureolis. Sullivan left the Theosophical Society along with Mabel Besant-Scott (the daughter of Annie Besant), who failed to succeed her mother as leader in the status stakes. In the early 1920s, Sullivan created the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, which lasted for some thirty years. This was a relatively small grouping in which Sullivan published pamphlets arising from his correspondence course. The Fellowship indulged in extravagant Rosicrucian lore already popular within the Theosophical Society, and also employed quasi-Masonic rituals (Sullivan being closely associated with a co-Masonry order founded in the 1890s). About 1935 Sullivan moved to Christchurch (Dorset), and in 1938 he tried to gain more subscribers for his eccentric project by opening a private theatre, teaching his form of Theosophy via drama. He finally staged “vaudeville and musical comedy in a last desperate attempt to attract audiences” (R. Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, 1999, p. 213). Sullivan had adopted the status title of “Supreme Magus,” and the young Peter Caddy came to regard him as a “being of vast knowledge,” gaining entry to the London-based branch of the Fellowship and travelling regularly to Christchurch to attend the “Rosicrucian” gatherings. Caddy’s autobiography relates his belief that Sullivan possessed an esoteric cipher manual of Sir Francis Bacon that was handed down the generations by “Rosicrucian” masters (S. J. Sutcliffe, Children of the New Age, 2003, pp. 42–3). The misleading ideas about Bacon in these circles doubtless serve to explain references to that British philosopher in “channelling” lore attendant upon the early 70s lectures of David Spangler at Findhorn (cf. Alex Walker, ed., The Kingdom Within, 1994, pp. 406ff.). One report strongly indicates that in his later years, Caddy believed himself to be the successor to Sullivan as “Rosicrucian Master” (R. Akhurst, My Life and the Findhorn Community, 1992, p. 34; S. J. Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation, 1996, p. 30).

During the Second World War, Peter Caddy served as a catering officer in the RAF. Afterwards, while stationed in Iraq, he met Eileen Combe (later Caddy), whose first husband was also a RAF officer. Eileen had become familiar with Moral Rearmament, which was an evangelical Christian movement associated with Frank Buchman. Her husband was an exponent of the doctrines involved, and she participated in the “guidance” sessions. “Her husband became obsessed by Moral Rearmament and imposed its disciplines on her, which she found increasingly restrictive” (Times online). Her husband attempted to convert Peter Caddy, though the latter appears to have been more interested in Eileen. “Their relationship remained platonic until 1953” (ibid.), after she returned to England. Eileen then proposed a divorce, and was banished from the family home (and her five children) by her husband, who was still in Iraq. Peter’s second wife Sheena Govan now “ostensibly welcomed her into the marital home in London” (ibid.), though the situation did not prove easy. The Rosicrucian adept Peter Caddy had created a volatile situation of ménage à trois. Sheena gained a reputation for being authoritarian and irascible. Her flat in Pimlico was the venue for a small early 50s circle entertaining “esoteric” influences that were surfacing in middle class sectors. The jargon of Sheena’s group included usage of the confusing phrase “new age” that was chiefly associated with Alice Bailey (1880–1949), whose Arcane School elevated the elusive Tibetan Djwal Khul in a rather Theosophical manner. Bailey’s book Discipleship in the New Age (1944) is a glamorous portrayal of the anticipated Aquarian transition, and dates the beginning of “new age groups” to 1931 (Sutcliffe, Children of the New Age, p. 51). These phenomena are more commonly associated with the 60s emergence of diffuse popular beliefs and organisations which have too frequently failed to impress observers that any solution to problems is being provided.

The Caddy tangent from Theosophy found a more tangible mouthpiece than the invisible Djwal Khul. Eileen Caddy first heard the desired “inner voice” in 1953 at a church in Glastonbury. “Be still … and know that I am God.” (P. Hawken, The Magic of Findhorn, 1975, p.71.) She later referred to the voice as “an instrument from the God within us all.” She was strongly influenced in this commitment by a rather contradictory situation in which she effectively competed for the full attention of Peter Caddy prior to their marriage. She became the disciple of Sheena Govan, the second wife of Peter whom she (Eileen) actually replaced in matrimony. Sheena claimed inner messages and stressed the “Christ within.” In her London apartment, Sheena held groups and taught that “the true teacher was within each one of us” (S. J. Sutcliffe, op. cit., p. 59). The reliability of such teachings has been questioned, as they have frequently instilled a sense of rather complacent accomplishment in those disposed to believe that they have become true teachers. The situation under discussion is made more problematic by Eileen’s statement in her autobiography that she obeyed Sheena through fear and the desire to please Peter. Indeed, Eileen even states that she hated Sheena (Caddy, Flight into Freedom, 1988, p. 34).

 

 

Sheena Govan passed out of favour by 1957, when the newly married Eileen and Peter Caddy moved to Scotland, ending up at Cluny Hill Hotel that same year. Sheena quickly vanishes in the Riddell version of events. What actually happened? Sheena had married Peter in 1948, but he had transferred his affections to Eileen. In 1957 information about Sheena and Peter Caddy leaked out in a newspaper, and this proved an excuse to jettison contact with her. “In the space of a few months Sheena had been transposed from guru of the Chelsea Embankment to Celtic witch” (Sutcliffe, op. cit., p. 63). The segregation continued when Sheena went to live at a village close to the new Findhorn Community in the early 60s. She did visit the nascent community, but the Caddy attitude towards her is reported to have been curt. Peter wrote that she had failed in her mission, and so contact with her had terminated. Eileen’s autobiography is similarly dismissive of the intruder, and includes the “inner voice” sanction of: “My beloved child, the past is past and finished.” Sheena died from a cerebral haemorrhage in 1967, poor and neglected, while living in a rented house in Kirkcudbrightshire (ibid., p. 64). While God became a hotel manager at Cluny Hill, elsewhere the witch died in ignominy. Eileen became closely associated with the new age theme of unconditional love.

Meanwhile, at Cluny Hill Hotel, Eileen continued to give “guidance,” and Peter became preoccupied with the prospect of UFOs, emphasising visits to the local beach “in case spacecraft might land there” (ibid., p. 66). The Caddy background was middle class, a factor which does not exclude superstition, as is attested in other instances. Eileen had been born in Alexandria, Egypt, where her father (a director of Barclays Bank) had a luxury home set in a large garden suited to British colonial outdoor parties. Eileen had learned from Sheena a schedule of daily meditation and writing “in order to pick out ‘God’s voice’ among the many different conversations she heard in her head” (ibid., p. 68). There are some strong critics of this practice, which has affinities with the Faith Mission and Moral Rearmament. Sheena had been affiliated to the former in her childhood (ibid., pp. 56–7), while Eileen had participated in Moral Rearmament “guidance” sessions which she later acknowledged as formative influences. There are many other meditation formats quite different to that of Sheena and Eileen, and which do not resort to evoking any inner voice, whether attributed to an immanent God or no.

In November 1962, the Caddys moved with their three children to the caravan site near Findhorn, after their exit from Cluny Hill Hotel. They lived on National Assistance and child allowance. Eileen was introspective and does not appear to have been very strong; even a brief trip into Forres made her feel “weak and shaken” (ibid., p. 78). The more energetic Peter worked on a vegetable garden, a project in which he was influenced by the assertions of Dorothy Maclean, a Canadian colleague who was the third co-founder of the ensuing community. Maclean claimed to communicate with “devas and nature spirits,” and as a consequence Peter believed that he gained the aid of a “deva” or angelic being in his horticultural endeavour.

However, gardening was not a sufficient outlet for the drive of Peter Caddy. In 1965 he was busy travelling about to various “spiritual centres” in Britain, and in this way he encountered Sir George Trevelyan (1906–1996), whom Caddy called “the father of the new age in Britain” (ibid., p. 80). Trevelyan controversially inserted alternative spirituality into his teaching courses at Attingham Park (and upon his retirement in 1971 he founded the Wrekin Trust, subsequently to be associated with the organisation known as the Scientific and Medical Network, concerning which caveats have also been sounded). Trevelyan was influenced by writers like Rudolf Steiner and Alice Bailey, and later wrote A Vision of the Aquarian Age (1977), a work which found critics. More influential was Marilyn Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy (1982), which brought the alternative term “Aquarian” into a more popular ambience. An academic assessment states that the term “rang of the 1960s, not the 1980s; entertainers in the 1960s from the Beatles to the cast of the rock musical Hair had celebrated the coming of the ‘Age of Aquarius.’” See Carl A. Raschke, “New Age Spirituality” (203–21) in P. H. Van Ness, ed., Spirituality and the Secular Quest (1996), p. 214. The question as to which new age exponents and gurus are entertainers is still very relevant, and yet the subject is still too often mystified. Peter Caddy was definitely a new age enthusiast, and when in 1965 he attended a meeting at Attingham Park, he rubbed shoulders with Trevelyan and various “new age group leaders” (Sutcliffe, op. cit., p. 82). Caddy made the most of that occasion, and via his subsequent liaisons, he placed the Findhorn caravan site on the map for a wave of enthusiastic visitors in the late 60s. Trevelyan himself made a visit in 1968, and is reported to have been enthusiastic about Caddy’s garden. That subject became a rather extravagant one, and it is clear that Caddy encouraged the topic. However, Trevelyan is said to have disliked the phrase “new age,” in which case there were differences with Caddy.

In 1971 appeared Eileen Caddy’s God Spoke to Me, the title attesting the emerging belief about her. The “divine guidance” had been commemorated in Findhorn News, the early organ of the Findhorn Community and edited by Peter. Eileen’s guidance was here constantly used as support for the contents. Her autobiography identifies the deific “Me” in her messages as “your own inner God” (ibid., p. 80). Yet it was her husband who conducted the daily organisation of the nascent community (Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation, p. 2). Peter’s industrious liaisons with the growing “new age” sector ensured that his isolation and poverty terminated. In 1969 the formerly obscure caravan park is said to have received more than 600 visitors. An appeal to build a bungalow for the Caddys quickly raised £3,500 (Times online), quite a lot of money in those days. Trustees were appointed for a charitable trust.

