(Editor’s note: Stan wrote the following as a result of conversations/correspondence with two long-term guests staying at Cluny 2010/11.)

A great story, perfectly exampling Peter’s emphasis, via the title of his autobiography In Perfect Timing, how things happen in perfect timing when you’re trying to work with a higher will than your own personality level; when you are trying to do God’s will, etc. The background:

When Peter was fired (mainly because he didn’t turn around financially the other hotel in the company’s chain that he had been sent to do; and to boot, insisted on returning to Cluny – hence he got the boot) and they had to leave Cluny, he wondered what was going on. They had felt by then that Cluny had a lot to do with their spiritual work together, and so he asked Eileen to get some guidance on it. I haven’t read the specific guidance at that time, but it would have been along the lines of “All is very very well…pay attention to what is right in front of you…be in the moment…just keep listening to My voice, my child” – i.e., continue to follow ‘the still small voice within’. So they did; and the Garden story unfolded, and their work in co-creation with Nature. But in the intervening years – from when they packed up everything and left Cluny, in November of 1962 – Peter would occasionally ask Eileen to get some guidance about Cluny. At one point she received: “You will return to Cluny soon.”

Well, thirteen years later, in 1975, the Community had grown to around 100 members, and they were beginning to get more guests, mostly by word of mouth; Eileen’s first book, God Spoke To Me, had been printed by the Foundation, but it only went to their mailing list of contacts. At that time the Public Relations person for some female guru visited the Community – Findhorn had begun to be known on the ‘new age’ circuit by then; young people coming by here before going on their merry hippy-trail way to India or Nepal, etc. – and asked to speak to the Core Group, the governing body that Peter had created to help him manage the place. The PR man told them that Paul Hawken’s book The Magic of Findhorn was going to be coming out in paperback that fall, “and you’re going to be inundated with guests who’ve never heard of you before. Where are you going to put them?” And Peter spoke up immediately: “Cluny! Of course!”

The connection was clear to him, although not so to the members of the Community, who had no such connection with the hotel that Peter, Eileen and Dorothy had formerly managed. Anyway, the next day he had the Foundation’s solicitor call the hotel chain management to see if they might possibly be interested in selling Cluny. As he told the story: “There was a pause at the end of the line, and the hotel chain’s representative then said, ‘Either you have a spy on our board of directors, or you’re psychic, because we just this morning decided to sell.’” What had happened was that over the years after the Caddys and Dorothy had left, Cluny had been losing money, until that year they were faced with new fire regulations for hotels that were going to force them to pour 25,000 more pounds into the building. It was a losing proposition; they made their decision; and ‘just then’ (a running theme in the story of this place) someone called them up inquiring about possible purchase. They were ready to give it away, to anyone willing to take it off their hands. For a building (and business) that, if a major hotel chain had wanted it for their stable – for its prime location, etc. etc. – was worth £1.5 Million (we had it evaluated, for dry rot, etc.), they were ready to sell for – are you ready for this? – £60,000.

It was a bargain. It was obvious to Peter that this was God’s will working out. But it wasn‘t so obvious to the Community, as I said. Some of the hesitancy had to do with the fact that included in the deal was that the Foundation would have to honor the contract the hotel chain management had already signed with a coach company to bring coach parties up here through the next season. These were people on holiday staying at the chain’s hotels as they toured England and Scotland and Wales. The Foundation would thus have to run it that summer season as a hotel. And part of the hesitancy had to do with many members’ concerns about what the purchase would do to the quality of community life that they had enjoyed up until then; splitting the Community up, with a good number of members having to move to Cluny, five miles away.

So, for some time the Community was split right down the middle; between those who said, “Peter is right; we need to grow, or perish” and those who said (in effect), “I didn’t come here to run a hotel. I came here because of the Garden,” and also those who felt it was too expensive a gamble.

To help the process, Peter would bus the members a few at a time over to Cluny to go up the Hill and meditate, and then walk the premises, for them to feel the place; realizing by then that he was now a part of a community, and couldn’t any longer just order things to be done. In the event, what happened was that Mommy and Daddy had to be away, for the Community to grow to a new stage of development: Peter and Eileen were off in Europe at some event or other, when the hotel chain called the Community and said, ‘We need to hear today if you’re going to accept our offer. We’ve had another offer, but we will honor the one we made you, up to the end of the working day.’ Click. So the Core Group met all day – meditated and shared what they got, and then broke for tea, and then meditated and shared what they got, and broke for lunch, and then meditated and shared what they got…and finally ‘got’ to consensus; which means, in this community, if those who aren’t sure about a decision will at least be a ‘loyal minority’ – i.e., can have their reservations, but will not energetically block a decision. So they called the hotel chain management and said Yes, and then got hold of Peter and Eileen and told them, “We’ve bought Cluny.”

So Cluny was the first major decision by the Community for the Community. And it was symbolic of how Peter was beginning to release the reins – with Eileen having already had guidance no longer to get guidance for the Community; that it was now up to the members to tune in and cultivate their own connection with ‘the still small voice within’. A voice that had also said to Eileen once, back when Peter was inquiring about Cluny: “Cluny will go down and down and down until it hits bottom.” Which is precisely what had happened. And needed to happen, for the Community to be able to afford to buy it.

As to that point: Our bank was willing to loan us the money for the purchase, because by then the Foundation had proved that it could pay its bills. Which also had to happen; for things to be ‘in perfect timing’.

And to note the rightness of it all: That summer was in fact the beginning of larger numbers of guests coming to visit, because of ‘the power of One’ – the power, in this case, of one book: The Magic of Findhorn.

And Cluny paid for itself within seven years.

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References

In Perfect Timing, with Jeremy Slocombe & Renata Caddy, FPress, 1996.
The Magic of Findhorn, Paul Hawken, Fontana, 1975/1988.