Second Letter to Tony Blair
Author: Kevin R. D. Shepherd
Introduction by the author
In this Second Letter of 2006, I complained at the bureaucratic inertia which had continually evaded my communications or passed the buck. The First Letter to Tony Blair had not gained any reply from the Department to which the Prime Minister had allocated this communication. The Second Letter describes events which had occurred during the interim, revolving primarily around the Findhorn Foundation, an organisation favoured by UNITAR without due inspection of factual events, accounting anomalies, dissident literature, and critical literature. UNITAR is the abbreviation relevant to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, a body responsible for the global CIFAL centres relating to ecological sustainability.
The new CIFAL centre at Findhorn was the only one in the British Isles. Closely informed persons viewed the selection of the Findhorn Foundation for this honour as a substantial error. The Second Letter explains why, implying that the infiltration of new age practices and concepts could gravely affect educational avenues in Britain. UNITAR was not proof against this adverse tide; the outcome remains unpredictable. The desire of Moray Council for economic benefits was a primary factor assisting the UNITAR selection in 2006, a decision not finalised until September of that year. Moray Council were directly involved in the agreement signed at Geneva that month.
Tony Blair briefly replied to me in a communication dated 18/09/2006, referring the contents of my lengthy letter to the Department of Health, whose very brief response was dated 21/09/2006. That Dept merely passed the Second Letter to the Scottish Executive, who did not reply. The Executive became notorious, in critical circles, for indifference to the complaints involved. The Scottish Executive preferred to support UNITAR without any due investigation. UNITAR was similarly resistant to any probe. The circular nature of argument was dismal. Critics had to be wrong; the Findhorn Foundation was a marvellous opportunity sponsored by Moray Council.
The Scottish Executive was later renamed the Scottish Government. The Executive, as a prospective donor, expressed unequivocal support for the UNITAR project in Moray, being strongly influenced by the economic anticipations of Moray Council. The new Findhorn Foundation promotionalism disarmingly emphasised the United Nations outreach as an agent of social equity. The Foundation image was immaculately progressive in this high status sector; they were now seen as a virtual agent of UNITAR, a channel of UN benevolence. Completely eclipsed and ignored was the suppressive treatment awarded by the Foundation to dissidents and critics of that problematic organisation.
The standard response of the Scottish Executive in these matters was evasion. They had a precedent in the Findhorn Foundation and UNITAR, whose social equity was compromised by ignoring due complaints, amounting to a mockery of democratic obligations. The Scottish Executive supported the blinkered economic interests of Moray Council, who saw in the Findhorn Foundation a source of tourism revenue, at the expense of public credulity and analytical faculties. Economics reign supreme as the decisive factor in modern society; ethical considerations are too often consigned to oblivion by that factor, as some data attests. The shielding CIFAL umbrella meant that the Findhorn Foundation conveniently escaped a tarnished repute of debt incurred by mismanagement. The Foundation now acquired further donations and subsidies from parties deceived into believing that this organisation is the agent of planetary transformation and spiritual education.
Some observers were puzzled that the CIFAL presence at Findhorn, in 2006, decoded to CIFAL Findhorn Ltd. This business company did not comprise UN delegates, but instead Findhorn Foundation staff and Moray Councillors. Five years later, the same company was renamed CIFAL Scotland Ltd. By 2016, many of the directors had resigned. Two years after, the residual CIFAL Scotland Ltd terminated.
The CIFAL presence in Moray expired without due explanation as to why the extravagant promotionalism in 2006 had proved to be unfounded. A multi-million pound CIFAL centre had initially been mentioned by propagandists at the Findhorn Foundation. Nothing of the kind ever materialised. Instead, CIFAL business accompanied the customary commercial output of alternative "workshops" at the Findhorn Foundation. Climate science is a very different field to holistic therapy and related pursuits. UNITAR could not distinguish the difference.
At the Findhorn Foundation, climate science was hindered by, and sacrificed to, the opportunism and high fees of purported "spiritual education." Furthermore, objectors were negated by the towering institutional associations of Geneva-based UNITAR, whose myopia discernibly erred in terms of CIFAL location. Planting ecology priorities in a centre of alternative therapy and "counselling" was not a viable prospect. The roots proved unstable. Findhorn is absent from the current list of global CIFAL centres.
