When we arrived, we discovered that across the bay, the last remaining portions of Britain’s only desert were finally being conquered and planted by a system involving the cross-hatching of branches to protect seedling trees. That desert itself had been wealthy agricultural land until some few hundred years ago. Legend has it that, overnight, due to gales brought about as a punishment to a laird who had sold his soul to the devil, hundreds of acres of rich farm land and many dwellings were silted over[1]. Today the Culbin Desert has become the Culbin Forest.

The reality of our own situation was more like a desert. The five Caddys filled the two tiny rooms of the trailer and I, thanks to the kindness of a hotel owner in the village, was allowed to sleep a mile or so away in the hotel staff quarters, which were closed for the winter. Each day I hiked across the dunes to spend the day with the Caddys. An extremely severe winter, well below freezing for six consecutive weeks—which incidentally froze every trailer water pipe in the park—made it necessary for me to go back to my room in the late afternoon just to turn on my electric underblanket. Otherwise it would have taken me hours to warm up and sleep in the unheated room. Despite the nuisance of an extra trip before spending the evenings with the Caddys, those hikes, following the countless animal and human trails winding among the hillocks and dunes, were for me the highlight of that period.

It was a strange situation for all us three mature and active people more or less hanging around together for no known reason. We had no jobs, having tried to get them without success. This in itself was strange, since Peter and I were both qualified and had never before had any difficulty finding employment. Despite the fact that we had gone through hells and bits of heaven together, we certainly did not stay together there for any personal reasons. At first we felt sure that we would be spending just the winter there and would return to the hotel when it re-opened at Easter. It was only the reassurance of our inner guidance that kept us in the situation.

The first few months we spent repairing the caravan. Following Sheena’s training to do everything with love, to the glory of God, and as perfectly as possible, we sanded every unevenness from the surfaces of the trailer inside and out, and achieved impeccable results. After all, there was no lack of time to pressure us into botched jobs. A mobile library supplied us with books. I read autobiographies and murder stories. Peter, who had always had a wish to start his own garden but had very little opportunity for practical gardening, mainly read gardening books. We were isolated from everyone and everything, our only contacts with the outside world being a trip to nearby Forres when Peter and I collected our weekly unemployment benefits. Although we kept in touch with what was happening in the world through television and newscasts, our vital interest was in changing human consciousness, which the news rarely mentioned. In any case, changing consciousness was an individual task; we were getting on with it as best we could.

Our continuing inner work had different focuses at different times. In the early Findhorn days, and with another like-minded friend, Lena, who joined us in the spring[2], we spent a great deal of time telepathically contacting the Network of Light. Briefly, this network was like a communication grid on subtle levels, covering the world in triangular patterns. The ‘stations’, usually manned by a group of spiritually dedicated people, existed in most countries throughout the world. This network had been charted by an American friend of ours [Naomi Stephens] through telepathy, and we ourselves linked with it telepathically, sometimes receiving from these groups, sometimes broadcasting to them, and always linking the whole together in love. We also had telepathic communication with beings known in certain esoteric circles as the Masters of the Seven Rays. Basically, these Masters are highly developed humans who have accepted responsibility to aid humanity. Focusing on these beings as I knew them, I would get on their wavelengths, there being a distinctly different energy feel about each one. I was developing the faculty to attune to and distinguish subtle vibrations.

Easter came and Peter had received no offer to resume the management of the hotel. Since it seemed that we were stuck there for another year, I ordered an annex from local builders for my accommodation. To supplement our food supply and to fulfil his wish to have a garden next to the trailer, Peter began to cultivate a small patch of ground, six by eleven feet, on which he grew a quick crop of radishes and lettuce. More time passed without jobs materialising, while he continued the cultivation of more ground around the trailer. This was no easy task on sand dunes in which only gorse and coarse grass grew. Underneath there were fine crops of pebbles very suitable for soakaways, but not for gardens. Peter cut off the top layer, then Eileen and I, occasionally helped by the boys, picked out the pebbles for about a foot down. Then Peter laid the top turf in the hole, upside down, and we shovelled the sand back, mixing in any bits of available compost. Then Peter planted vegetables, or sowed seeds. The many gardening books he read were a mixed blessing, with one book suggesting one method and the next advocating a different procedure — and none of them written for garden vegetables in sand dunes in northern Scotland. Our days began to centre around the garden, and we pursued our gardening with the same kind of care and perfection that we had learned to put into everything. It was hard physical work, often dreary, but being outdoors made it enjoyable to me.

