DISKUS Vol.3 No.2 (1995), pp.23-42

The Authority of the Self in New Age religiosity: the example of the Findhorn Community

Steven Sutcliffe
PhD candidate
Dept. of Religious Studies
The Open University
Milton Keynes
Bedfordshire, UK

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ABSTRACT
This paper locates the source of authority in New Age religiosity within the self. I argue that the possibility of religious authority being thusly construed was made possible by the confluence of key elements of Human Potential ideology with an established, but minority, New Age hermeneutic. I support my argument with fieldwork description and analysis of 'Experience Week', a residential workshop regularly offered by a major New Age centre, the Findhorn Foundation and Commmunity in Moray, Scotland. 
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Introduction

This paper pursues the source of ultimate authority in New Age religiosity. I illustrate my argument with an examination of both New Age literature and my own fieldwork material concerning a celebrated New Age centre, the extended Findhorn Foundation and Community on the North East Scottish coast near Inverness.

By 'religiosity', I have in mind a popular discourse the basic character of which is pragmatic and experiential, preferring an affective mode of expression to systematic discourse and, typically, 'spiritual' enthusiasm to 'theological' debate. While it may be an expression of individuals within well-established religions, it also incorporates the stance of the institutionally thinly-affiliated: those practioners of what's sometimes nebulously called 'popular' religion. In other words, New Age religiosity is a popular form of expression by no means confined within the formal boundaries of the New Age movement itself - although the very existence of 'boundaries' in this specific context may be a matter of dispute.


New Age apocalypticism and the 'cultic milieu'

As is widely acknowledged, 'New Age' is a complex term and it is often used in a somewhat cavalier manner by all interested parties to the debate. A few minutes' consideration of the hermeneutics of the term will set the scene for my later argument. Thus, until fairly recently, it tended to be used in a nominal form and with a literal interpretation. One spoke of 'the' New Age as a coming era, an eschatological event, glossed according to a millenarian astrology proclaiming the demise of the old, Piscean, age and imminence of the new, under the influence of the sign Aquarius.

In Anglo-American occult circles in the 1950s - one source of individuals subsequently active in the early days of the New Age movement - the concept of a 'New Age' was frequently expressed in apocalyptic terms. According to prominent emic ('insider') theorist David Spangler:

'The transition (into the new age)...would be accomplished by the destruction of the old civilization, either by natural causes such as earthquakes or floods, or by a great world war, or by social collapse of an economic or political nature...Those individuals whose consciousness could become attuned to...the qualities of the new culture would be protected in various ways...Guided by advanced beings, perhaps angels or spiritual masters or...emissaries from an extraterrestrial civilization...they would help to create a new civilization'  (Spangler 1984, pp.17-18)

Most of the ingredients that were to give the emerging movement its distinctive flavour are already in place in this description: millenialism, the significance of 'consciousness', a hierarchy of 'masters' or teachers, and the extraterrestrial/cosmological preoccupation. However, by the early 1970s the apocalyptic element - specifically the explicit millenialism - had become muted. An adjectival form 'new age' began to permeate through what - following Colin Campbell (1972) - we may term the contemporary  'cultic milieu', defined by him as:

'the sum of unorthodox and deviant belief-systems' (ibid., p.134) 'continually giving birth to new cults, absorbing the debris of the dead ones and creating new generations of cult-prone individuals to maintain the high levels of membership turnover'. (ibid pp.121-122)


The Human Potential Movement

The subtle but significant semantic shift in usage from 'The New Age' to 'New Age' (upper case) or even 'new age' (lower case), reflects wider influences permeating the cultic milieu from the late 1960s, in particular the various psychological and psychotherapeutic practices collectively known as the Human Potential Movement (HPM for short). An early commentator defines this as:

'a general consciousness-raising movement...(whose) members...seek to transcend the oppressiveness of culture by transforming themselves as individuals. They see that, if society is to realize its potential, they must first realize theirs' (Stone 1976 p.93). 

In other words, the focus of interest falls squarely on the transformational potentiality of the individual, with the correlative tendency towards the privatization of the category 'experience'.

It would seem that the immediate seeds of the HPM are to be found in post-World War Two North America; for example in Maine, where from 1946 the National Training Laboratories facilitated various courses on exploratory group interaction (Wibberley 1988,  p.62). Carl Rogers' person-centred therapy and Fritz Perls' gestalt therapy were among several other related developments of the 1950s. However, the key concept or tension inherent in the term 'human potential' can be most usefully traced in the history of ideas to the Romantic movement, and in particular to J.J. Rousseau's conception in 'Emile' (1762) of the struggle between an education  either for the 'human being' ( 'l'homme', an integrated organism) or 'state citizen' ('citoyen', a  rationalized individual in the Weberian sense). The HPM aligns itself firmly with the former project.