An enthusiastic commemoration appeared in The Magic of Findhorn (1975) by the American journalist Paul Hawken. This book has been described as the first commercial publication about the new community, and one which was markedly glorifying. An academic commentator has described this work as promoting “a miraculous image reminiscent of the ‘signs and wonders’ theology of conservative evangelical Christians” (Sutcliffe, op. cit., p. 79). A rubbish dump (Peter Caddy’s horticultural plot) was depicted as becoming a Garden of Eden, and new age fantasies were prolific thereafter. The crops included a reputed forty-two pound cabbage, and roses were said to bloom in the snow. The sandy soil of the Moray Firth is rather inhospitable, but Caddy removed the sand. The reputed miracle, attributed to deva benevolence of the Maclean lore, is undercut by the data that Peter Caddy used ample compost (plus dung and seaweed) in his small plot, and that Durham Agricultural College grew a seventy pound cabbage in 1988 with generous manures (Castro, op. cit., p. 4).

In 1970 the new age influx of visitors included the young American David Spangler, then in his twenties, who returned the following year to settle in. His three years of residence imparted a new direction in terms of American trends and idioms associated with the Human Potential Movement. One of Spangler’s associates introduced “counselling” into the community, the harbinger of alternative therapy. Yet the craze known as “channelling” was at first the major preoccupation of the new wave. Soon after his first arrival, Spangler began to claim an ability to “channel” Limitless Love and Truth, thus rivalling Eileen’s inner voice. The channelling craze was popular and very commercial in America. The text known as A Course in Miracles achieved a following that staggered the critics, and this became one of the influential books at the Findhorn Foundation. Spangler’s version of the craze also opened the way for the subsequent fad of channelling Sathya Sai Baba, who was one of the guru influences at work in this same organisation from the 80s onward.

Spangler’s exotic phrase Limitless Love and Truth (LLT) incorporated an influential theme associated with the Spiritualist Liebe Pugh (1888–1966). Peter Caddy enthused about this psychic and her network known as the “Universal Link.” Elsewhere, Pugh was considered credulous even by Psychic News (Sutcliffe, Children of the New Age, p. 87), due to her habit of deferring to so many “spiritual” trends. The Universal Link arose through visions claimed by Pugh and the businessman Richard Graves. The latter elaborated upon his rather sensational experiences with a popular devotional painting of angels. A brilliant orange light emanated from this picture, and so on. The light was so strong that Graves received a burn. A Christ-like figure is said to have materialised, whom Graves called “the Master” and whom Pugh called “Limitless Love.” Pugh even made a relief sculpture of this enigmatic figure in modelling clay. Psychic messages from “Limitless Love” were viewed as “prophecies of a new spiritual dispensation in which faculties of illumination and discernment would develop in the population at large, creating a ‘universal link’ in spiritual consciousness” (ibid., p. 88). It may be deduced that such beliefs contributed to a blockage in public discernment. Peter Caddy wanted Pugh and her associates to join the Findhorn Community. Yet his motives are a little suspect in that a wealthy benefactor was in the offing. Pugh died before there was any possibility of her moving to Findhorn, though Caddy apparently gained her mailing list in a feat of new age strategy. “As a result, the Universal Link was effectively absorbed into Findhorn” (ibid., p. 89). David Spangler evidently did not wish to be left out of the honours believed to be in process, though several years later he did very briefly refer to the tendency for a cult to develop around Pugh (ibid.). The main point to grasp is that the Findhorn Community entrenched itself, not through abstruse universal processes, but via mailing lists and the canny Caddy strategy of liaison demonstrated at Attingham Park. Plus the continual promotionalism which cultivated the attention of a totally uncritical new age audience.

The LLT channelling of David Spangler identified the Findhorn Community as “one of several world centres in an emerging planetary network of ‘world servers’ – the term stems from the Arcane School’s ‘New Group of World Servers’” (J. P. Greenaway, In the Shadow of the New Age: Decoding the Findhorn Foundation, 2003, p. 50). Critics refer to this as Alice Bailey optimism and Spangler lore. In 1973 Spangler returned to California to found another alternative community. The membership of the one he left behind is said to have quickly exceeded 200 (ibid.). In Spangler’s wake came other servers or opportunists like William Bloom, who tilled the field of new age commerce in the 80s and 90s while exhibiting academic credentials. (See my Letter to BBC Radio, on this website). Group consciousness, the “money game,” and other lucrative roles such as trademark therapy were advertised via the universal link between far-flung foci of new age capitalism.

Eileen Caddy tended to retreat from the new dominance of Spangler. His contributions began to fill Findhorn News in 1971. In 1972 Eileen pronounced that she was to stop sharing her guidance with the community (Riddell, op. cit., pp. 80–1). Peter was evidently taken aback by this development, and continued to rely upon “guidance” in the form of psychic messages from itinerant “clairvoyants” (Castro, op. cit., p. 3). Peter’s psychology was not self-reliant; he continually needed reassurances. His estrangement from Eileen has been traced to the withdrawal of “guidance.”

In 1970 there were only about twenty members of the Findhorn Community. Yet this increased to over a hundred some two years later, a development attributed to the popularity of David Spangler with the younger recruits. In 1972 the community became officially known as the Findhorn Foundation. The simple caravan site developed into “The Park” with the aid of donations, loans, and charity status. Several books of Spangler were published during the 1970s by Findhorn Press. The influence of Sir George Trevelyan may be considered marginal by comparison with the overseas factor. In later years Trevelyan sent a letter of protest to One Earth (the Foundation magazine) about the snub of Steiner expressed by a supporter of Rajneesh. Trevelyan himself was considered an extremist in more sober quarters than the Wrekin Trust, whose policy was elsewhere considered to be random and reckless in the “all-in” tactics reminiscent of Esalen and the Findhorn Foundation.

Peter Caddy exited from the Findhorn Foundation in 1979. This event caused a shock, and many others left in his wake, leaving a very substantial hole in the community ranks. Eileen hoped that he would return, but this did not occur (save on brief visits). Some say that Peter Caddy left in pursuit of a fourth wife, Eileen now being a less enticing prospect. Riddell’s commentary states that Peter “left the community in 1979 to develop himself by means of a new series of relationships; he remarried in 1982” (Riddell, op. cit., p. 84). The partisan version manages to dignify the exit with a due sense of significance. Eileen is presented as the heroine, conquering her shyness “to become a lecturer and spiritual guide, unafraid before mass audiences of thousands” (ibid., p. 84). Eileen did not become a therapist, though the nature of her vocation is a subject for dispute elsewhere. She was afraid of incurring the displeasure of new managerial entities within the Findhorn Foundation, and her intermittent lectures served to buttress the commercial community which she did not appropriately tutor. Just as she retreated from Spangler, she also retreated from his successors, many of whom were far less inspiring.

Critics are sceptical of Carol Riddell’s rather glowing report above-cited, one reason being that Eileen is known to have been subject to an acute mood of retirement from the community until 1989, when she stated in a published article that she was no longer hiding after a recent event in which she was initially terrified of exposure before the community (Castro, op. cit., p. 54). Eileen’s passivity and general abstraction from the community was a notable feature of the 80s and after. The fact that she chose to endorse the commercial “Game of Transformation” in her sense of changed role is no particular reason to credit her discernment in saying “what I feel about the spiritual side of things” (ibid.).The Game of Transformation is a lucrative board game that has offended sensitivities in other camps.

Eileen’s “inner voice” had become closely associated with the official Findhorn Foundation doctrine of “attunement,” which extends to the practice in which participants seek their own inner guidance. The practice of “attunement” so frequently led to the facile assumption of spirituality being achieved. Spirituality was a coveted accomplishment in the Foundation cause of “planetary transformation.” Eileen Caddy became the mascot for what the managerial bodies described as “spiritual education.” A strong component of that drawback were numerous leaders of commercial “workshops” who taught the most facile and misleading concepts in too many instances.

During the 70s, Cluny Hill Hotel was purchased by the community, and became a college of alternative therapy. American influences are impossible to ignore, and the roles of “focaliser” and “facilitator” are an indication of ultimate origin. Other local properties were also acquired by the Findhorn Foundation, including Newbold House which “adopted donation financing and is independent” (Riddell, op. cit., p. 85). The caravan park itself was acquired, and “The Park” became the subject of “global village” lore. Ecology was often mentioned, though rather loosely; the concept of sustainability became a preferred motto in the late 90s.

Both Maclean and Spangler had departed from the community in the early 70s, and so Eileen Caddy was the only remaining co-founder during the 80s and 90s (Spangler sometimes being counted as the fourth co-founder). David Spangler became noted for warning against drugs, but his “channelling” vogue facilitated confusions in which intellectual talents were zero-rated. The Cluny Hill College of alternative therapy supposedly represented intuition, and the relevance of critical faculties was denied. Learning skills were severely handicapped by the planetary transformation in which commercial therapy and pop-mysticism were considered holistic panaceas. This situation was effectively endorsed by the commercial programme brochures which exalted the ubiquitous “Guidance” slogan of Eileen Caddy that commences: “Be at perfect peace; all is working out according to My plan.” Critics wince at the implication of destined events operative at the Foundation, which is thus sanctioned by the divine plan inherent in the presumed “Guidance.”

The influence of David Spangler was celebrated in this community, and yet he left for other prospects after only three years. The average length of residence for many inmates during the early 70s is said to have been about six months (Riddell, op. cit., p. 80). The urge to acquire properties caused a predictable financial plight and aroused controversies. Economic problems were already surfacing in the late 70s, to the tune of more than £400,000 (ibid., p. 85). In 1983 the caravan park was purchased, and at that period was completed the ambitious project known as the Universal Hall, which “contributed greatly, however, to a very large debt, and the collective energy of the community for construction was exhausted” (ibid., p. 82). This impressive building proved expensive to maintain, while many community members were living in dilapidated caravans. During the 80s the membership was smaller, and inmates are said to have stayed longer. “Some independent businesses started to form” (ibid., p. 89). Financial crisis was still looming in the late 80s. Yet Riddell (writing at the end of the 80s) was optimistic about the future. “In 1988, Foundation members were involved in a long period of collective and individual attunement to create a new spiritual Core Group; this process represents the most determined attempt yet to move towards a spiritual democracy” (ibid., p. 90). Was utopia just around the corner? Why did the new management team of the 90s privatise the existing communal assets? Why were dissidents afflicted and outlawed? Why did the new executive leadership contrive higher incomes in a debt-ridden community?