Despite all the "ecovillage" talk about sustainability, CIFAL did not transpire to be sustainable at the Findhorn Foundation. The UN ecology paradise at Findhorn was a mirage of promotionalism.
Strong interest has accompanied the online First Letter and Second Letter, on the part of diverse analysts, who are easily able to perceive the evasive nature of political responses. Those analysts recognise that serious issues are too often obscured by bureaucratic preferences and economic conveniences of the moment.
A number of headings have been inserted in the Second Letter to assist online reading.
CONTENTS KEY
1. Holotropic Breathwork Hazard
2. UNITAR Myopia and CIFAL Centre at Findhorn
4. British Home Office and United Nations PR
5. Holistic University of Brazil
6. Findhorn Foundation as Problem Zone
8. Christopher Bache and LSD Therapy
9. Letter of Complaint to David Lorimer
12. Exploitive Therapies and Purist Ecology
Second Letter to Tony Blair: Re the Findhorn Foundation
The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, 10 Downing Street, LONDON SW1A 2AA
01/09/2006
Dear Tony Blair,
A TESTIMONY TO WHAT IS OFFICIALLY IGNORED
Further to my letter to yourself dated 15/04/2006, together with enclosed documents, I am reporting in the negative with regard to the aftermath. Your reply of 04/05/2006, via the Direct Communications Unit, informed that you had asked for my letter to be forwarded to the Dept for Education and Skills, so that they could reply direct on your behalf. There has been no reply from that Dept, a fact which I find perturbing.
In addition to the government failure to communicate, BBC Radio also failed to reply, despite the 12 page Letter to BBC Radio (2006) that was published as a booklet, and which comprised one of the documents sent to yourself. Conclusions may thus be drawn about the stature of the BBC in relation to social responsibility.
1. Holotropic Breathwork Hazard
Another cause for alarm was the failure of medical authorities to respond to the documents sent to them. The customary aloofness of medical credentials from the public sector means that it is useless to communicate with the medical profession, governed by a protocol working against the public interests (and also possibly against their own, as they are increasingly losing ground to alternative medicine). A salient ingredient of the Letter to BBC Radio was the issue of Holotropic Breathwork (abbreviation HB), an alternative therapy improvised on a commercial basis by Dr. Stanislav Grof at Esalen. This hazard was unleashed upon the British public by the Findhorn Foundation (abbreviation FF).
HB workshops have continued on a smaller scale at the FF, whose internal magazine has advertised this practice as a means of access to "transpersonal" states. This is standard Grofian exegesis, misleading many gullible people. HB is hyperventilation accompanied by loud music, diversely causing euphoria, powerful hallucinations, acute traumas, and even violent moods. Clients are deceived into believing that this is a spiritual exercise, paying high fees in America and Europe, a factor encouraging the increasing number of HB practitioners, many of them taught by Grof in California (there are now said to be more than a thousand of them throughout the world). Strong fears exist about this trend.
Popular beliefs spread by HB commerce are made more dangerous by the general context of Grofian ideology, which expounds a psychedelic mysticism rooted in LSD therapy and MDMA therapy (both of these being illegal). An American scientist has stated that Grof inspires an underground LSD therapy movement comprising hundreds of illegal practitioners. My first letter to yourself observed that popular media sentiments in America had obstructed the efforts of American scientists to counteract a new ploy of the drugs lobby (here I supplied a reference to the case of two practitioners of HB who promoted MDMA therapy as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder).
The ominous development in America, occurring in 2001–2, was pioneered by MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), a Grof-related psychedelic lobby. These LSD partisans almost succeeded in controlling the medical situation, engineering the approval of the American Food and Drug Administration (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, 2005, pp. 17ff.). The Grofian plot (funded by MAPS) in Charleston was foiled. Few people were aware of the details, and the ignorance continues (with other plots in train). [This was a reference to the MAPS tenacity in gaining, and attempting to gain, official sanction for their MDMA proposal in several different countries; see also MDMA Therapy]
The gravity of such trends should not be underestimated. The main point to grasp is that scientists were amazed at how the MAPS strategy had got past official protocol, disarming all defence lines and an Institutional Review Board. Medical controls had fallen asleep. The proliferating corps of HB practitioners are associated with MDMA preferences, which are viewed by partisans as a stepping stone to LSD legislation. Grof’s influential disciples Rick Doblin and Christopher Bache have lobbied for LSD in a variety of ways. The Grof movement is now integral to the international "new age," in which American "therapy" influences percolate Europe.