In particular, it has been argued that the HPM emerged from the union of humanistic psychology and the institution known as the 'personal growth centre' - a redolently American phenomenon, although arguably previsaged, as Heelas notes, in the establishment in 1922 of G.I.Gurdieff's 'Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man' near Paris (Heelas 1991, p.168; on Gurdieff, see Webb (1980) and Moore (1991) ). Nevertheless, Michael Murphy's Esalen Institute at Big Sur, California, was foremost among such centres post-World War Two: from about 1962 it hosted small groups of individuals experimenting with massage, encounter groups and meditation (Alexander 1992, pp.36-7 and p.41; for an anthropologist's ethnography of a residential encounter workshop at Esalen in the early 1970s, see Holloman 1974). 

Meanwhile, Abraham Maslow had co-founded the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1961. Its very first issue featured his leading article 'Health as Transcendence of Environment', the title of which nicely anticipated the prominence in 1990s popular culture of a rhetoric of  decontextualized self-realization as a precondition for the full emergence of a New Age 'planetary culture' (on such a culture, see for example readings in Bloom (ed) 1991, pp. 208-10 and 212-19). More modestly, the  first issue of the journal also included a list of 'human capacities and potentialities' said to be ripe for exploration, including:

'love, self, growth, organism...self-actualization, higher values, ego-transcendence...autonomy, identity, responsibility, psychological health' (quoted in Alexander 1992, p.41)

Clearly these are all terms largely pertaining to inter and intra-personal dynamics. They thus serve to magnify certain micro-levels of an individual's psychological and affective functioning. This is a significant point to keep in mind when we come to consider the interaction of the HPM with The New Age. 

This brief digression into the background of the HPM is important for two reasons. Firstly, we need to recognize its overwhelmingly ahistorical ideology: it is largely premised upon a rejection of historical determinism in favour of a rhetoric of limitless potentiality for the individual seeking a fortune - of whatever kind - in the fluid, migrant culture typical of C20th North America.

Secondly, and most pertinently, it is the HPM's focus on the self that timeously provides a new key for a stagnating New Age apocalypticism at the end of the 1960s.


New Age hermeneutics 

Let us now rejoin the story of the emerging New Age movement. In Britain at this time - the late 1960s - several individuals committed to a specific 'New Age' nexus within the cultic milieu were struggling with hermeneutical issues. For example, various international voices had apparently forecast the inauguration of a New Age by the end of 1967 but on Christmas Eve that year Eileen Caddy, a co-founder of the Findhorn Community and a pioneer of the British New Age movement, received the following divine message:

'The day many have waited for is over. The cosmic power released at that appointed moment, felt by you and many others, has begun to reverberate around the universe...Some may be disappointed because there was no outer manifestation. Nothing has gone wrong. It is simply that man has misinterpreted what has been prophesied'  (Caddy and Hollingshead 1988, p.122)

In other words, the New Age was here, despite the absence of sufficient eschatological evidence. Thus, important soteriological questions clearly required reassessment, not only for general metaphysical reasons, but more prosaically for the longer-term development of what was in sociological terms hardly a 'movement': at this time the Findhorn Community - a leading light in British New Age circles of the 1960s - consisted only of about a dozen adults. 

Of course, for those within a particular religious movement it is feasible and even quite natural to argue that self-evaluations postulating a high degree of spiritual potency and cosmological significance are inherently unrelated to, or even negatively correlated with, possession of those features deemed central to orthodox sociological assessment, in particular to questions of the numerical strength and sociogeographic profile of a religious movement. Such a position has been a feature of Twentieth Century occultism in general, from those who claimed that decisive events in World War Two had been influenced by specific occult practices, to Eileen Caddy's claim that the nascent caravan community on wasteground beside Findhorn bay was 'making telepathic connections...in a worldwide network of light (ibid. p.84) and in the process 'building a magnetic centre' (ibid, p.87). Such claims are not empirically testable according to any non-theological methodology. In any case, we do not need to seek an esoteric interpretation for the dramatic growth of the Findhorn community: an exoteric explanation is at hand, as I will show shortly. 