Eileen Caddy remained a community figurehead for the rest of her life, and she continued to live at The Park (the old caravan park). Yet she did not lead the Findhorn Foundation, and her low profile after her husband’s exit tends to confirm her earlier reliance upon his organisational activities. However, such matters have been subject to much confusion. The operative principles at work in the Foundation were frequently obscured by partisan exegesis. The “spiritual democracy” was a fantasy. Dissident reports serve to clarify what actually occurred behind the façade of divine guidance, spiritual education, and planetary transformation.

The community income did not come from gardening, but from “workshops” and related courses of purported spiritual education. Plus donations, which were strongly encouraged. Many American alternative trends were hosted at The Park and Cluny Hill College, which resembled aspects of the Esalen Institute very closely. New age celebrities like Caroline Myss and Arnold Mindell were favoured speakers, along with more native entities like Peter Russell and William Bloom. The high charges were evidently aimed at an affluent international clientele broadly comprising the “new age” consumers. This trend culminated in the hosting of Stanislav Grof by Craig Gibsone, who was director of the Findhorn Foundation in the late 80s and after. Until 1987, Grof was a superstar of the Esalen Institute in California, which supplied so many new age influences and assumptions. His subsequent career as a Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies has confused some assessors. That role did not reduce his entrepreneurial status in alternative therapy. Grof has continued his lucrative trademark therapy known as Holotropic Breathwork, which is audacious in the claims attaching. Grof is indelibly associated with Esalen, where therapy was big business, and where spiritual transformation was one of the lucrative phrases employed in the consumer ideology. Very suspiciously, criticism was frowned upon as being judgmental, a taboo drawback supposedly indicating Neanderthal characteristics. The Findhorn Foundation assimilated a great deal of the Esalen attitude, and Gibsone was the ideal vehicle of uncritical sponsorship for Grof commerce.

The Grof phase (1989–93) at Findhorn met with setbacks, and the Foundation simply deleted the details from their records, a characteristic of their strategy. Holotropic Breathwork gained internal resistance, though Gibsone acquired many supporters. Dissident reports were shunned as being hopelessly judgmental, and confusions about Grof’s “therapy” continued at the Foundation for years after, despite official intervention from the Scottish Charities Office. (See further my recent Letters to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, featured on this website).

Peter Caddy remained a voluntary exile from the Findhorn Foundation. He died in 1994 in a car crash in Germany. That was after his fifth marriage, Eileen having been his third wife. For his version of events, see P. Caddy, In Perfect Timing: Memoirs of a Man for the New Millennium (1996). Caddy’s estimation of his role is not universally agreed upon, though at least he provided a shock exit which served to indicate that there were problems in the Findhorn Foundation continuum. Eileen’s autobiography was not posthumous, and Flight into Freedom (1988) was awarded canonical status. Eileen became celebrated on British television, though in a rather abridged manner, and many outsiders received the impression that she was the basic guiding factor in the community she had helped to create. In actual fact, a fair number of other individuals, far less well known, were the operative conductors of management decision and public relations. One of these was strongly associated with Sathya Sai Baba, while another became a convert to Grof doctrines and temporarily succeeded in imposing Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork upon the partially unwilling community.

 

 

The Times online obituary does not attempt to give an in-depth assessment of this phenomenon, and probably lacked many of the available details. Instead, a very skeletal description of the 90s phase is proffered. The obituary observes that the Findhorn Foundation was threatened by bankruptcy, and that “it was also investigated by the watchdog Scottish Charities Office.” That is correct, but no further details are given, and so the blank is extensive, to say the least. Yet “the community responded by creating a management structure and a multitude of outreach programmes.” This is very far indeed from being the comprehensive truth, and is chronologically inaccurate. The Times obituary was clearly attempting to follow the orthodox version preferred by Foundation spokesmen, who have been assessed by critics as media manipulators. One discrepancy is that the management structure exacerbated the substantial economic debt which arose, and which was concealed from view for a surprising number of years, until 2001 in actual fact. Prior to that date, one management team had been obliged to resign in failure, the internal contradictions of their policy being too much even for the Foundation staff to accept. The internal problems were further covered up to general view by the new management team, who ensured that the community emerged unscathed from controversy by emphasising their NGO status acquired in 1997 and suppressing details of the economic malady. NGO status does not necessarily decode to perfection, especially if that status is acquired in circumstances of evasion concerning basic details.

The Times obituary asserts that Eileen Caddy joined the management committee after worrying that the Findhorn Foundation was becoming too commercial. This does not tally with dissident and critical reports, which utilise more detailed data (and some of which can be found on this website). In reality, Eileen assisted the commercial trend and remained a puppet of the management teams. In 1994 she expressed the endorsement that “when all of us can think in millions of pounds, we will draw millions of pounds to us” (Shepherd, Letter of Complaint to David Lorimer, 2005, booklet version, p. 16, and citing Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent, p. 190). This statement was not a private disclosure, but was inserted into an influential circular letter to the community. That letter was both a public and “open community” circular seeking donations after the death of Peter Caddy in February 1994. The demise of the co-founder was treated as an opportunity for a major fundraising operation by the Foundation director Judy Buhler-McAllister. The Forres Gazette reported that the circular was being sent out to eleven thousand “regular customers” of Foundation courses (and workshops). Those clients were located in America, Europe, and Britain. A copy of Peter Caddy’s obituary was enclosed along with a donation form. Plus the persuasive letter from Eileen Caddy addressed to “My dear family,” and which included her eccentric (and inaccurate) interpretation of the word Findhorn as meaning the “Horn of Plenty.” The explicit nature of that letter as a goad to donations was unmistakable, and the reference to millions of pounds sterling clearly denoted the objective (Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent, pp. 189–90).

Eileen here refrained from mentioning some rather significant matters which she had disclosed in private. Her confidante had been Kate Thomas, a relative newcomer to the Foundation who had chosen to live in Forres. Eileen had invited Thomas to her new home at The Park, and seemed in desperate need of discussing internal matters relating to her organisation. She prefaced a major disclosure by swearing Thomas to strict confidence, stressing that the information she gave could be damaging to the community reputation. It was obvious that she dared not talk to various other women who were orthodox supporters believing in the ordained nature of the community role. Eileen disclosed that the managerial figures of the Foundation had ceased to take her advice, and that the people concerned were themselves worried that their diverging attitude towards her would become known. They had been influenced by Peter Caddy’s departure and critical attitude towards herself. On this point Eileen lamented that Peter had told her by telephone that he no longer believed in any of her guidance. She had also received a dismissive letter from Peter reiterating this outlook, and one which made clear that he now considered she had been deluded from the start. Eileen was very upset by that recent letter, which was never made public knowledge.

Eileen repeatedly invited Kate Thomas to her home at The Park, and also commenced a telephone contact with this new friend. Eileen was very troubled by such factors as Craig Gibsone (the Australian director of the Foundation) being immune to her advice and complaints. It was noticeable that Gibsone, a long term inmate of the community, had sought ideological support in Tantric Buddhism, which he often mentioned. His conversion to Holotropic Breathwork accentuated the fact of his acute tangent from the Caddy guidance. There was no effective leadership within the Foundation, influential staff tending to do what they wanted and with some frictions developing. Eileen felt that things had got out of control. Kate insisted that Eileen should alter her tactics and stand firm against the problems, which would otherwise get worse. Eileen knew that this was good advice, but proved incapable of following it. She continually demonstrated that she could not stand up to assertive personalities, especially certain men who were noted to be difficult within Foundation ranks. Two of these overbearing officials became aggressive towards Thomas, and there was nobody to stop them. Eileen was terrified of saying a word against Eric Franciscus and Loren Stewart. She simply kept quiet and stayed well in the background. She did not even want to know about the events concerning them. This grim situation involved the persecution of a younger friend of Thomas, who had joined the community but who became the victim of authority complexes. It was these and other problems which caused Kate Thomas to compose a chapter in her autobiography which described flaws in Findhorn Foundation events. That chapter included critical references to Eileen’s teaching, which had set the tone for some basic attitudes in the community, and which tended to mesh with simplistic therapy emphases derived from elsewhere.

After the publication of The Destiny Challenge in May 1992, Eileen remained in contact with Kate Thomas. Surprisingly, she did not read the Thomas book, though she became acquainted with the basic contents of chapter 14. It was confirmed that Eileen was not a studious type, reading only the short and popular “new age” works favoured within the Foundation. She wanted to be friends with Thomas providing that she was not expected to stand out against the problem entities. She did not want to forfeit in any way her new home at The Park, and she frequently spoke of her children rather than anything else. Thomas despaired of getting a due response from her.

Eileen had demonstrated her evasive tendency to the full in an episode which was briefly recorded by Thomas (and which is an understatement). The female victim of staff hostility made a desperate visit to Eileen’s new home, asking the occupant why she “had done nothing at any step to correct this situation” (The Destiny Challenge, p. 975). Eileen listened to the anguished report of her visitor, but gave no explanation. The visitor was told “that if she was unhappy, she should leave” (ibid., p. 976). The visitor left in despair, and was “in a state bordering on collapse” (ibid.) when she afterwards telephoned Kate Thomas. The latter immediately contacted a retired medical practitioner (in Forres) who promptly went by car to the distressed woman. The state of this woman was such that the doctor took her back to her (the doctor’s) own home. The sufferer soon afterwards relinquished membership of the Foundation.