The peculiar jargon of American alternative therapy (much of which comes from Esalen in California) is rife at the FF, which has hosted a large floating population over the years. Grof himself was a celebrity at the FF in earlier years, though he stopped visiting when Edinburgh University intervened with medical warnings. Grof has since been hosted at Cambridge by the anomalous Scientific and Medical Network (SMN), whom critics regard as a dangerous influence falling well below scientific and medical standards in their more inappropriate selections.
2. UNITAR Myopia and CIFAL Centre at Findhorn
What has been very worrying is that the United Nations (UN) have turned a blind eye to defiant HB sessions at an FF-related venue in Forres, a disability shared by the SMN, who have even enlisted Bache as a speaker and columnist. Critics say that the FF will now attempt to disown HB in the face of renewed attack, while the dangers will continue to be present by the very nature of the diverse workshop influences acting upon the FF, a major relay point in Britain for contemporary "shamanism," a phenomenon which should not be underestimated.
In Britain, the situation is now comparable to the near fatal American crisis of a few years ago. The lethargy of the government, the media, and the medical profession, is counterproductive to due warnings and necessary educational measures. Your party has done nothing to heed warnings against the ludicrous scenario of a commercial "new age" workshop organisation being given UN sanction as a CIFAL centre for ecology in Moray. Despite their known misdemeanours, the FF will now be able to do more or less anything they like under the guise of UN (or CIFAL) expertise. From obscure beginnings, the UN project in Moray has been pushed ahead this year at breakneck speed to avoid any possible complications. A book could be written on this disconcerting subject, but in the current milieu of official lethargy, the exercise would be wasted.
Consider the non-response to a 13-page circular (of mine) entitled About the Findhorn Foundation and UN, dated 05/06/2006. The CC list included the names of twenty members of Moray Council, six Scottish MPs (including Peter Peacock, who represents the Dept of Education), three English MPs (including Alan Johnson and Tony McNulty), Dundee University, and Oxford Brookes University (the last two being supporters of the UN or CIFAL plan). Only three MPs replied, two giving brief acknowledgements, and one other who attempted distance from their role on a Drugs Panel, which must surely involve some public obligations. The implication is that any UN decision must be impeccable, and any discrepant data can therefore be ignored and consigned to oblivion.
The FF has erratically spliced ecology onto the "new spirituality" commercialism, being entrepreneurs in lucrative workshops noted for high fees. One of those workshops has been suspended at the strong recommendation of the former Scottish Charities Office (SCO). However, new age defiance has been clearly visible. Many confusions are spread by FF "ecology." The real history of the FF has been obscured by the propaganda tactics now invested with official laurels by the myopic UN [alias UNITAR in Geneva].
The Moray councillors are now notorious for their economic (or mercenary) interests in the UN plan to boost the profile of the FF as a CIFAL centre in Moray (the first such centre in the UK). The Moray Council see this development as a source of economic benefits to the local area, turning a blind eye to disquieting information. The Scottish Executive has opted to follow the example of Moray Council. The only party to extend consideration was the OSCR (Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator), successor to the SCO. This Office expressed a willingness to investigate matters, but seemed unable to assimilate all the information imparted, narrowing down the issue to HB and even suggesting (by telephone) an alternative medical assessment to Edinburgh University, which is risky [Regius Professor Antony Busuttil relied upon medical facts, not theoretical approaches]. The OSCR is discernibly awed by the Moray Council and the UN, and accordingly in danger of backtracking upon former precautions.
During the 1990s (and despite the recommendation against HB), the SCO were a major obstruction to the passage of dissident information about the FF. The SCO did nothing about complaints which were frequently sent to them by dissidents and victims (Letter to BBC Radio, pp. 3–4). A recent disclosure informs that, in the transition from the SCO to the OSCR, the former file on the FF has been lost or destroyed. This fate includes the report on Holotropic Breathwork commissioned from the Pathology Dept of Edinburgh University. The official ineptitude in these matters is now acute. The excuse has been proffered that a nine year storage life is sufficient for documents. The rules should be amended for extreme cases of public affliction.
