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(Extracts from ‘If it’s Right for One it’s Right All Round’ a lecture in the ‘Foundations of Findhorn’ series given on 28th April 1975, and an Early Foundation Study Paper. Other than PC himself, the participants are Vance Martin, Roger Doudna, François Duquesne, Billy Sargeant, Caroline Shaw, Gordon Cutler, Marlene Guppy and Mary Inglis.)

Vance: How clear was the vision to you when you started? I had the impression somehow that the vision wasn’t clear and you were just following more or less the day-to-day guidance.

Peter: That’s true. But our vision really was to do God’s will. That was very clear. We were really on that rock-like foundation, but we didn’t know where that was going to lead us. Then we were given the vision step by step. We knew quite clearly that we were being led to do something, but we knew not what. The purpose is revealed step by step, but it’s an inner prompting that needs to motivate a person to a certain place and be guided to start a group, and at that time probably without knowing its full purpose.

At one stage of the garden, putting the beech hedge around, I wanted to know where we would go from there. But all I was told in guidance was that the next step wouldn’t be given to me until I’d finished off that portion of the garden. So the physical vision was only given bit by bit.

Roger: Did that keep you from crystallising the vision; in other words, from getting too locked into your own personal view of the growth?

Peter: Yes. Also I don’t think we could have understood it at the time. Supposing we had been told right at the beginning what the Community was going to develop into? We wouldn’t have believed it. We’d have said, “Impossible”. So one is just given a bit at a time; and that leads on to the importance of living in the moment, in the now. Not thinking all about the past or the future but living in the now; taking one step at a time and finishing off to perfection one job at a time. You can only do that if you are just given a little bit at a time and are willing to be led intuitively from one stage of growth to the next.

François: Doesn’t that illustrate the principle that until something is finished the energies are more or less blocked, because if they haven’t been anchored, no more can come through?

Peter: I’ll give you an example of that. When we were building the extension to the community centre, the roof went on in about a week but as the months went by it was the finishing off that took the time. The six coats of polyurethane on 17 tables and 34 benches took an awful long time, and it was dragging on and getting slower and slower, and people wanted to get on with other things. There was the season starting for the theatre, and the performing arts group wanted to start in the theatre, but we had no theatre. There was only a tumbled-down old shop with a broken floor, partitions, a toilet, etc. Then Eileen had guidance that we were to complete the community centre before doing the theatre. So there was a whole new surge of energy, a whole concentration to get that dining room finished, and it was finished ten days before we were to put on our first production. And that theatre was completed in those ten days, again by a full concentration and a full flow of energy into the theatre. So one thing at a time, fully concentrating and focusing on it.

Billy: Do you think that is an error that can often be made – trying to do too much at once?

Peter: Yes I do. It is so easy to get dispersed, as many of you here know. A real secret of creating anything is concentration. Creation is concentration. To try and take on too many projects at once, you just dissipate your energies.

Also, it is vitally important to finish a job perfectly before moving on to the next one, because it is so difficult to go back. I’ve used the instance of when we put our first concrete patio down. We concreted between our caravan and the garage. I knew we had to put in a path around at the back, but we were feeling a bit tired and we thought “Well, we’ll finish that tomorrow”. It was six years later before we finally got around to doing that path at the back, because there was always something to be done the next day. So finish off today the jobs for today and don’t put them off until tomorrow. I’ve learned some hard lessons in that.

François: If someone has just acquired a house or whatever environment for a community, what should be their next step?

Peter: The first thing in taking over any building is to clean it from top to bottom. That clears out all the darkness, puts in vibrations of love and light. Clean and polish it. There is an occult reason for this, because the forces of darkness can always find a niche, find an anchor where there is dirt and disorder. So cleanliness and order are very important in starting any community. When the building has been thoroughly cleaned, then comes putting your own vibrations in with repairing it, making it perfect, repainting it.

Whatever is done in the new community should be done in a consciousness of love and of peace. If you are in disharmony or upset or negative, stop working. Find that inner centre so that the right vibrations are put into what you’re doing. It is those vibrations that set up a magnetic force field which draws people to you. You shouldn’t have to go out and ask people to come because if you create the vibrations, then those of like vibrations will be drawn to you without your having to do anything.

Caroline: You were trained in your lifetime. What of those starting up some place who may not have had that rigorous training? How far do you feel that those founding new centres should have been trained?

Peter: I think we had to have such a tough training because we were like a spearhead. Training in self discipline, faith, obedience to that inner prompting and being able to hear that still small voice within; being able to act on intuition; all these are gifts and qualities that need to be developed first of all.