That episode occurred in 1991. As the present writer was a personal acquaintance of the medical practitioner mentioned, I can here fill in some details. Dr. Sylvia Darke was a retired English G.P. who had settled in Scotland after a distinguished career in which she had been connected with the Ministry of Health, and had also acted as a professional consultant to the World Health Organisation. In her later years she took a liberal attitude to some of the more restrained “new age” ideas, but firmly drew the line with regard to the Findhorn Foundation. Though she lived in Forres, Dr. Darke refused to join the Foundation and regarded that organisation with considerable scepticism. She made a few visits as an observer, and was very suspicious of the casual attitudes and therapy jargon that were prevalent. Her opinion of Eileen Caddy was very low, and plummeted to zero when she rescued the unfortunate woman abovementioned from a very stressed predicament. She concluded that the sufferer had been victimised in an unmonitored situation of grave implications. The sufferer quickly recovered under Dr. Darke’s supervision, but had to leave the Foundation in the interests of her health. Dr. Darke’s assessment of the Foundation remained very critical thereafter, an outlook converging with that of other medics in Forres. She wrote some complaining letters to the local newspaper about subsequent events, and in 1994 made a special visit to the Foundation director Judy Buhler-McAllister. Dr. Darke intended to discuss pressing discrepancies in the Foundation policy currently being enforced by the director. Yet the Canadian director refused to see the senior British medic, and the latter had to wait outside in her car before driving away. The director refused permission for the senior medic to enter the building in which her managerial office was located at The Park (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, 2005, p. 215).

That same year of 1994, Eileen Caddy betrayed her conscience by siding totally with the management (and the director) against Kate Thomas, apparently under strong persuasion. See Part Two below. Despite this poor example, Kate never divulged the matters which Eileen had disclosed in confidence. In the late 90s, Thomas had further contact with the co-founder, though of a more incidental nature than formerly. Eileen did not refer to the past, and for the most part expressed only mundane interests. She never wished to discuss the management, whom she had chosen to support despite her dislike of many policies they furthered. Eileen once visited the home of Thomas, which she knew well, this having formerly been a Foundation support venue, and one where Eileen had a small room upstairs reserved for her use.

Kate Thomas passed on details from Eileen to only three people – myself, Stephen Castro, and Dr. Darke. This was in strict confidence, which all observed. Stephen Castro refrained from mentioning the upsetting details about Peter Caddy in his book Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation (1996), though he would have had good cause to do so. Thomas did not want the details to be disclosed while Eileen was still alive. In view of current attitudes of the Findhorn Foundation, such as their internet stigma of Castro and Thomas (see Part Four below), the relevant details have been supplied here in the interests of historical reporting.

Dr. Darke was one of those local residents who felt strongly about the promotion of Holotropic Breathwork by Craig Gibsone and his associates. Reports about unpleasant aftermath symptoms of this presumed therapy became widespread in Forres. Yet an international promotion campaign by Grof and his supporters misled many subscribers. It was more often women who were the sufferers in this direction, though some males also encountered serious problems, including nervous breakdown. Dr. Darke wrote a strong letter of complaint to the Scottish Charities Office, which served to complement other communications made to that Office (which, however, failed to act in relation to other subjects of which they were apprised). The Breathwork was only one of the more obvious drawbacks within the indulgent community lacking any effective leader. Other therapies also caused problems and confusions, while “spiritual counselling” was a popular trend which saw many doubtful experts giving advice on subjects difficult to pin down. “Letting go” was one of the panaceas that accompanied “Be here Now.” Dr. Darke became concerned about what Eric Franciscus was doing, having had to monitor his victim abovementioned in 1991. She was extremely perturbed that Franciscus was the official in charge of “Education” at Cluny Hill College. He was not a Breathwork practitioner, but was considered an expert on therapy and counselling. Those activities were largely what was meant by the word “Education.” Franciscus and his wife also conducted regular and commercial “spiritual pilgrimages” to India. Eric became strongly associated with the “miracle guru” of Puttaparthi. He and his wife subsequently became members of the management team that survived the acquisition of NGO status which baffled locals.

Dr. Darke expressed the conclusion that a principled standpoint, such as that demonstrated by Kate Thomas, opposing the follies promoted by Foundation officials, was crucially necessary for public health. It is perhaps an irony that Peter Caddy can also be numbered amongst the supporters of Thomas. Less than a year before his death, Peter sent Kate Thomas a letter which stated: “Many of your expressed concerns about the so-called New Age movement and particularly the Foundation, will, I trust, receive the attention they deserve” (Castro, op. cit., p. 189). This was his cordial response to The Destiny Challenge (1992), which contains a lengthy chapter on the Foundation. Perhaps his conversion to Hinduism had made Peter Caddy more critical of his earlier role and Eileen’s guidance. Be that as it may, a co-founder of the Findhorn Foundation endorsed the heretical book that was suppressed by the management. That was in strong contrast to Eileen’s fear of authority which caused her to side with the suppression and deny her former friend and confidante any democratic hearing.

The Times obituary for Eileen represents a surface layer in reporting the Caddy events. This commemoration informs that Eileen told an interviewer in 1999 that she regarded herself as the “spiritual anchor” of the management committee (or team). The management teams of the 90s did indeed wish to depict Eileen as their spiritual anchor, thus giving them a sense of elevation that was suitable for NGO status as deemed appropriate by their patron Dr. Pierre Weil. Yet the latter spent most of his time in Brazil at the Holistic University which has been accused of confusing institutional issues by employing a vague and uncritical approach.

 

Part Two: The dissident Kate Thomas and the problem of Eileen Caddy

Kate Thomas (b. 1928) was both the confidante and critic of Eileen Caddy, gaining an intimate knowledge of the latter’s psychology. She was likewise British, and a nearby resident of Forres who conversed with Eileen on many occasions until 1993 (and sometimes in the latter’s home at The Park by invitation). Thomas demonstrated a scruple that was acknowledged and admired even by one of the opposing practitioners of Holotropic Breathwork. Caddy wavered between a feeling of kinship with Thomas and a feeling of fear about upsetting the management. It was the fear complex which proved victorious. Thomas discovered that Caddy was socially amenable but very evasive on points of community wellbeing. Caddy admitted to Thomas that she did not agree with various trends promoted by the management, though she gave lame excuses for her inertia. She divulged that she had formerly complained, but the management had ignored her. Caddy’s policy had become one of taking the line of least resistance, which meant no resistance at all. That was how the 80s closed and the 90s commenced.

 

 

The discussions between Caddy and Thomas were very unsatisfactory, the former becoming apprehensive at being drawn into possible frictions. Caddy demonstrated a singular failing in relation to Grof’s controversial Holotropic Breathwork, a trademark therapy which worried many people in the community (to such an extent that a number of them departed from the scene in a perturbed state of mind). Caddy’s nominal protégé Craig Gibsone was the principal instigator of Holotropic Breathwork workshops, and she had contracted a habit of never interfering with this man, who was resistant to correction. Gibsone had been one of the younger recruits at the time of Spangler’s sojourn, and had since strongly entrenched his claim to community salience. Caddy herself did not agree with the doctrines of Grof, and was not a therapist. Yet Gibsone was totally uncritical about Grof theory and commercial practice. Dissidents concluded that Eileen Caddy demonstrated a lack of integrity accompanied by a preparedness to accept the adulation involved in her docile puppet role as the Findhorn Foundation figurehead. That role was nurtured by the management as a convenient prop en route to NGO status in 1997.

It may be useful here to focus in more detail on a recorded interchange between Thomas and Caddy in 1990. This was about Holotropic Breathwork, and it transpired that Caddy agreed with the concern of Thomas about the Grof “therapy.” Yet Eileen’s attitude was pronouncedly evasive. Thomas referred to the recently observed drawbacks in Holotropic Breathwork sessions at the Foundation, and commented that some participants “could become seriously deranged, or even die.” Caddy’s response alarmed her. “Perhaps that is what must happen to make them pay heed,” said Eileen, who divulged that Gibsone had opposed her own critical reflection upon the Breathwork. It was evident that Eileen had retreated from the issue. Yet as a consequence of talking with Thomas, Eileen said that she would approach the guest American facilitator (a pupil of Grof) who was in charge of Holotropic Breathwork proceedings (being a tutor of the recently converted Gibsone). Eileen later told Thomas that this facilitator and Gibsone had agreed to provide a support group for those who might need “spiritual emergency” treatment. Such emergencies were recognised to occur, but were interpreted in a Grofian “spiritual” manner very different from medical assessments (which were all considered to be outdated by Grof and his supporters). Thomas was still alarmed, because Caddy would make no public statement and remained anonymous in her objection. Other Foundation people expressed disbelief when Thomas told them that Eileen had made some intervention, as they had no idea that Eileen was opposed to the Breathwork (The Destiny Challenge, 1992, pp. 935–6). Such people merely assumed that Thomas was exaggerating. This grave failure of Eileen Caddy to register a complaint in public was disastrous for the train of events. Gibsone had full play in his ambitions to be a practitioner of the controversial therapy, and subsequent support groups transpired to be a necessity for distraught women, some with revived memories of sexual abuse. The problems were covered up, as usual. Gibsone proceeded in his plan to make the Foundation a worldwide training centre for Holotropic Breathwork, and it was over three years before official intervention stopped the tide of casualties. While some participants became euphoric, others suffered greatly, and sometimes with damage. All this was cast into oblivion by the hierarchy.

In a comment about Eileen Caddy’s teaching, Thomas distilled: “Eileen teaches that one is already a Christ-filled being and that affirmations of this condition are all that is necessary for interior development. One should ‘love oneself’ with all one’s faults and accept oneself just as one is. Self-examination is not a requirement, and the correction of flaws is never mentioned” (ibid., pp. 912–13.). That describes so much of what occurred in the indulgent community known as the Findhorn Foundation.