4. British Home Office and United Nations PR
The British Home Office replied to an earlier version of About the FF and UN, dated 12/05/2006. They disclaimed any responsibility, instead advising an appeal to several other government departments. Only the Dept for Communities and Local Government replied to further appeal, in a letter dated 30/06/2006. They too disclaimed any responsibility, stating that they had forwarded my document to the Scottish Executive. The latter body never replied.
Yet perhaps even more alarming is the evasive strategy of UN offices in Britain and America, who failed to give any response to the FF and UN document. The French headquarters of UNESCO had earlier disowned any responsibility by referring controversial matters to their ineffective London branch, which is unable to reply to relevant documentation. The United Nations PR (Public Relations) is a fiasco, and nothing short of a disgrace.
The two UN-related officials most closely associated with the FF are Dr. Pierre Weil and Marcel Boisard. Weil was feted by the FF as rector of the Holistic University in Brazil. Critics said that this gullible patron was living in a fantasy world. His protégé Craig Gibsone is the major practitioner of HB within the FF, and the prime mover against dissidents who complained at the injuries inflicted by this "therapy" (which is hyperventilation). That revealing trend (resulting in dissident literature being proscribed) has been glossed by the story of the FF as a model NGO, a story perpetuated by the more recent supporter Marcel Boisard, the UNITAR official who made no response to the FF and UN document that was sent to him.
5. Holistic University of Brazil
Thus, we are now confronted by the "alternative UN," which is not the same body celebrated in former years. The avant-garde and suspect UN has for some time been observed to accommodate exotic and fashionable beliefs about space aliens and occultism (Pointed Observations, pp. 320–1). The glorification of the FF as an ecological platform demonstrates an ostrich mentality. The UN support for the FF (via UNITAR) encompasses serious ethical anomalies in relation to commercial therapy "workshops" and forms of mismanagement, quite apart from the detail that HB was suspended in 1993, as a consequence of SCO recommendation on the basis of strong medical warnings. The Holistic University of Brazil is at the root of this folly, which could easily outmode Edinburgh University.
Craig Gibsone, a major FF celebrity and Holistic University recruit, has been defiantly practising HB in Forres as recently as November 2005. His therapy team possess no medical credentials whatever. The partisans regard hyperventilation as a spiritual exercise, despite the casualties on record. HB is a dangerous fantasy and a source of revenue for the fantasists. HB is sanctioned by the incompetent Holistic University and is one of the suspect tools of MAPS, who have been infiltrating international medical sectors with psychedelic propaganda.
6. Findhorn Foundation as Problem Zone
Holotropic Breathwork (HB) was devised by Grof at Esalen as a substitute for his illegal LSD therapy. Sharing the same ideological reference points as LSD therapy, HB is compatible with MDMA in the MAPS plan to legalise psychedelic drugs. Grof was a practitioner of MDMA therapy before this activity became illegal during the 1980s. The UN has done nothing to contradict MAPS by embracing HB in the nominal ecology. The UN and MAPS now converge. Although Gibsone does not preach drug use, the influence of MAPS acts like a submarine in new age ranks, breaching defences. The outcome is unpredictable. HB and MDMA therapy could easily become legal in Scottish education, as there is no responsible body in evidence to prevent any such disaster.
Meanwhile, the substantial debt of the FF has been covered up by UN myopia, which permits the FF to gain large donations from the trusting public who are never told the truth. Donations offset the debt, but the ethical shortfall is never rectified.
The FF reality was mismanagement throughout the 1990s, achieving a debt of nearly a million pounds (which was substantial for a relatively small organisation of this type, starting from scratch on a caravan site in the 1960s). The debt was declared in 2001, having been in process for a number of years prior. The origins of this debt can be traced to Craig Gibsone’s term of directorship (ending in 1991), which had altered the earlier economic pattern of the FF. Gibsone was concerned to create salaries for personnel like himself who were not content with the pittances of idealism. They wanted old age wages combined with new age status as spiritual authorities.
Gibsone imposed HB upon his community, with the result that a support group had to be created behind the scenes for suffering victims. The FF subsequently became a commercial machine serving new businesses, dubious "workshop" activity, and the process of acquiring donations. This situation facilitated the new staff salaries. The management furtively privatised communal assets and resorted to elaborate propaganda for the purpose of gaining NGO status in 1997. Visitors gave their services free, while the staff were paid for the betrayal of idealism and democracy. Dissidents were vengefully squashed by the preening staff who gave hideous lip service to quack themes like "unconditional love."