In one of my meditations early in May I received an interesting, new directive from within:

To those who have an insight into life, everything has meaning. For example, there is a spiritual meaning behind the constant blowing of the wind, in spite of any unpleasant results it may bring
The forces of Nature are something to be felt into, to be reached out to…. One of the jobs for you as my free child is to sense the Nature forces such as the wind, to perceive its essence and purpose for me, and to be positive and harmonise with that essence. It will not be as difficult as you immediately imagine because the beings of the forces … will be glad to feel a friendly power. All forces are to be felt into, even the sun, the moon, the sea, the trees, the very grass. All are part of my life. All is one life.

I thoroughly approved of this suggestion, thinking it would be a good excuse for time spent on walks or lying in the sun. I have always felt best alone in Nature. To me, lying in the sun with as much skin exposed as possible is not only a sensual delight but almost a spiritual experience. I feel blissfully spaced out, as if absorbing some sort of wholeness, and not even exposure to the tropical sun in Panama cured me of the feeling. But when I showed this guidance to Peter, he took it to mean that I was to feel into the forces of Nature to give him information about the garden. Next morning I received:

Yes, you can co-operate in the garden. Begin by thinking about the nature spirits, the higher overlighting nature spirits, and tune into them. That will be so unusual as to draw their interest here. They will be overjoyed to find some members of the human race eager for their help. This is the first step.
By the higher nature spirits I mean the spirits of differing physical forms such as clouds, rain, vegetables. The smaller individual nature spirits are under their jurisdiction. In the new world to come these realms will be open to humans— or I should say, humans will be open to them. Just be open and seek into the glorious realms of Nature with sympathy and understanding, knowing that these beings are of the Light, willing to help but suspicious of humans and on the lookout for the false. Keep with me and they will not find it, and you will all build towards the new.

I was left with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I felt totally incapable; how could I attune to beings about which I knew nothing? These seemed to be neither the fairies of children’s literature nor the creatures of myth. Anyway, I was afraid that I might be under some illusion. I stalled, yet I knew from experience that I couldn’t forever disregard an inner directive. While I was filled with all these disbeliefs and questions, Peter had none at all. His background in positive thinking trained him to admit no doubts. He had his faith affirmed by following Eileen’s guidance for years, and he immediately accepted all guidance from us in complete faith. Peter, all action himself, expected the same of us. When I told him I couldn’t do what my guidance had suggested, he simply replied, in his usual supportive, though forceful manner: ‘Nonsense, of course you can.’ This too probably put me off, since I have always responded better to requests than to commands.

With a sincere desire to increase our own firmness in action, Peter had, in fact, shared with Eileen, Lena and me a series of lectures that had been part of his training. Included in these was the exercise of repeating the phrase ‘I am Power.’ I had considerable trouble with this exercise at first, because I don’t like the thought of power with its implications of force. I would not repeat the phrase, although I had no compunction about repeating, ‘I am Love.’ Then, on analysing myself, I concluded that the word ‘power’ was not the culprit, but the word ‘I’. I had been thinking of the limited human personality called Dorothy as the ‘I’, as the power, instead of the unlimited God-essence of Dorothy. When I changed my identification, I could happily repeat that phrase. I was going through this series again, and on repeating ‘I am Power’ one day, some weeks after the earlier guidance to contact the forces of Nature, I slipped into a stream of power. I became so identified with power that I felt I could do anything, even attune to the essence of the spirits behind Nature, as had been requested of me, for I as God-essence could be one with the essence of any part of creation. Vegetables had been mentioned in my guidance, and as Peter was interested in receiving guidance related to the garden, I decided to choose the garden pea, since it was growing in our garden and I had known it since childhood. I had a clear sense of what the plant was in terms of its colour, shape, flower and taste, and moreover I loved eating peas. Drawing on my familiarity with and fondness for peas, I imagined and focused on their essence, or inner spirit. The response was surprisingly immediate:

I can speak to you human. I am entirely directed by my work, which is set out and moulded and which I merely bring to fruition, yet you have come straight to my awareness. My work is clear before me: to bring the force fields into manifestation regardless of obstacles, of which there are many on this man-infested world . . . While the vegetable kingdom holds no grudge against those it feeds, man takes what he can as a matter of course, giving no thanks, which makes us strangely hostile.
What I would tell you is that as we forge ahead, never deviating from our course for one moment’s thought, feeling or action, so could you. Humans generally don’t seem to know where they are going, or why. If they did, what powerhouses they would be! If they were on a straight course, how we could co-operate with them! I have put my meaning across and bid you farewell.

Although unclear as to what it would mean, co-operation with the spirits of Nature was an acceptable idea, since to me co-operation was and is the way to relate. When I showed the typed message to Peter, he composed a list of questions for me to ask the spirits of the various vegetables, since he had been facing a number of challenges.