A friend of Thomas was Stephen Castro, who produced a significant account of discrepancies within the Findhorn Foundation. He also encountered Eileen and was very sceptical of her belief system, though he did not openly express this. In a letter to the present writer dated April 1st, 2007, Castro stated: “The ‘inner voice’ heard by ‘Elixir’ (Eileen Caddy) in the formative early years really was believed to be God.… When Craig Gibsone put her name forward on a community bulletin board indicating she was going to be among the participants in the original programme for Holotropic Breathwork (thus endorsing the programme), she quickly asked for her name to be removed after learning what he had done. Her ‘inner voice’ said it was not for her. The ‘inner voice’ being of course a convenient screen to hide behind so that one need never have to stand up and be counted by speaking from the first person, i.e., oneself.”

Eileen Caddy toed the party line, maintaining a more private “inner voice” in these later years. She required a goad from Kate Thomas even to express a secretive complaint that produced a support group for Holotropic Breathwork. Her reputed “inner voice” of the 60s now amounted to a bystander endorsement of dubious policies from which she herself felt largely estranged. Such realistic details were foreign to management propaganda, which was careful to suppress The Destiny Challenge (by Thomas) in a memorable manner. The detailed report of Castro in Hypocrisy and Dissent was likewise eschewed. The unwelcome reporting continued in my own Pointed Observations (2005, Part Five). These sources have all been suppressed and ignored by the Foundation management strategy, a fate also befalling critical accounts by other writers (e.g., J. P. Greenaway, In the Shadow of the New Age, 2003; C. Coates, 21st Century Theosophy, 2005). A recent account by Kate Thomas includes an update on the Caddy problem, which was further aggravated by the Findhorn Foundation College (the new commercial version of the therapy venue Cluny Hill College, and promoting the drawback known as Holistic Learning, which prominently includes the myth of “conflict resolution”). See Thomas, SMN Events 2000–2004, chapters 1 and 5, available on this website.

In the spring of 1992 appeared the book by Kate Thomas entitled The Destiny Challenge. In the lengthy chapter fourteen, she describes her contact with the Findhorn Foundation from 1988 onwards, and how she objected to Grof’s commercial Holotropic Breathwork and other drawbacks. Craig Gibsone effectively screened her out of any chance of a democratic hearing, and was backed up by two ruthless Foundation personnel who victimised her for daring to criticise internal policies. These men ensured that her membership was severely restricted and annulled. These two Findhorn Foundation oppressors were a German and an American respectively, the former being more relentless and also gravely victimising a female friend of Thomas who had joined the Foundation. When the Foundation staff acquired a copy of the Thomas book, they reacted to the content of chapter 14 by attempting to impose a legal interdict. One of them publicly denied in a local newspaper that Thomas had ever been a member of the Findhorn Foundation. That was a big mistake of Alex Walker, and the resultant press exposure of Foundation problems electrified a local audience, to such an extent that photocopies of chapter 14 were passed to interested parties such as medical doctors.

Kate Thomas proved willing to reconciliate, and initiated this move. Yet once again, the proud and vindictive staff of the Findhorn Foundation asserted their primacy. There could be no reconciliation for them, the commercial promoters of conflict resolution (often appearing in the American rendition of conflict facilitation, studiously employed by the Foundation promotionalists to gain a wider audience). They proved many times over what their orientation basically amounted to. Some of them met their Waterloo when the management team crashed at the time of gaining NGO status, but others crept past that fiasco to gain glorification as the inheritors of the UN mantle.

While the ill-fated management team was scheming how to siphon off funds for the new salary increases initiated by Gibsone, a very revealing event occurred in 1994 which revolved around Eileen Caddy, though the management was the actual instigator of the tactic denoted. The docile Caddy was here the condoning witness to the management policy of total suppression of Thomas in the wake of her commendable gesture of reconciliation. Kate Thomas was the only one who forgave, while the other participants harboured animosity and vengeful pride. The management now excluded Thomas from all forms of membership so that she could have no say in community events or conduct any defence of her own acutely misrepresented position. She was stifled while being slandered. This grave situation deeply shocked some onlookers, who recognised that the Findhorn Foundation were reversing their declared priorities in such lip service themes as unconditional love. Democracy was and is a myth in new age planetary transformation. The Vatican of the New Age may be compared with a medieval prototype (or archetype) of elite exclusionism. A person who intervened on behalf of Thomas could not elicit a grain of sympathetic response from Eileen Caddy about the dissident situation, and his encounters with prominent Foundation officials further served to totally alienate him (Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent, pp. 138ff.). This was one of the episodes which the management were subsequently very keen to suppress. Howard Whiteson had hoped to join the Foundation, but the setback caused him to leave the vicinity in revulsion. He never returned, and remained averse to the Findhorn Foundation. The “inner voice” of Foundation “attunement” decoded to authoritarian abuse of basic rights of representation and issues relating to communal wellbeing. Whiteson moved back in despair to England, and without actually meaning to do so, he also lost contact with Thomas. Many years later, in 2006, he resumed contact with Thomas (via correspondence) and contributed an account of his former contact with Eileen Caddy. This is reproduced here:

 

“When I returned to the Findhorn Foundation in 1994 for a second visit, I was shocked to learn that Kate Thomas had been expelled from membership, and in an arbitrary and undemocratic manner. I had first met Kate in Cambridge during the 1980s, and found her to be a woman of remarkable probity, honesty, and insight. I found various Foundation people busy denouncing Kate, but none of them actually seemed to know what she was reputed to have done wrong. Despite much rumour-mongering by the Foundation staff, the fact was that Kate’s case had never been heard in an open forum. Of course, such a platform would have allowed her an opportunity to defend herself, as well as to publicly reveal the nature of the treatment she had received at the hands of Findhorn Foundation figureheads, who had much vested interests in ensuring her continued silence. During my stay, I made every effort to gain Kate a due hearing, but my letters, phone calls, and personal discussions with members and trustees only ever met with a wall of indifference verging on callousness, and at times, downright hostility.

“Such stonewalling tactics are characteristic of cults, another being the pervasive use of jargon. The latter tendency was rife amongst Foundation members, many of whom referred to themselves as ‘Christ-filled.’ The connotations of this phrase remained difficult for me to fathom. Some members referred to ‘finding the God within,’ a particularly abstract concept. When questioned, one member told me he was ‘divinely ordinary,’ that although everything he did was ordinary, he imbued it with divinity. I found this stance hypocritical, given the attitude shown towards Kate. But who originated the quixotic terminology? In her autobiography, Foundation co-founder Eileen Caddy referred to herself as ‘a beautiful Christ-filled being’ (Caddy, Flight Into Freedom, London: Element Books, 1988, p. 207). Had this and other self-aggrandizing affirmations convinced Foundation members that Caddy was in receipt of cosmic ‘guidance’ which ensured that the Foundation would pursue a correct course of spiritual development? The truth was rather more mundane. On one occasion, Caddy ‘had no guidance to write down. Although I felt a hypocrite, I pretended to hear something then wrote down the first thing that came into my head.’ Despite this inauspicious tactic, Caddy’s guidance went on to inform her: ‘You are Mary, the mother of Jesus the Christ’ (ibid., p. 118). Being ‘Christ-filled’ took on new significance.

“Perhaps in the role of ‘divine mother,’ Caddy asserted: ‘Gromyko from Russia and George Shultz of the United States were meeting to discuss a possible halt to the arms race, so I visualised the Christ within those two world representatives. I saw them transformed, their faces filled with joy and happiness and I saw them taking this change of consciousness back to their respective countries. In my mind the destructive energies changed to positive, constructive ones, and a wonderful healing joy of the earth took place, filling it with light, love and joy’ (ibid., p. 223). The Greenham Common women, who held permanent vigil outside Britain’s nuclear arms HQ, would have been dismayed to learn that years of political protest had not led to nuclear disarmament. Instead, ‘Christ-filled’ Caddy had purified the planet with her loving, joy-filled mind.

“Another clue to Caddy’s psychology lay in a catchphrase she frequently employed, and which Foundation members just as frequently repeated: that in all their actions they were practising ‘unconditional love.’ No one I met within the Foundation precincts ever questioned whether love could actually be unconditional. More objective New Age analysts, however, were not so easily persuaded: ‘to want to give or receive unconditional love is to place a condition on love – namely, that it have no conditions. This is not just a play on words. Abstractions by their very nature leave out the living context, and when dealing with emotions, this is particularly treacherous. If the abstraction omits or denigrates important aspects of the living situation, strange and often harmful consequences and distortions result.’ (Kramer, J. and Alstad, D., The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, California: Frog Ltd., 1993, p. 265.)

“Harmful indeed were the unconditional distortions Kate Thomas received in a living context of persecution. Despite such glaring anomalies, which were carefully kept from the tender ears of newcomers, the promise of unconditional love greatly influenced visitors. They willingly forked out large sums of money to hug each other, open up, and narrate intimate life events (often traumatic or abusive) during frequent and lengthy group ‘sharings.’ As I saw it, the resultant tide of intense emotionality short-circuited their ability to reason. This may have contributed to the difficulty I had conducting any form of coherent discourse with New Age adherents. In fact, many participants seemed to have undergone the conversion syndrome known as ‘snapping,’ after which they became followers who routinely fell in with the party line. (See Conway, F., and Siegelman, J., Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1978.)

“If Caddy was a planetary healer, then one might imagine her as some sort of divinely-inspired saint. When I met her, she cut a singularly uninspiring figure. I requested a moment of her time, to which her immediate response was to bark a brusque, ‘No.’ A little later, I gained a brief hearing, whereupon she announced that in Kate’s case, democratic processes were unnecessary, as the organisation was being watched over by God. Furthermore, Caddy opined, Kate had been expelled for the horrendous sin of ‘writing a book.’