Nevertheless, the Findhorn Community makes an exemplary case study for a consideration of the turn in fortunes of the New Age phenomenon as a whole, for it reveals the reinvention of the movement in a nutshell. Thus, by 1995 the educational program alone of the Findhorn Foundation - the Trust forming the core of the wider Community - had an annual turnover of a million pounds (Brierley and Walker 1995, p. 32). Assets now include several acres of land, part of the original commercial caravan park and a variety of buildings, including a large former spa hotel and a purpose-built venue, the Universal Hall. The Foundation also has its own trading company operating, among other ventures, a publishers and a large bookshop-cum-wholefoods store. Several large houses in the vicinity belong to the wider Community, including a Rudolf Steiner school, and there are a number of small businesses in the surrounding area operated by associates.

The number of participants is difficult to state precisely,  partly because of the relatively high turnover of Foundation staff. A useful recent quantification is provided by resident historian Carol Riddell, who nevertheless cautions that:

'...people constantly come and go. Guests stay...from a week to several months. Student members stay for 18 months and staff members may live here for several years. There are always new faces...' (Riddell 1990, p.62)

Riddell notes that in 1989 there were 153 Foundation 'members' - 77 women, 49 men and 27 children (Riddell 1990, p.132) plus an indeterminate wider community of  friends, family and sympathisers. (A new fourfold typology has recently been deployed which provides a fresh categorization of the roles under which people participate in the Community: guest, student, employee and volunteer (Buhler-McAllister 1995, p.33). In 1995 the total is probably around 350 altogether.

Now clearly this is a far cry from the strength of the community at the end of the 1960s, when, according to one sociological study Findhorn had 'approx. 20 full-time residents, who have no intention, often because of age, of leaving' (Rigby and Turner 1972 p.82). Again, the exact numbers at any specific date are hard to corroborate, and of course such a high turnover rate amongst participants highlights a distinguishing characteristic of Campbell's 'cultic milieu'. Whatever the precise figure, a general trend emerged at Findhorn at the beginning of the 1970s that significantly transformed the status quo, as one of the authors of the above-mentioned study noted on revisiting the Community in 1972:

'I was able to recognize a few of the older members and some of the original caravans and bungalows, but very little else...The years 1969-72 had obviously brought about a tremendous growth and transformation of the venture' (Rigby 1974, pp.108-9).

Corroborating the change, Alex Walker records that '...by 1972 there were 120 (members), and by 1974 over 150, with 25 guests per week arriving in the summer months' (Walker (ed) 1994, p.59).

In other words, over a 3 year period at the beginning of the 1970s, the Findhorn Community grew perhaps as much as sixfold. What factors could have contributed to this remarkable expansion?


From 'The New Age' to 'New Age'

A major consideration was the visit in 1970 - and subsequent three-year residence - of North Americans David Spangler (b.1945) and Myrtle Glines, fresh from what Spangler describes as five years 'offering a lecturing and counselling service' to the 'new age subculture' in America (Spangler 1984, p.25). 

Spangler's status within the Findhorn pantheon is high. Carol Riddell describes him as 'the last of the Findhorn Community's founding figures' (Riddell 1990, p.78). All sources credit Spangler with inaugurating the educational programs with which the Foundation now identifies itself (see Walker (ed) 1994, p.58; Rigby 1974, p.114; Caddy and Hollingshead 1988, p.145 and p.165). During his residency at the community, in addition to teaching and lecturing, Spangler published three books (Riddell 1990, p.91) and several dozen pamphlets and papers that formed the basis of an emerging curriculum (see bibliography in Walker (ed) 1994, pp.406-12).

Of course, the provision of appropriate education is crucial to the health of any New Religious Movement that, like Findhorn, depends largely  upon the first-generation convert (see Barker 1989, pp.11-13; Chryssides 1994), although there are increasing numbers of children growing up in and around the community as long-term residents become parents and (more rarely) migrant families arrive. An affiliated school, the Moray Steiner School - run according to the Rudolf Steiner 'Waldorf' curriculum - has now been established to cater to this need. Pedagogical titles and programs have certainly proliferated in the post-Spangler period. Thus the Findhorn Foundation was registered under Scottish law as a 'Religious and Educational Trust' (Walker (ed) 1994, p.126); it is pictured elsewhere as a 'university of light' (ibid. p.132); and the former Cluny Hill Hotel became Cluny Hill College once acquired by the Foundation. In 1995 academic initiatives include a semester exchange programme with a North American Lutheran University (Findhorn Foundation Guest Programme October 1995, p.7), and the recently inaugurated 'Findhorn College of International Education', which is described as 'presenting academic programs in association with the Findhorn Community' (One Earth 19, back cover).

