FROM SOIL TO SOUL:

The Start of the Educational Impulse at Findhorn
I have to admit that I was the originator of the educational impulse at Findhorn. I didn’t intend to turn the community into an educational centre, and in fact, others who came later did this. Looking at all that Findhorn offers 50 years later, they did it very well. But I was the seed from which it all sprang. Here’s how it happened.

Peter, David and ROC

So as not to interfere in any way with the community’s work. Education was definitely not at the top of Peter’s list of priorities!

When I came to Findhorn in the late summer of 1970, I had been holding classes and workshops and lecturing at conferences as a spiritual teacher back in the United States for six years. Teaching was what I did. But I didn’t come to Findhorn to be a teacher. I came, as most people do, because I’d heard the Findhorn story and wanted to see the famous garden for myself. I was not disappointed! The day I arrived, the garden and the community were in full bloom. I was greeted by a place radiating more powerful subtle energies, love and joy than any place I’d ever been before. I couldn’t help but feel that, like the characters in Brigadoon, I’d stumbled into some Scottish village that was not entirely of this world.

During my first week there, Peter and Eileen asked me to join the community as a co-director with Peter. I couldn’t say no. My own inner contacts had already told me that on my trip I’d find the place where I’d begin a new cycle of work. I knew

Orientation Group 1978

Findhorn was that place as soon as I arrived. I fully expected to work in the gardens; it came as a surprise when Peter said Eileen had had a vision three years earlier of my coming and that I would be his partner in administering the community. With no experience of gardening or administration, I was entering uncharted territory. As it turned out, I did very little administering. What Peter really wanted was a sounding board and a fourth person, in addition to Eileen, Dorothy, and ROC, to whom he could turn for guidance and contact with the inner worlds. I was happy to help however I could.

Very soon, Peter, realising my teaching experience, asked me to give lectures on the New Age and other topics to the community, the first person whom he’d ever allowed to do so. I suppose these lectures were the beginning of the educational impulse at Findhorn, though none of us saw them as such: this was where my skills lay, and Peter was happy to use those skills. The lectures were timed

Findhorn was a demonstration centre, Peter, rightly, emphasised this over and over. The community’s power lay in what people could see and touch and hear and taste. Findhorn’s ‘teaching’ was in its gardens, its buildings, its people, and the stories of manifestation, inner collaboration, and God’s guidance that wove them together into a living whole. There was neither time nor reason for classes or other educational endeavours.

Actually, another form of education had been going on at Findhorn long before I got there: Peter’s telling of the story of Findhorn to guests, visitors and new members. His miracle tales and stories of faith, trust in God, hard work, and attunement were powerful and dramatic; he was an excellent storyteller. As he often said, the proof of the pudding was all about the eating. One simply had to walk through the community to see the physical truth behind Peter’s stories.

Foundation Year Programme 2001

However, as the months passed and the community grew, doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling in size, there were too many people and Peter had too little time to continue this. He deputised the telling of the Story to others who would meet with the guests; some told it well, and some not so well. These people, such as an American named Jim Glines who told the Findhorn story every bit as well as Peter, were giving birth to an educational impulse.

The early community was fairly homogeneous, as well as small. Most members had more than a nodding acquaintance with what’s been called the Western Esoteric Tradition, of which the Rosicrucianism of Peter’s early background and training is a part. While Findhorn didn’t publicly espouse any single spiritual teaching or faith tradition, it was implicitly acknowledged that Western Esotericism was the community’s de facto cosmological foundation.

By 1972, if I remember correctly, Peter and I realised that most new members, the community numbered close to 150 people, had no knowledge of this tradition or its relationship to Findhorn’s work. We decided the time had come to hold classes in esoteric cosmology, to give the membership a better understanding of nature spirits, subtle energies, and so on. I remember Peter saying, “It’s time we moved from simply growing plants in the soil to growing souls in the community.” So I set about organising and teaching classes in the Park Building conservatory, which was being rented from Captain Gibson, the caravan park owner. We called this programme the Findhorn College.

Mindmapping exercise 2011

Education had arrived, but only in a limited way. The classes were held twice a week at most, in the evening and mostly during winter when it was too dark to work outside. Classes still could not interfere with the community’s actual work. Further, they were open only to members. This was my decision. I saw these classes as a form of training and not as programmes for the public. The classes were free. In fact, I remember that at first, Peter made it obligatory for everyone to come! But I changed that as there’s nothing worse than trying to teach something to people who don’t want to be there.

Because Peter wanted me to do other things with him, including travel, I couldn’t devote as much time to the classes as I would have liked. So the programme sputtered along until I left Findhorn in the spring of 1973. Others, such as Milenko Matanovic and Michael Lindfield, took over the programme, and under their leadership it began to grow and prosper. From there it was only a short step to make the programmes available to the public, eventually turning Findhorn into the educational centre it is today.

David Spangler