“Perhaps the crux here is that a woman who fantasised herself as Mary was not so much ‘Christ-filled’ as ‘ego-filled.’ Instead of divine behaviour, ‘Christ-filled’ members exhibited demonic misbehaviour towards Kate Thomas. I will never forget the rage which manifested from such Foundation stalwarts as Charles Peterson (focaliser of Cluny), or Loren Stewart (member of Management Group). Once their hugging, smiling, and sotto voce affirmations ceased, something altogether more malevolent emerged. It was Kate’s misfortune to be at the receiving end of their aggression. Sadly, collective New Age acrimony was still in evidence as recently as 2001, when Kate was seventy-two years old (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, pp. 180–3). Participation in too many Findhorn Foundation workshops, it seemed, resulted in a form of unconditional hatred.

“In the end, the tragedy remained that Kate was prevented from contributing effectively towards Foundation life. Eileen Caddy and the community of ‘unconditional love’ remained the unrelenting barrier until Eileen’s recent death in 2006.”

 

Eileen Caddy was now a screen against relevant criticism, her position effectively condoning the motivations underlying the attempted legal interdict on The Destiny Challenge. The Foundation solicitor was unable to give the Foundation staff any license; people could not be stopped from criticising what was potentially hazardous or events which seemed unfair.

Publication of The Destiny Challenge had not prevented Caddy from being in contact with Thomas during 1992–3. She actually agreed with some of the complaints Thomas made in chapter 14, though she was averse to any criticism of herself. Eileen’s conversation with Whiteson was clearly influenced by the management, and reflected several of their idioms – such as Thomas being a “nuisance,” and that she wanted to “take over the Foundation” (Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent, p. 151). A variant of this distortion, though not used by Eileen, was that Thomas wanted to “save” the Foundation, an accusation which gravely misrepresented objections to the traumas and dysfunctions caused by Holotropic Breathwork.

The justifiable complaint made by Kate Thomas against Holotropic Breathwork had been suppressed, despite that complaint having been vindicated by medical scruple and SCO recommendation. The SCO (Scottish Charities Office) had recommended (to the Foundation) against the commercial Grof therapy the previous year (1993) after the report submitted by the Forensic Medicine Unit at Edinburgh University. Yet Eileen Caddy chose to ignore such factors, her fear of management displeasure being a major psychological complex in her case. She allowed the management to decisively eliminate the major objector to Holotropic Breathwork, while spokesmen like Alex Walker were attempting to justify the role of Grof therapy in Foundation precincts. The Breathwork continued to be practised privately at the Foundation in defiance of the official recommendation and medical warning, and was afterwards spread with even greater defiance in England by such new age activists as William Bloom, who had become a prominent “workshop” celebrity at the Findhorn Foundation. (See my Letter to BBC Radio, featured on this website.)

Thomas had also warned in her chapter 14 against such controversial matters as neoReichian therapy and the influence of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Aleister Crowley – the books and accessories of both these new age icons were sold without scruple in the Foundation bookshop. Yet Eileen Caddy turned a blind eye to the inappropriate commercial policy. Apparently all that mattered to her was that “Eileen’s Guidance” be continually emphasised in Foundation literature. Visitors were familiar with her “inner voice” statement: “Be at perfect peace; all is working out according to My plan.” The Rajneeshi terrorism in Oregon, occurring in the 80s, was the recipient of peaceful indifference, as nobody in the Foundation bothered to chart the divisions between socially beneficial and socially harmful behaviour. The divine plan of Caddy Guidance did not envisage criticism of anomalies and drawbacks. The management and Eileen Caddy represented the Door to Heaven, while critics represented the Door to Hell.

 

Part Three: Commercial expansion and mismanagement of the 90s and after

The door to commercial superficiality was opened by this organisation, notorious in some quarters for the Game of Transformation, which has figured extensively in their promotional brochures. The Online Store of the Findhorn Foundation has sold “Angel Cards” (price £6.95) in the context of a new age supermarket invitation to sample, e.g., books, cards and calendars, and “Tools for Transformation.” The ad appeared in the Courses and Workshops brochure, noted for specifying high prices charged for the luxuries denoted by the title. In this ad, transformation explicitly covers the Transformation Game and Oracle and Card Sets (See Findhorn Foundation Courses and Workshops May-October 2004, p. 34). The Transformation Game is a novelty selling for extortionate prices in so-called workshops, while oracular accessories are another distraction in the milieu where anything goes except sober thinking and due analysis of chronic exploitation. Such situations become even more obnoxious when sanctioned by the divine plan of Caddy Guidance and the UN drawback of faulty research demonstrated by UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) in the recent decision to boost the Foundation profile as a CIFAL centre.

The commerce in the tutelary Findhorn Angel makes the deva lore of the early Findhorn garden seem like a reasonable exercise in fantasy horticulture. Such distractions were entertained and furthered by the 90s phase of known mismanagement, which concealed a debt of £800,000 that was finally recognised as requiring acute measures of curtailment. The problem here is that the wrong measures were adopted when the debt was declared in 2001. Various extreme strategies were pursued, designed to enhance entrepreneurial scope to kill overdraft. The new Findhorn Foundation College was described as an independent company. “Totally independent” enterprises were stressed, such as Duneland Ltd and EcoVillage Ltd. Ecobiz had arrived. The overdraft involved the mortgage of four Foundation properties. Cluny Hill College had already been involved in a large overdraft, but the failure of therapy to float ecology was covered up in the erstwhile manner. The lore of Holistic Learning was now celebrated, a substitute for the core necessity of delineating the influences involved in the 90s feat of privatising community assets. Old Age capitalism was still the basic drive in the Findhorn Foundation, as demonstrated further by Craig Gibsone’s commercial workshop version of ecology that was deployed to seduce UNITAR, whose standards of scrutiny are lax. CIFAL status decodes to relief from overdraft and the problems involved in totally independent enterprises which are all part of the same ongoing deficiency. Holistic Learning is one of the biggest mystifiers invented in the post 60s new age of retarded values. (See further Shepherd, Pointed Observations, pp. 189ff.) Some accountants have caught up with the discrepancy evidenced in Findhorn Foundation activities of the pre-NGO phase in which a large sum of money apparently became suspiciously absorbed (ibid., pp. 383ff. note 175). The fact that the Financial Services Authority intervened in more recent ecobiz banking operations at Findhorn is further cause for reflection about the propriety of holistic capitalism. The “magic of Findhorn” has cast a spell which it is necessary to break in the due perception of what has been occurring, and what might be likely to happen as a consequence.

One of the recent accounts which confront problems in the erring community is John Greenaway’s In the Shadow of the New Age: Decoding the Findhorn Foundation (2003). The data on economic and related matters is significant; Greenaway was the first writer to exhume details of the Foundation response to debt. The ICSA quarterly Cultic Studies Review (Vol. 2 no. 3, 2003) published a review by Frank MacHovec (Ph.D) which was both critical and validating: “The author’s search for truth is clear, his observations are objective despite some factual errors, and his judgment sound, making it a useful model for others and a detailed account of Findhorn’s history and program.” (The errors referred to do not relate to Greenaway’s solid data on the Foundation, but to certain of his excursions into more tenuous subjects.)

Greenaway joined the Findhorn Foundation, but withdrew in 1992. He traces a strong commercial instinct during the 80s, one which blended with the assimilation from California of the innumerable “techniques” and presumed therapeutic panaceas associated with the decaying Human Potential Movement. He writes that the “spirit of the early Findhorn Community was now dead and buried under increasing managerialism and commercialism.… The Findhorn Foundation had come of age – as a full blooded commercial operation of the Californian kind” (In the Shadow of the New Age, p. 52). Greenaway cites the academic work by Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leiden, 1996) entitled New Age Religion and Western Culture. This source commented on David Spangler’s book Revelation: The Birth of a New Age (1972), defining the latter as “one of the foundational texts of the New Age movement” (Greenaway, op. cit., p. 53, citing Hanegraaff, p. 39). Yet according to Steven J. Sutcliffe, “Hanegraaff’s model of ‘New Age religion’ remains curiously decontextualised” (Children of the New Age, p. 24), though the concession is made that Hanegraaff “provides a rich digest of the popular religious imagination in post-1960s Anglo-American culture” (ibid.). Hanegraaff treated themes found in over a hundred books located in leading new age bookstores. While some academics argue laboriously about what should comprise the definition of “new age,” the actual events involved too frequently suffer from obscurantism. Sutcliffe enlarged upon the early years of the Caddys, but made no reference to the dissidents at Findhorn, clearly influenced by partisan biases, himself preferring to describe “Experience Week,” which is commercial bait for the uncritical.

Spangler’s Revelation was so favourable to diffuse conceptualism that the Findhorn Foundation published it at their new press (Findhorn Press). This disconcerting book comprises “channelled” messages from Limitless Love and Truth, and is not the stuff to advocate for hard core ecological projects possessing scientific credibility. The new CIFAL status of the Foundation is contradicted by their legacy of confusions. Revelation fitted perfectly into the Foundation repertory of the 70s and long after. The Foundation spokesman Alex Walker described Spangler’s channelled work as “the philosophical basis for what is evolving in the Foundation” (The Kingdom Within, 1994, p. 58). Walker’s manifesto contained many typical Findhorn Foundation themes which arouse strong query elsewhere. He added the new rhetorical device about the “perennial philosophy” being at work in the community, the proof for which is still precisely nil. There was also the sickening refrain of unconditional love, likewise totally disproven by managerial attitudes.

Greenaway has pointed out that Spangler’s Revelation “is regularly introduced to neophytes on Foundation induction courses where a critical response is not encouraged” (Greenaway, op. cit., p. 53). He provides detail about one induction course (or “Experience Week”) where the Spangler text was read and the “workshop” participants were invited to give their comments. The replies such as “Very meaningful” were counterbalanced by the unusually blunt rejoinder from a Dutch woman that “I’ve never heard such a load of turgid twaddle.” This pointed response prompted others to become more sober, the drawback conceivably being that “the induction week had reduced the critical level of most participants to that of a bunch of sheep” (ibid.). The “workshop facilitator” made no attempt to probe what was occurring, which was the type of event unwelcome in the nonjudgmental milieu where cashflow is the primary consideration. The damage done to popular education has been extensive, and continues without break under the new aegis of UNITAR, which slumbers in Geneva while more donations are appropriated under the auspices of “attunement” and other problems.

