The Findhorn GardenThis little booklet is the first presentation of a phenomenon that calls for investigation. At Easter 1968 I stayed with Peter Caddy, who lives with a small group of friends on the Caravan Site at Findhorn Bay in Moray. Their caravans are surrounded by a lovely garden. There were daffodils and narcissi as beautiful and large as I have ever seen, growing in beds crowded with other flowers. I was fed on the best vegetables I have ever tasted. A young chestnut eight feet high stood as a central feature, bursting with astonishing power and vigour. Fruit tress of all sorts were in blossom – in short, one of the most vigorous and productive of small gardens I have ever seen, with a quality of taste and colour unsurpassed. Many species of broad leaved trees and shrubs are planted and thriving, yet the caravan site is on the landward slope of windswept dunes. The soil is simply sand and gravel on which grows spiky grass. Exactly opposite them is Culbin Sands where after 50 years’ growing, conifers have rooted and held the dunes so that tough grass can now begin to root. Other folk on the caravan site, seeing the lovely burgeoning around their neighbours’ caravans, put in cabbages and daffodils which came up as miserable specimens. Caddy claims to have grown a 42lb cabbage!

He brings in straw and farmyard manure and makes compost. Some beds are liberally mulched and composted, though some seem to thrive with only a modest amount mixed into the dusty sandy soil. When I was there he was in process of planting 600 young beeches to make a hedge. Beeches simply do not grow on soil like this, nor any others of the many trees now thriving on the plot. Good basic organic husbandry is going on, but what at once struck me was that this was not an adequate explanation. Caddy began this garden in 1963, never having sown a seed in his life. The flower garden is less than a year old – the splendid show I saw is its first spring blooming.

I make no claim to be a gardener, but I a member of the Soil Association and interested in the organic methods and have seen enough to know that compost and straw mulch alone mixed with poor and sandy soil is not enough to account for the garden. There must be, I thought, a “Factor X” to be taken into consideration. What was it?

I pressed Caddy for his explanation. Here we have to take the plunge and what follows will appeal to some and be unacceptable to others. Caddy’s dedicated group are living a God-centred life. His wife, Elixir makes a daily contact at the highest spiritual level which brings very direct advice and teaching. Another colleague, Divina, is a sensitive who can also in fullest consciousness listen in thought to higher beings. When they were prompted to start gardening in this unpromising terrain they at once came up against difficulties through inexperience but conceived a novel way of getting help and advice. They knew of the world of the devas, who might be described as the architects of the plant forms and the elemental nature beings (sylphs, gnomes, undines of the fairy world) who are the craftsmen carrying out the divine laws of plant growth and form. So they decided to seek help and Divina quite simply, in meditation, asked the Pea Deva for advice. Immediately and clearly she got the answer in her thinking! They acted on it and went ahead asking direction in like manner from the devas of other plants. Then a being which they call “The Landscape Angel”, controlling the whole area, came into contact. The response of the devas comes to Divina in the form of perfectly clear thought and feeling impressions in her higher consciousness which she translates into words.

To disarm a possible criticism, may I here say that I well know that there are a number of advanced sensitives who are in direct touch with the devic world and working with it. Steiner knew all about it and founded his bio-dynamic methods on this knowledge and on his investigation of the etheric formative forces. The gardeners with green fingers are, of course, working unconsciously with the nature spirits through their sheer love of plants. What appears to be new at Findhorn is that here is a group of amateurs, starting gardening from scratch, using a direct mental contact with the devic world and in fullest consciousness basing their work on this co-operation. It is a complete partnership of the human and spiritual worlds.

Another friend of Caddy’s, closely in touch with the work there, is an older man whom they call Roc whose consciousness has opened to the elemental world. His ability to “talk” with these beings is therefore complementary to Divina’s deva contact and to Elixir’s contact with the High Divine Source. This group together, with Caddy himself doing and directing the practical work, makes a balanced team to demonstrate this co-operation in action. They have wonderful stories of their contacts with the elementals which are worth hearing! Suffice it to say that, when the goodwill of the nature spirits is won, they (the nature spirits) seem prepared to pour profusion into the garden. Thus bushels and bushels of blackcurrants came off the bushes last year when the crop largely failed in the rest of the country.

The ancients of course accepted the kingdom of nature spirits without question as fact of direct vision and experience. Celtic clairvoyants can still see the “little people”. With the development of modern intellectual consciousness this knowledge has dropped out of our thinking and is often written off as so much superstition. An alternative explanation is that the organs of perception of the super-sensible world have atrophied in modern man as part of the price to be paid for the evolving of the analytical scientific mind. The nature spirits may be just as real as they ever were, though not to be perceived except by those who can re-develop the faculty to see and experience them. Modern spiritual science shows that this is possible and that the conscious investigation of higher worlds is of the utmost importance in our understanding of life. Perhaps the phenomenon with which we are now concerned is simply one of many examples of a break-through from higher planes leading to the new possibilities of creative co-operation.