A very relevant and graphically detailed book, published in 1996 by an ex-member, was suppressed by the management, whose infamous resort in 2002 was to portray this book on the internet as not being worthy of review ( I am referring here to Stephen Castro’s Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation). In actual fact, that book is one of the few reliable sources available about the FF. The management had so much to conceal that outsiders could frequently not believe the deficit, duped by the NGO blurb about planetary transformation and spiritual education. This deceptive status had been achieved via the holistic fantasist Dr. Weil, who failed to exercise any critical acumen during his periodic celebrity visits. However, the major puppet figure was Eileen Caddy, the co-founder who was known to complain in private that the management disliked criticisms. She used this fact to exonerate herself from any role as a conscientious objector.
During the 1990s, one newspaper dared to describe the FF in terms of mafia, on the basis of the staff treatment of Jill Rathbone. The press had genuine grounds for complaint in this instance; Rathbone subsequently won a court case in Scotland against the Moray Steiner School, who were totally influenced by dictatorial FF staff. The Scottish law courts did not exist in the version of events favoured by the FF. Such episodes were concealed by the FF propaganda tactics intent upon gaining NGO status, a status which should never have been conferred. The erring Holistic University in Brazil is no justification for dissimulation and "mafia" tactics in Moray.
Consider the lunatic situation in which The Scottish Daily Mail (according to a first-hand report) is scared to make known due details about the FF owing to fears of libel action. The press are here shackled to a supposed initiative from the OSCR, who are to date part of the bureaucratic evasion syndrome in Britain. The OSCR might dangerously overturn medical warnings in their fear of the UN mandate. Meanwhile, BBC Radio celebrated the most prominent FF therapist (William Bloom) in a superficial chat show about "new spirituality." Anything but the truth.
The present writer lived in Forres (Moray) during most of the 1990s, and almost next door to the therapy college of the FF. That college should have been closed down, in the public interests. Large numbers of visitors to this college were prone to the idea that they had become spiritually gifted as a result of attending "workshops." An inflated sense of self-importance could occur in weeks. Some victims called themselves "spiritual counsellors." The standard tactic was to "heal" others and give supposed guidance. Some became FF staff members or "focalisers." They created a bizarre amalgam of misinformation that seeped through international boundaries to become a new ideological plague.
One of the more extreme cases moved about the streets of Forres offering instruction to the townspeople, soliciting fees for his great knowledge and healing gifts. Such was the totally subjective power of "attunement," an FF exercise in self-deception. The capricious and mercenary spiritual teachers protected themselves from criticism by using the catchphrases of Esalen alternative therapy about "judgmentalism." Now they are further protected by the UN (or CIFAL) ecology project, which will cause additional problems for the public via the burgeoning underground of delinquent entrepreneurs existing from Forres to the south of England.
One of the presumed spiritual authorities was Craig Gibsone, who taught hyperventilation with no medical credentials, the casualties including totally distraught women with intensely revived memories of child abuse. Gibsone retained his preference for HB limelight despite the official suspension (within the FF) of his dangerous pastime. His orientation was made more credible to the gullible UN by his increasing partiality for a commercial form of tuition in ecology (offered in workshops). Ecology is a buzzword rather than an ideal in such circles. It is sold rather than practised. Gibsone’s pet theme of ecological sustainability (repeated ad nauseam) is another myth. The factors sustaining the FF were evasionism, constant donations, lucrative commercial workshops, the indulgence called "attunement" which acted as a psychological conditioner, the total suppression of dissident views, and the elimination of unwanted history such as the dissident victory in the Scottish law courts against the erring Moray Steiner School (an FF satellite).
The pattern of retarded FF response in public relations commenced with Eric Franciscus, a colleague of Gibsone who was head of "Education" at the FF by 1990. His preference was to threaten and segregate female dissidents and distort their complaints against HB and other anomalies. His evasive tactics are attested by a tape-recorded conversation between himself and a female victim dating to 1994. [The tape is in my possession] Franciscus was one of those who claimed intuition, a word sufficient to cause nausea amongst those averse to "holistic" predators and little caesars. Franciscus did not believe that differences from his own viewpoint were worthy of consideration,. This form of politics has obviously been infectious in Moray, and perhaps elsewhere also.