When Peter Caddy made return visits in the early 90s, he expressed dismay at the increasing commercialism of his former community, warning that a departure was occurring from the original values and ideals. (David Spangler is also reported to have expressed a similar warning during the 90s.) Yet the new elite did not pay heed (ibid., p. 110).

Local press coverage increased in 1992 when a Foundation document leaked to a newspaper. This internal memorandum “outlined financially ambitious plans for a £5 million share flotation, to create a public limited company (Findhorn Business Partners plc) with the aim of expanding the Findhorn Foundation and its commercial operations” (Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent, p. 9). One of the plans mentioned in this document was that of acquiring additional land in Findhorn, for which purpose the sum of £1.4 million was in prospect (ibid.). The obvious intention of expansion caused shock and anger amongst local inhabitants. It was known that Foundation projects had sustained economic losses the previous year, a factor which made the new plans seem even more suspect and provocative. In August 1992 the local pressure caused the Foundation to host a public meeting at the Park. The local tide of opinion was so strongly against the new age expansionism that the Foundation desisted from further reference to the unpopular agenda save to explain this away. The Scottish locals remained wary however, and their leading spokesman became Sir Michael Joughin (d. 1996), the company chairman of Hydro-Electric who lived very close to The Park.

That same month of August 1992, Sir Michael felt obliged to send a letter of complaint to the new director of the Foundation, namely Judy Buhler-McAllister, stating the grievances of the native Scottish village named Findhorn. He expressed the local view that the Foundation did not act as a spiritual retreat but as a commercial organisation employing “all the techniques of modern tourist marketing.” He pointed out the contradiction involved in the adroit Foundation denials of their recent expansion plan (which envisaged a five year schedule), even though “your whole ideology is based upon expanding to the ‘whole planet’ let alone to Findhorn.” Sir Michael was worried about the local area becoming a new age colony via the evasionist tactics which had recently been demonstrated. He further stated: “If you are to regain contact with your neighbours, then the Foundation must contract dramatically back into its ‘spiritual roots’ and give up its commercial and expansionist New Age ambitions” (Greenaway, In the Shadow of the New Age, pp. 87–9). This letter was sent to a local newspaper, which reported his various comments. Later, Sir Michael added a postscript for the Sunday Mail report in November 1992, saying that the Foundation had “gone from a benign community who believed in fairies in the garden to a commercial organisation feeding upon trusting people” (ibid., p. 89).

Sir Michael reacted strongly to a BBC television programme about the Findhorn Foundation, which he considered to be very misleading for audiences unfamiliar with basic events. That 1992 coverage entailed the further complexity that Kate Thomas was also scheduled for an accompanying slot in relation to the Holotropic Breathwork issue. Thomas was officially offered this slot, and she agreed. Yet a BBC technician who visited her home on the day of filming was strongly influenced by Foundation officials; he told her rather insultingly that “it is just your word against theirs,” implying that she must be wrong in her complaint. She then refused to proceed with the filming, objecting to such obvious bias about a subject that was so imperfectly known to the public. The BBC management were subsequently informed of this event (by the present writer), but the matter was glossed over as though it had never happened. Sir Michael Joughin subsequently ensured that the BBC were acquainted in detail with the poor economic performance of the Findhorn Foundation, a matter which the BBC were obliged to declare in a television news bulletin in 1993. It is worth noting here that only a man as eminent as Sir Michael could have prevailed upon the media in the face of the insidious propaganda spread by the Foundation.

Wishing to hear more about Holotropic Breathwork and other events, Sir Michael invited Kate Thomas to his home, and was very sympathetic to her position. He mentioned to her his plan of all-out resistance to the Foundation, but also indicated his fears of a reprisal, having sensed their hostility because of his objections. He indicated his fear that extremists might damage his property. Such fears did in fact curtail the extent of Sir Michael’s tactics, though his underlying opposition remained well known locally.

For the last few years of his life, Sir Michael Joughin worried constantly about his new age neighbours. What concerned him most of all was their tendency to cover up, to act as though all was well and nothing suspect was in the offing. He emphasised their known economic losses, their inability to keep afloat in the world as it really was and not as they wanted it to be. His viewpoint was confirmed by such details as those surfacing on a BBC television news report in 1993 which relayed that recent Foundation accounts recorded “a meagre profit of £471 on a turnover of £1 million” (Castro, op. cit., p. 10).

Also in 1993, the Scottish Daily Express referred to the disturbing experience of Eva Haden, an inmate of the Foundation caravan park who had been experiencing stress rather than any therapeutic benefit. In an interview, she said of the Foundation that “their claim to be a spiritual community is a complete con; the place is run by a dictatorship; anyone who steps out of line or questions their rule is subjected to a concerted campaign of harassment and terror” (ibid., p. 77). The lore of nature spirits and the Findhorn Angel was insufficient to dispel strong doubts about what was occurring.

Sir Michael was very concerned that the Foundation could host a controversial therapy like Holotropic Breathwork. He noted the censorship which the Foundation elite imposed upon dissidents like Kate Thomas. He did not trust the Foundation promotionalism, and minutely analysed their visible activities, which he regarded as ill-conceived. The “planetary village” lore often sounded like a riddle, being sustained by an assertion made by Eileen Caddy in the late 1960s about the Findhorn Community becoming a “City of Light.” This was the underlying excuse for, or inspiration for, the contested expansionism. Critics watched apprehensively, and there were signs that the Findhorn Foundation were pursuing a doubtful policy that was shrouded by internal schemes and camouflage tactics. One reason given for the continued repression of Kate Thomas is that the management elite feared that she might divulge what was occurring behind the scenes, especially as they desired NGO status more than anything else. Local residents were puzzled as to precisely how this organisation achieved that status in 1997.

Meanwhile, after Joughin’s death in 1996, the Foundation became more bold in their tactics. It was evident that the tendency to commercial expansion was as strong as ever. The activity known as Eco-Village Ltd commenced, and the related project of Duneland Ltd acquired an extensive tract of land adjacent to The Park. There was a disconcerting element in the public relations talk. The Eco-Village was rather deceptively submitted to Moray Council in 1997 as a separate unit to the Foundation (Greenaway, op. cit., pp. 108ff.). Yet this new project was afterwards revealed by the leading director to cover The Park and some adjoining areas such as the desirable six acres known as The Field of Dreams. This project boosted the new NGO status of the Foundation. Plots in the Eco-Village were offered for sale to private buyers, these being affiliates of the Findhorn Foundation who wished to participate in the ecohousing industry that commenced. The theme of “eco-houses” was elaborately invested with “planetary village” significance. The status dwellings were being constructed by the mid-90s. An accompanying, and unadvertised trend, was that of Foundation affiliates having an increasing tendency to purchase homes in the nearby Scottish village of Findhorn, a matter which caused much local resentment during the 90s. The new age colonisation was viewed as an invasion. The presiding Foundation management have been described as “an unelected administrative caste appointed by trustees” (ibid., p. 117). There were originally twelve trustees, though this number was subsequently reduced to nine.

Meanwhile, Judy Buhler-McAllister (a Canadian) was relentless in her persecution of the dissident Kate Thomas, and influenced the mandate of the management elite. In 1994, Stephen Castro (an ex-member of the Foundation) petitioned the trustees for a democratic internal enquiry into a pressing issue, but this request was dismissed without any adequate reason (Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent, pp. 230–2). The trustees included Buhler-McAllister, who was still the Foundation director at that time. The sense of dictatorial authority demonstrated by this leader was such that Buhler-McAllister refused to see a local medical doctor (a retired GP) who was concerned at the treatment administered to two British dissidents (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, p. 215). Critics were not impressed when Buhler-McAllister subsequently became one of the Foundation icons for conflict resolution in the much advertised Consultancy Service (which charged high fees).

According to Greenaway’s relevant analysis, Findhorn Foundation managers are appointed by the trustees in a situation that is only nominally democratic. The trustees are here described as an oligarchy. “In practice long serving managers and senior community affiliates, plus those in favour with them from time to time, seem to hold the real power” (In the Shadow of the New Age, p. 138). Amongst the privileges attending the elite group of trustees is the factor that “certain trustees have links with satellite concerns, such as Newbold House in Forres, which in a technical legal sense is independently owned” (ibid.). The independence of satellites is misleading, because the diverse components act in concert with regard to the clientbase and many features of ideology.

Local watchdogs kept track of Foundation accounting, which became more complex. Foundation accounts for the financial year ending Jan. 1999 showed that (relative to the previous year) staff costs increased by approximately £88,000. Not long after, newspaper reports in Sept. 2000 disclosed internal problems of the ailing community, informing that the Findhorn Foundation was nearly £600,000 in the red, and that things were getting worse. Even the manager of the Phoenix general store (at The Park) had recently complained of declining numbers of visitors and a deep malaise. The strong pound and the exchange rate, plus the high cost of workshops and other courses, were conspiring to deter overseas supporters. Yet further, maintenance costs for the Foundation properties were a disability. The extensive Cluny Hill College (a Victorian building with scores of bedrooms) was valued at only £100,000 despite many free labour contributions over the years from guests (ibid., pp. 139–40).

Drawbacks were not mentioned in the Foundation propaganda. The ecological theme of “sustainability” was fashionable, and this became glibly utilised in Craig Gibsone’s ecology workshops, which also stressed the glowing theme of “community,” presented in such a way as to imply a solution for all problems. Although the lavish debt of £800,000 was officially declared by the hierarchy in 2001, the propaganda continued, becoming ever more deceptive. Critics scrutinised the high prices charged by the elite. A Foundation annual programme starting in 1999 cost between £3000 to £1500 according to “a sliding scale by attunement.” Food and accommodation were included. In 2002, this same annual programme had increased in price to “between £4000 and £2500,” a short term inflation providing one of many indicators that sustainability is a myth in these sectors (ibid., p. 138).