While Spangler developed educational initiatives, his colleague and partner Myrtle Glines gradually introduced into the community her own variation on humanistic psychology (described by Eileen Caddy as 'Personology, a personal and spiritual counselling technique' (Caddy and Hollingshead 1988, pp.143-4) ). Significantly, Spangler writes that both he and Glines were particularly concerned to challenge New Age apocalypticism, for this:

'shifted accountability away from individual persons and onto the back of vast impersonal forces, whether astrological, extraterrestrial or divine. It took away an individual's sense of....being involved in a process of conscious and participatory evolution' (Spangler 1984, p.28)

Spangler's revised 'New Age' can be seen as a restructuring compromise in which certain features are retained and others subtly reinterpreted. Thus 'channeling' remained a valid epistemology, although Spangler demystified the process: although he has 'channeled' messages from contacts and sources including the Christ, the Higher Self and St. Germain, his preferred source is known simply as 'John' (Spangler 1984, p.65-68). 'Channeling' has been defined by one scholar, who provides an excellent overview of the American phenomenon, as 'a process in which information is accessed and expressed by someone who is convinced that the source is not their ordinary consciousness' (Riordan 1992, p.105). In line with the egalitarian flavour of 'John', the earlier sociopolitical orthodoxy, which had privileged the role of an illuminated elite (principally Eileen and Peter Caddy) in the development of Community policy, was gradually coaxed towards the form and virtues of the group. Such incipient political liberalism greatly attracted a younger clientele to Findhorn, drawn increasingly, according to Andrew Rigby, from the 'international youth culture' (Rigby 1974, p.113). Indeed, following one analysis of the countercultural sources of the burgeoning membership of the typical New Religious Movement in 1970s North America, we might well speculate that the availability of increasing numbers of younger people for New Age and other alternative enterprises in Britain during the same period followed a similiar pattern (Tipton 1982). Certainly one self-described 'directory of spiritual groups and growth centres in Britain' supports the existence of a thriving contemporary New Age milieu by the early-to-mid-1970s (Annett 1976).

Riddell summarizes the turnaround in the fortunes of the Community as follows:

'By the time (David Spangler) left (1974), the Foundation was as large as it is now, had oriented itself towards spiritual education, and had a much more youthful personnel. Peter (Caddy)'s authority had been supplemented by a leadership group' (Riddell 1990, p.78)

In other words, a major hermeneutical shift followed the collapse of the original,  highly  literalist  eschatology, favouring instead a broader symbolic discourse that had the advantage of functioning with plausibility at several different levels simultaneously. Ideological uniformity gave way to multiplicity, orthodoxy to heteropraxy. Now the eschaton could be reinterpreted as an individual's psychoaffective crisis, and the millenium recast as the fruits of the self's metanoia, for example. A populist, diverse and resilient 'new age spirituality' emerged, in which the self withdrew from traditional religious institutional affiliation altogether whilst eclectically synthesising on an increasingly global scale the functional religious elements each biography required for its unique soteriological pilgrimage. One commentator insightfully described the emerging melting pot at Findhorn - where 'followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh worked next to followers of Madame Blavatsky... [and] British psychic healers sat in morning meditation with American PhDs in philosophy'  - as evidence of 'the plastic quality of New Age beliefs and the remarkable agility with which individuals are able to modify [them] and assign new meaning to their experiences' (Clark 1992, pp.100 and 104).

The hermeneutical shift at Findhorn is actually better conceptualised as a proliferation of New Age hermeneutical styles. It can be formulated in three main ways: 

1. Sociologically, as a liberalizing movement against the theocracy of the first decade, which was based largely on Eileen Caddy's daily divine guidance as operationalized by her husband Peter, towards an oligarchy with the establishment in 1973 of a 'Core Group' to provide a measure of group inspiration and strategy. In theory at least, democratization was to continue towards the ideal of complete individual exegesis.

2. Ideologically, as the growth of a rhetoric of interdependence, holism and synthesis

3. Theologically, as an increasing emphasis upon divine immanence over transcendence. 

Significantly, each of these three formulations serves to highlight the empowerment of the empirical human realm at Findhorn, at the expense of the valorizations of abstract consciousness and spiritual realms that dominated the decade preceding Spangler and Glines's arrival. Such an empowerment is directly traceable to the ideology and technology of the HPM, and I've indicated above some lines of the latter's dissemination. Crucially, in the process of negotiating a balance between neo-Platonic contemplation and more quotidian concerns - on which depended the homeostasis of such a diverse and rapidly-expanding community - an ideal methodological and epistemological unit of exploration and consolidation was precipitated, or perhaps more accurately, rediscovered: the self.