One of the drawbacks associated with Franciscus was the "channelling" of purportedly ethereal messages from Sathya Sai Baba [an activity conducted by Carol Riddell], peculiarities which occurred in FF premises during the 1990s. The delusions in evidence were staggering (a residue of these is suspected as still existing, along with the Rajneeshi affiliations promoting the subversive factor known as Tantric Sex — see Letter to BBC Radio, pp. 6–7). Sathya Sai Baba has since been revealed as a very suspect and erring guru, associated with murder events and notorious for alleged homosexual molestations. The Sathya Sai Organisation gained a strong anchorage in the UN, via an influential Sathya Sai devotee holding a Deputy position in the UN, even becoming India’s candidate for UN Secretary General [a position that was not secured]. The UN unfortunately attracts fringe interests of a dubious kind, wishing to legitimate their activities.
8. Christopher Bache and LSD Therapy
Names like Gibsone and Franciscus are still little known. That is not the case with Professor Christopher Bache, the American academic who is a leading exponent of HB and LSD "shamanism." Bache is now associated with an extension of FF activities, in the format inaugurated by the new age impresario David Lorimer, a major collaborator with the FF via different English alternative organisations. Lorimer has been Programme Director of what is called the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN). He was responsible for including Bache in an SMN conference in 2003. Lorimer also promoted an article by Bache on the SMN website in 2004 (Lorimer was also directly responsible for the earlier disastrous SMN promotion of Grof at Cambridge in 1995).
A book by Bache, published in 2000, was subtitled Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind. Beware of deep [psychedelic] ecology, which can cause severe disorders. Bache briefly mentions the extreme psychological and domestic difficulties befalling him as the consequence of practising LSD therapy and HB (as a pupil of Grof). Yet he chose to glorify his psychedelic visions, with tragic effects in America. [The influential book was Dark Night, Early Dawn, supposedly a revelation of LSD therapy wonders in which "the deep psyche is hyper-stimulated using Stanislav Grof's powerful therapeutic methods," to quote publisher description; the extensive public confusion caused by academic books of this category is a more significant factor]
Bache, a hero of MAPS, has discrepantly admitted that LSD therapy cannot itself stabilise the practitioner. Bache’s solution is recourse to Vajrayana Buddhist Tantric exercises. The questionable remedy, and justification, appeared in the pages of the SMN journal Network in the year 2004. This was part of Bache’s awkward and unconvincing reply to a critic [Jean Shepherd, alias Kate Thomas] who resigned from the SMN that same year [as a consequence of principled objection to the LSD lobby and other matters].
9. Letter of Complaint to David Lorimer
Such issues were an ingredient of my lengthy Letter of Complaint to David Lorimer (2005), included in the despatch to yourself. Lorimer has chosen to ignore that thirty page document (as did all but one member of the SMN listed in the relevant CC bloc). This fact of evasion has amazed some onlookers. Such failures in response give indication of acute drawbacks in the alternative sector of presumed "spirituality" and "science." Spirituality is currently a danger word of extensive proportions. The evasive policy of the FF has become standard in the new age of British indifference to facts as distinct from fantasy.
Instead of rectifying evident disparities of the new age mentioned in a 30-page document, Lorimer has been busy cementing his alliance with the FF in his new project known as University for Spirit Forum (USF). Complaints about abuses and palpable errors are unfashionable. The UN mantle [at Findhorn] is a convenient excuse for further enterprises in misinformation.
Of course, one has to reflect that Oxford University has preferred to sink millions in a vivisection laboratory rather than dynamise sociology or philosophy into active social welfare. The obscurantism just gets worse. So the Holistic University in Brazil constitutes a Scylla to partner the conventional Charybdis.
Yet what about religious studies? Have they countered the UN sanction of holistic chaos and exploitation? The prestigious Alister Hardy Trust (or Society), associated with the University of Wales, failed to reply to their noticeable inclusion in my 30-page document addressed to David Lorimer. The only exceptions were very brief acknowledgements from two ecclesiastical patrons of that Society, who at least remembered protocol relating to CC lists. The other twenty entities listed are perhaps dyslexic. Scholars in that sector cannot be bothered to rectify palpable errors made in a very misleading article composed by one of them (an FF partisan strongly influenced by propaganda). The new age virus of indifference has spread to Hardy’s offspring also.