I will give you just one example. The earliest spiritual training of Eileen and myself was given by my former wife, Sheena. She was a great soul, but pretty ruthless in her training methods. At one time Eileen, Sheena and I had dinner in a London restaurant, and we were having coffee. Halfway through my cup of coffee I had an inner prompting to go and see someone by the name of Jack. I finished my coffee, got up and said, “I had a prompting to go and see Jack.” And off I went.

But I missed him. I could not understand it. I came back and said, “I don’t know why, but I have just missed him. I had the prompting when I was halfway through my coffee.” Sheena turned on me, told me that this man had a revolver with him and had gone to commit suicide, because I, instead of following that inner prompting, had followed my lower nature and finished my coffee. This went on and on, and I got smaller and smaller. In fact he had not taken his life; but I had to believe that he had.

François: Can you say a little more about timing?

Peter: I think timing is one of the most difficult things to judge. You can know within that the project is right, but the timing might be premature because you can get it from higher levels of consciousness which are outside time. Timing is so vital to a community. It’s crucial in a community that people are in the right place at the right time.

Marlene: What sort of consequences are there when timing is wrong?

Peter: Well, when the timing is wrong – no, let’s say instead that when a thing is right, if it’s God’s will and guided from within for one person, then it’s right for everyone and it benefits everybody. If it’s right for one it’s right all around.

For instance. The studios were started by a group of seven people who had received their own guidance to come here. They were all skilled craftsmen and were all very keen to make a success of the new studios. In fact they were too keen, because it eventually became clear that many of the studio artists were putting their craft first and the Community second. They weren’t really participating in the Community as a whole. They weren’t coming to morning sanctuary, Saturday night sharings or anything. So the four of us responsible for the Community met with them one by one to see whether it was right that they stay or not. We’d been given guidance that those separating themselves from the whole would have to be gone by Christmas; so that new energies could flow into the Community then, and the Community would have to be in a state of wholeness before the energies could be released. In every case where we had to turn someone out of the nest, as it were, things worked out excellently for them once they learned to spread their wings and fly on their own. One couple started a large new pottery, and it gave them the experience and self-confidence they could never have got here within the sheltered environment of the foundation. Although they were not happy with our actions at first, their pottery became a daughter centre to ours and they now say they are grateful that they were asked to leave.

Gordon: What has been the Foundation’s relation to modern technology and all that?

Peter: I believe that a new age community should be a blend of co-operating with the nature forces and respecting the oneness of life, but at the same time realising that we are in a technological age, a scientific age, and in the bringing about of one world, modern means of communication, transport, etc. are vitally necessary. So use machines and modern equipment as long as you have control of them. They can free you for doing things that are more important.

Mary: Isn’t being aware of the devas and life of machines a way to use them properly?

Peter: Indeed yes. We were talking about that this afternoon, and discussing how man’s machinery must be seen as an extension of himself. Just look at Alan with that recording equipment sometime – it’s difficult to tell which is the recording equipment and which is Alan, he’s so wedded to it.

Billy: I’d like to ask how many people have tried to buy or take over the Community?

Peter: Hundreds. Not to buy the place but to take it over. The number of people who have said you are doing it all wrong, you should do it this way, you should do this, that or the other thing, is incredible. This is where you have to be so grounded in your foundations and how those foundations have to be really tested and proven solid so you know from within where you’re going and what your part is. Otherwise you’ll get blown about by everybody who comes and nothing will be achieved.

We’ve had, for example, the Sun Myung Moon people. Their representative from America came here saying that Sun Moon is the Avatar, he is the Christ, he is the Lord of the World and the Foundation has just been prepared for him to take over; and this representative was very upset because I didn’t quite see it in the same light. There have been any number thinking that the Community was just right for their particular path or their particular master, guru, teacher or whatever. That’s why sometimes I am rather immovable, because I’ve had to be rocklike – otherwise the hundreds of people who have come here with their own ideas would have found us an easy pushover.

François: Can you say something about private ownership here?

Peter: Well, I suppose different communities will have different approaches on that. Our approach has not been of a commune where there’s common ownership. There is common ownership of certain things here, but there’s also complete freedom for private ownership and private responsibility. I think this allows for the development of the individual’s sense of responsibility and custodianship.

Billy: What about people who say they don’t get guidance of any kind? Is some kind of guidance always necessary to start a community?

Peter: I think you need to have developed, if not clear inner direction, at least an openness to intuition. You must be able to intuitively follow inner promptings from your higher self, the God within. In other words, it is no good planning things out with the mind, thinking about starting a centre in such and such a place and planning it all out in that way. That just wouldn’t work. The only way is to let go and let God, as it were.