Thus began a day-by-day unfoldment in communication with the forces behind Nature. Peter, of course, would try to find a reason for a plant’s malfunction himself, but when he found none or did not know what to do, he would give me questions. Then I would attune to the spirit of the particular vegetable for the answer. Having done it once, I couldn’t use the excuse that it was an impossible feat. In fact I now realise that my own or anyone else’s belief in our limitation is the greatest block to achievement. So circumstances, using Peter as their able instrument, kept forcing me to turn to the Nature forces. For instance, we had two sowings of dwarf beans; the first lot didn’t come up, while the second lot seemed promising. The spirit essence of dwarf beans told me that the first lot had been sown too deeply and before the soil had sufficient nutrition, but that the other was fine and was being worked on by them. The spinach sprouted so well that Peter asked if it was too thick. I received:

If you want strong natural growth of the leaf, the plants will have to be wider apart than they are at the moment By leaving them as they are, you will get overall as much bulk in the leaves, perhaps a little tenderer but with not as strong a life force. I, of course, like to see plants given full scope, but the choice is up to you.

Even at this early stage, no laws were laid down and human freedom of choice was integral to the co-operation. Whatever we asked, I received an answer of some sort, sometimes merely ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and sometimes an explanation. For example, we were told, on request, when to water each plant, where to put in new ones, which needed liquid manure, etc. For the first couple of years, until we became familiar with this unfamiliar view of garden growth, Peter had frequent questions. However, he acted at once on suggestions given. Otherwise, I believe, the co-operation would not have continued.

As to who these Nature beings were, I quickly realised that each was not the spirit of the individual plant but was the ‘overlighting’ being of the species. I discovered that the being behind the garden pea held in its consciousness the archetypal design of all pea plants throughout the world, and looked after their welfare. Obviously such beings must function in more than our three dimensions, but my previous telepathic contact had made this concept familiar. A slight acquaintance with Theosophical literature, together with my inner promptings and the tremendous purity, joy and praise which these beings emanated, led me to conclude that they were some type of angel. As the word angel had a very restricted and stereotyped image in my mind, contrary to the impression of lightness, freedom and formlessness given by these beings, I decided, generally, to call them ‘devas’, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘shining one’. The word was no doubt often used in India, but it was not hackneyed or conventional to my mind.

The Pea Deva was the first to come into my awareness. The second which my inner guidance suggested I should contact was a being overlighting that particular geographical area. I called it the Landscape Angel. I was told it would answer general questions concerning the soil at first, and later it would act as envoy for the whole angelic world. The Landscape Angel was very keen on compost, indicating that man had to play his part in this co-operation and that we couldn’t expect them to do all the work, especially to grow vegetables in unnourishing sand. This Angel gave fairly detailed instructions on compost making, when to turn the compost, whether it should be mixed with the soil or laid on top as a mulch. Imperceptibly, the Landscape Angel gave us a more holistic approach to the garden, helping us to see it as part of the larger environment. We began to see the soil as part of a living organism and the plants as links with their environment, a focus of energy integrated and interacting with its surroundings. As my inner guidance said:

As you read and try to understand that book (Agriculture, by Rudolf Steiner), you come across what are called cosmic influences on the Earth emanating from the various planets. Think of that planet as a living Being, and also as the forces being relayed by Beings and being received by Beings. There is no such thing as dead matter. Everything is living and everything has a place in my one life; and that life force is more than what you call magnetism. It is an influence consciously wielded on the higher levels. You are simply surrounded by life; you are a life force moving among other life forces. As you recognise this and open up to them, you draw near to them and become one with them, and work with them in my purposes.

The Landscape Angel said that since Peter, through me, had voiced the need for the ingredients necessary to make the soil live, he would be shown these ingredients as we did not have the money to buy them. Indeed he was: grass cuttings from the trailer park; soot from an ancient dump used by local chimney-sweeps; seaweed from the shore; and horse manure that we collected with buckets and spades from a field, to the puzzlement of both horses and passers-by. Once we obtained a bio-dynamic preparation for compost. All of us, including the children, went through the ritual of mixing it in a big vat, going round and round giving it the prescribed number of turns. It was fun and hard work; in fact this whole period was healthy, hard work for us all.”

From ‘To Hear the Angels Sing’, pages 44-52.

 

[1]See Sinclair Ross in Paper 9 reading list for a more accurate description of these events.
[2]In fact there are several early references in the archives to Lena arriving with her three children before the end of November 1962. In any case, it is a mistake to think of this period as involving “Peter, Eileen and Dorothy and the three children.” There were in fact four adults and six children for virtually the entire time.