The new law of [some] learned societies is now: "If you write to me, I won’t reply; I am beyond reproach, so you don’t exist for me; my club is elect." When the air of infallibility is maintained at all costs, it is time to look elsewhere for the scientific study of religious experiences, confused by some with the commercial promotion of Holotropic Breathwork.
An honourable exception to the indifference was the Islamic savant Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who has been a patron of the AHT. He sent a speedy reply from America, making clear that he is not in agreement with any of the erratic perspectives associated with the FF and the SMN. I duly respect his standpoint and etiquette.
12. Exploitive Therapies and Purist Ecology
It is the extremist, unbalanced aspect of "holistic thought" which annoys critics, especially when translated into organisational terms of a workshop commerce that suppresses dissidents and refuses to read their literature. Without the complementary analytic abilities, the (presumed) holistic is a spastic problem of retarded psychology. Perhaps that is why the UN holistic experts cannot reply to detailed documents, have no answer about so many events unrecorded in FF literature, are unable to recognise drawbacks in exploitive therapies and propaganda tactics, and see no incongruity in the new age mix of ecology and aberrations.
The UN should be promoting purist ecology of an advanced kind, not the "holistic" mutation which takes pride in sloganism. e.g., planetary transformation and unconditional love, presumptions which can so easily be disproved (and have been so in literature shunned by "conflict resolution," another pseudo-holistic deception of the FF). Ecobiz and pseudo-spirituality are a bad marriage. The offspring will be at a disadvantage accordingly.
To assist you in sorting out the priorities in this letter, please allow me to formulate a few questions:
a) Why are the UN so evasive? Why is the departmentalism of your government also evasive? The abysmal indifference of the Scottish Executive and Moray Council tends to underline the bureaucratic deficiencies.
b) Why are the commercial operations of the Findhorn Foundation (FF) deemed worthy of NGO, CIFAL, and charity status? Their so-called "sustainable ecology" is the mask for a continuing educational havoc created by their commercial workshop system, which was largely based upon Esalen and not anything more sustainable. Complaints at FF workshop setbacks created a dissident factor that was severely repressed by the FF management, whose evasionism persists today. While dissidents have studied FF literature, the FF refuses to take account of dissident literature and other critical writings. They (the FF) are not a model NGO, but a non-democratic suppressor.
c) Why does the CIFAL project ignore the well known debt of the FF, and the circumstances of mismanagement which created that debt? Other aspects of mismanagement are known to the Financial Services Authority, who were in receipt of an analysis of FF accounting, the data revealing marked discrepancies during the decade before NGO status was secured by the FF (Pointed Observations, pp. 383–5). Should the FF be allowed to gain substantial donations from parties and persons in ignorance of behavioural shortfalls?
d) Should Moray Council cupidity and UN myopia in "holistic" matters be allowed to perpetuate the acute risks posed by practices and attitudes of the Grof movement? The latter is a multi-faceted psychedelic lobby and therapy racket. Holotropic Breathwork has meant income for Grof Transpersonal Training Inc., a commercial pursuit attended by misleading books published by a recklessly irresponsible university institution in America. The new age basically amounts to alternative sources of income acquired at the expense of the public and even the academic clientele, though the latter have less justification for sympathy.
The present writer requests due explanations and a due investigation of matters evaded.
Yours truly,
Kevin R. D. Shepherd
P.S. For the benefit of interested parties, I have been advised to get this letter reproduced on the internet, to ensure that the contents will not be stifled or otherwise eliminated from scrutiny. I do not myself use a computer. In view of the fact that you have a very busy schedule of commitments, I think it fair to allow the passage of one month from the time you receive this letter before my own is placed on the internet. Others have advised me to place my entry on a "Citizen Initiative" website. I do not wish to cause you any embarrassment. You will recognise that you are not the subject of this letter, only the addressee. As the original complaint was addressed to you, it seems fitting that a sequel should be written, in view of events occurring during the interim, and the failure of the Dept for Education and Skills to reply on your behalf.
LINKS
Findhorn Foundation Commercial Mysticism
The Findhorn Foundation: Problems
Kate Thomas and the Findhorn Foundation