The acquisition of NGO status had not secured relief from basic problems. UNITAR patronage was sought as the endorsement for sustainability. In 2004 the promotionalism stated that “the task of the Findhorn Foundation over the last forty years has been to qualify and adapt the most inspired ideas of the world to meet the exigencies of the times” (Findhorn Foundation Courses and Workshops May–October 2004, p. 35). This rather exaggerated claim to prerogative was not enhanced by the feat of bracketing together such workshop themes as “Ecovillage Education” and “Ageless Wisdom for your Daily Life” (ibid.). Ecology is here equivalent to the teaching of Alice Bailey and her Arcane School, be it noted. The relativism is not impressive to scientists. Ecovillage Education became a favoured motto of the PR team, and the “Culture of Peace” slogan borrowed from the United Nations scrupulously ignored reference to the dissident books elsewhere gaining attention. The Caddy factor was incorporated into “weekly Guidance from Eileen emails” that became a feature of the Findhorn Foundation internet front (ibid., p. 34). The same enticing brochure stated the crux of the situation in that “we need also to seek voluntary donations to help us continue to offer the level of services we provide within the community” (ibid., p. 35).

The commercial programme for 2002 had involved “a median price for one week workshops of around £350–£400 (Greenaway, In the Shadow of the New Age, p. 143). Although remaining static for some years, these prices were high by comparison with religious equivalents in, e.g., Buddhist establishments. Tithing and bursaries were given, but in this respect “the annual amounts are very small” (ibid.). Foundation programmes were aimed at American and German affluence. The local Scottish population viewed these charges as exorbitant, and the reputation of the “sustainable community” amongst local villagers and townspeople was often very low (though bakers and other tradesmen were content to reap some benefits). A calculating assembly like Moray Council, having strong interests in tourism, would eventually succumb to the suspect magic of Findhorn Foundation alternatives, being interested in ecobiz and not ecology. A “Conflict and Transformation” conference in May 2002 cost £600 (ibid., p. 147), though dissidents were carefully screened out of the representations, thus typically leaving no trace of disquieting and unresolved conflict. It is a fact that Kate Thomas had twice been snubbed the previous year in her gestures of reconciliation, becoming ill on her neglected visit to Findhorn in April 2001 (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, pp. 180ff.), and again being consigned to oblivion by God’s mouthpiece Eileen Caddy later that same year via an inglorious episode in the history of the Scientific and Medical Network (see Thomas, SMN Events 2000–2004, chapter five, on this website). What is actually transformed by the Findhorn Foundation? The Moray Council balance sheet of anticipated revenues in tourism.

Close analysis of data could well disclose that Peter Caddy did not transform anything much outside his gardening plot and the caravan site which became The Park. In 1974, News of the World reported his statement: “God has told us this is the age of abundance and we must live in affluence and luxury” (In the Shadow of the New Age, p. 147). Nearly thirty years later, in 2002, the Foundation situation was that “affluence and luxury are for the hierarchs and the ‘mid Atlantic’ brigade of workshop leaders; many (Foundation) workers live close to penury, and the Foundation is nearly broke and frantically chasing grant aid” (ibid.). Peter Caddy at least did some gardening, though too many of his successors lived an artifical lifestyle more in affinity with the Manhattan jet set than anything sustainable in the ecological sense. Peter acquired five wives in the lifestyle of abundance, and eventually became a subscriber to Hindu religion. At least gurus are tangible entities, whereas the mystery Tibetan Djwal Khul was “channelled” out of thin air by the versatile Alice Bailey. Yet gurus have spelled danger in some instances. From the late 80s, the vogue for Sathya Sai Baba at the Foundation created more channelling fantasies. An official of Cluny Hill College was very partial to this trend, and in the early 90s Eric Franciscus mounted an expensive expedition for subscribers to Auroville and Puttaparthi (the ashram of Sathya Sai Baba). After slandering and threatening two dissident women who had dared to protest at wrongs, Franciscus revelled in the glorified tourism of Eastern wisdom, which cost £2,500 per head for his travelling companions to secure (Thomas, The Destiny Challenge, p. 983).

The persons who actually benefit from Foundation propaganda about “spiritual transformation” are implied as being the managerial elite and “the new international upper middle class sub-group who ‘focalise’ its workshops” (Greenaway, op. cit., pp. 151–2). These bodies constitute an extension of the Human Potential Movement and the lore of self-realisation and personality enhancement. Critics observe that the personality often seems to get worse under such influences. Activities such as “channelling” are also preserved via commercial “workshops,” which entail the complete absence of due assessment by the affluent participants.

During the 90s and after, the Findhorn Foundation failed to achieve UK university status for course “modules,” to use the preferred jargon. The therapy centre of the Moray Firth did not convince all spectators that presumed prowess was indisputable. What would be the next move of the claimants to ageless wisdom? When the substantial debt was declared in 2001, the eco-prefix became a standard feature of identity tags. Ecobiz had become the road to salvation, all else having failed. “By the start of 2002, the Foundation was poised for a massive eco-cum-tourist led expansion under an impressive (to the untrained eye at least) array of eco fronts” (ibid., p. 344). The underlying purpose discernible was the pursuit of grant aid, including “Lottery money and venture capital” (ibid.). Now appeared the “independent” projects such as Ekobay Ltd and Ekopia Ltd, supplementing the existing enterprises of Eco-Village Ltd and Duneland Ltd (ibid., pp. 344–5). The ecovillage lore appealed to the UN, who do not investigate complexities and undertones, or at least not in Moray. Ekopia emerged as “a vehicle for putting new money into other Foundation-linked enterprises” (ibid., p. 349), and one criticism has been that this activity is “essentially an in-house project, not the community buy-out which its publicity has proclaimed” (ibid., p. 350).

The most well known feature of the Findhorn Foundation eco-drive is the “eco-house” trend, strongly associated with the “Field of Dreams” adjacent to The Park. A feature of the 90s, the eco-houses became a status symbol for the new executive staff and affluent affiliates who could afford the investments. There is a reliable detail about how a shocked caravan resident of no status was removed to make way for one of the new staff assets (Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent, p. 105). These elite constructions became controversial for the high price asked when one of them came up for sale in 2002, a very substantial profit being anticipated. See further About the Findhorn Foundation and UN, Appendix One, on this website.

The new Findhorn Foundation College (like Cluny Hill College) was observed to duplicate the spirit of deceptive promotionalism and new age jargon. A sample workshop ad for “Holistic Learning” (cost £435 for a week) gives an idea of what this Learning involves: “Working with core beliefs, conflict facilitation, dance, bodywork, art, group games, intuition and more” (Findhorn Foundation Courses and Workshops May–October 2005, p. 26). This College claims skill in conflict resolution (or facilitation), and may be considered ineffective in view of the recorded laxity demonstrated towards a dissident who was willing to communicate. The College Principal, Dr. Malcolm Hollick, “wishes to resurrect the old ‘University of Light’ vision of Peter Caddy, which is taken up periodically by Foundation spokespeople” (In the Shadow of the New Age, p.333). The vision has also been attributed to David Spangler (Riddell, The Findhorn Community, p. 80). This auspice is also associated with the more well known “City of Light” theme expressed by Eileen Caddy, whose purported guidance referred to a village eventually growing into a “City of Light.” The Foundation impulse for property acquisition has been traced to this reference of the co-founder (ibid., p. 85), which served to justify the expansionism causing debt. In 2001 the Findhorn Foundation College failed in the elementary option of resolving the issue of dissidents, Dr. Hollick deferring to the feeble response of Eileen Caddy who once again sent Kate Thomas into oblivion, a development aided by the economic interests of the Scientific and Medical Network, another alternative body (see Thomas, SMN Events 2000–2004, chapter five, on this website). Critical observers have reached the inescapable conclusion that the “City of Light” decodes to the “Vatican of the New Age” as a vehicle for the suppression of dissidents. There are two extending considerations which can be expressed as follows:

(a) Eileen Caddy’s “guidance” was the genesis of the “planetary village” lore, which will not suffice to pass the necessary qualification of ecology being a science as distinct from the new age entrepreneurialism of ecobiz.

(b) When Eileen Caddy again sided with the management suppression of Kate Thomas, she did not raise a flicker of protest at the simultaneous inclusion of Margot Anand in a Foundation conference that is now notorious. This conference occurred in October 2001, and celebrated the disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh whose speciality was incitement to orgasm, attended by a form of crude magic associated with mundane desires. The remoteness of the commercial opportunism from viable tuition is very marked, and one reason why the Findhorn Foundation has not been taken seriously in establishment sectors immune to revenues of tourism. See further my Letter to BBC Radio, featured on this website.

 

Part Four: The “magic of Findhorn” is ongoing camouflage for drawbacks such as heavy debt and internet stigma of dissidents

The civil servant Stephen Castro (author of Hypocrisy and Dissent) has recently summed up his impressions of the Findhorn Foundation in retrospect: “The more I think and read about the early influences from which the Findhorn Foundation arose, i.e., Moral Rearmament, the ‘Christ-within’ teaching of Sheena Govan, the Universal Link (and ‘Limitless Love’), Eileen Caddy’s ‘God spoke to me,’ Spiritualism, Theosophy, purported Rosicrucianism, channelled UFO messages, and Devas, the crazier it all becomes. Can any rational person really take any of the above seriously? Sociologists write about these matters in their detached and scholarly manner, yet dare not highlight the salient fact that what is actually happening is surely a form of social pathology whereby delusory beliefs and sanctimonious rhetoric contribute to the camouflage of ‘spirituality’.… The Findhorn Foundation was not the first community to arise based on ‘divine messages’ or charismatic leaders; historically many such communities have arisen, and during the 19th century there were a number of these communities in America. Even in Britain various agrarian communes based on self-sufficiency and crafts developed in response (or rather, reaction) to industrialisation, and thus predated current ecological concerns. So the Findhorn Foundation has a precedent, but can no longer be viewed as a commune, spiritual or otherwise;