In Peter Caddy’s article mention is made of contacting Pan as Lord of the nature spirits. This may at first cause surprise to some. Yet if we can accept the general concept that these beings are part of an eternal and divine world, it will be seen as a right and natural development that their leader should again show himself in recognisable form to one who had developed faculties of perception.

Fortunately Caddy rejected the offer of a walled garden and had the initial hunch that he must continue on his sandy barren plot. No human interference or the use of chemicals had touched it. The experiment is in this way a valid one. Had he chosen the good garden, the results would simply have been put down to organic husbandry. Now they are beyond normal rational explanation.

As I see it, the implications are vast. This comes out in the comments from the deva world. The picture they give is that from their viewpoint the world situation is critical. The world of nature spirits is sick of the way man is treating the life forces. They (the devas and elementals) are working with God’s law in plant growth. Man is continually violating it. There is a real likelihood that they may even turn their back on man whom they sometimes consider to be a parasite on the earth. This could mean a withdrawal of life force from the plant forms, with obviously devastating results.

Yet their wish is to work in co-operation with man who has been given a divine task of tending the earth. For generations man has ignored them and even denied their existence. Now a group of men consciously invite them into their garden, as have the other rare individuals who, being adepts, are mostly working in secret. The delight in the deva world is apparently great. At last men have begun to wake up. Since the spiritual world is all one, a great living unity, the news shoots around instantly and the devas throng with joy to help.

They are literally demonstrating that the desert can blossom as the rose. They also show the astonishing pace at which this can be brought about. If this can be done so quickly at Findhorn, it can be done in the Sahara. If enough men could really begin to use this co-operation consciously, food could be grown in quantity on the most infertile areas.

There is virtually no limit if “Factor X” can be brought into play on top of our organic methods. Even if we blast part of the face of the planet, it can still be purified again – but only if we work with these directive life forces consciously.

The danger of that world turning against man can be averted if enough men turn to them with love and invoke help. Here is the simple method:
1. We acknowledge they exist and offer our love and thanks.
2. We invoke their aid in inner thought contact.
3. We listen, with alert attention (whether or not we can consciously receive an answer).
4. Again we give thanks with love from the heart.

It must follow from the nature of the higher planes that even if we cannot (yet) hear their answers clearly in our thinking, the nature spirits must be able to hear us when we think up to them beyond and within the outer forms of tree and plant. It is, furthermore, likely that with the coming changes in the consciousness and the raising of the vibratory note in matter which is foretold by so many, the world of the devas and nature spirits may open up to a great many more people who are inwardly prepared for a widening of conscious awareness. Then exciting and surprising things could begin to happen and a great step forward could be taken.

If Caddy’s group have done it, many others can do so too. It is not a question of more numbers but of finding sufficient centres which can invoke the flow. Then the power of the devic world could turn again to flow into the work.

They stress again and again in their messages that they are part of the great Unity of Divine Life. We must recognise the hierarchy under God and also that every separate deva is one with the Divine wholeness. This unity in diversity and diversity in unity is hard for us to grasp with our analytical minds. Imagination can apprehend the whole. Wherever we are, we can invoke our devas, who doubtless are instantly in touch with those on the same wavelength anywhere else. This means that many gardeners can link up for help with centres like Findhorn where the break-through is conscious.

The contact will not necessarily bring a scientific knowledge though this may follow. It will work in the immediate intuition of the gardener so that his hunches may guide him to the right, though perhaps unorthodox action. This is well demonstrated in Caddy’s case and many others who will acknowledge and love the nature spirits may, even if they are in no way sensitive, find that their gardens begin to grow and respond as never before and that they are led with surer intuition to do the right thing in planting and tending.

This simple process of pioneering the direct contact could be begun forthwith by anyone with goodwill towards the spirit. Any cynicism would be likely to cause the nature spirits to withdraw. If several groups and centres began in a conscious experiment, results and experience could be compared and a periodical bulletin circulated.

The phenomenon is so remarkable that it calls for open-minded and unprejudiced investigation. The challenge, I repeat, is that here something is happening which appears to be beyond normal methods of organic husbandry. It is, in the opinion of several experts who have visited Findhorn, simply not enough to write it off as the use of good compost. The quality of flowers and vegetables growing in the sand simply belies it and if anyone believes he can achieve these results by normal methods, let him try in the next sand dune. This would make an interesting experiment.

The possibility of co-operation with the devas should be investigated seriously. The time has come when this can be spoken of more openly. The phenomenon of a group of amateurs doing this forces it into our attention. Many people are now ready to understand and that enough should understand and act on it is possibly of critical importance in the present world situation

 

We thank the Findhorn Foundation for the permission to offer this document from their Archive on our website.