'Experience Week' at the Findhorn Community

Since the early 1980s, a synthesis of encounter group method and holistic ideology has provided the infrastructure for the Community's primary educational vehicle. Known as 'Experience Week', this residential week functions for visitors and potential employees as a required initiation into the Findhorn Weltanschauung, being a prerequisite for further formal involvement. Riddell writes of it:

'The Experience Week is just that, an experience of our life in microcosm. The guests represent Foundation members, and the time spent together represents the way we...discover how to get in touch with...the unconditional love that is humanity's real essence' (Riddell 1990 p.117)

Experience Week represents the institutionalization of the shift in community eschatology described above; from external revelation to internal transformation, from apocalyse to evolution, from transcendental god to immanental self. In short, from theology to psychology, without to within.

Its suitability as a case study is shown by its centrality in the Findhorn program, and its multitilingual availability. It will run fifteen times in English, twice in French, and once each in a Danish, Japanese, Spanish and Brazilian format in the seven months alone from October 1995 to April 1996 (Guest Programme p.10). In addition, its structure has remained remarkably consistent over the last 10 years, as earlier insiders' descriptions amply demonstrate (see, eg, Boice 1990, pp.60-77; Riddell 1990, pp.115-118). 

To conclude this paper, I'll indicate how 'Experience Week' functions to (re)locate the source of religious authority in the New Age movement, using notes from my participant-observation in/of a week in February 1995. My fieldwork role was negotiated both in advance with the Findhorn Foundation, and with the group itself at the first meeting. No-one is identified in the following account.

First, the structure of proceedings, which begin at the point of application to participate in an 'Experience Week'. The 'Guest Programme' indicates the requisite general attitude:

'We ask you to come with a willingness to meet others with love and respect, to share yourself openly and to participate fully' (Guest Programme, p.10).

The very process of application is presented as a relatively serious undertaking:

'When you book your Experience Week, please write a letter telling us about yourself, your spiritual background, if any, and why you want to visit. (Most people write between one or two pages)' (idem).

Applying in this way - composing a personal letter to an unknown institution, hoping to receive a letter of acceptance, waiting for it to arrive - creates a general atmosphere of expectation and begins a subtle process of institutional mythologization. It was also clear from the courteous and helpful reply I received that the contents of my letter had been fairly carefully read, although of course my declared research interests raise the possibility of 'fieldworker reactivity' in this connection.

The heightening of expectation is increased by factors such as the not inconsiderable travel schedules and consequent expense required for most participants simply to arrive at the Community. My journey was significantly shorter in mileage than other members of our group, although it took me four and a half hours to come by rail from central Scotland. Others  came from as far afield as South-West England, Manchester, London, Geneva and Berlin, by coach, train and aeroplane. In addition, and apart from obstacles of culture, mileage and geography there is language orientation to negotiate for many participants: the first language of 50% of our group was not English, although all were reasonably fluent in it. Finally, Experience Week can be considered a relatively  expensive investment. In 1995 participants are asked to pay on a sliding scale between UK225-335 pounds, all found. Accommodation and meals are of a comfortable standard, although rooms are generally shared. Bursaries are said to be available according to personal circumstance and application. 

The week itself runs intensively from Saturday afternoon to the following Friday evening. Apart from two free evenings and one free afternoon, the days are fully programmed. They included an early tour of the split site that constitutes Findhorn Community geography, which afforded further opportunities for implicit mythologization of the institution: for example, we saw the 'original caravan', in which the Caddys lived for several years from 1962; the Universal Hall, built over a period of years in the mid-1970s by the Community itself; a local hill said to be a 'power spot'; and the 'Nature Sanctuary', the siting of which had been inspired by 'one of the little people' (ie. a nature spirit ), according to our guide. There was also a 'nature outing' to a local beauty spot on the Findhorn river, and informal presentations on most evenings from various community members on themes such as 'Inner Life', 'Nature', 'Management Structures in the Community' and 'Personal and Planetary Transformation'.

There are three main educational elements in the week: the group of participants itself, work placements, and the principal Findhorn 'religious' practice, meditation. Each element, or mode of activity, is effectively strained through the exegetical filter of the self.

Our group consisted of fourteen - ten women and four men - and in general ethnogeographic terms might be described as 'white Euro-American'. The largest represented nationality was English (4), with Germany and America close behind (2 each), but Brazil, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Serbia were also represented. In terms of age, half of the group were in their thirties, while the youngest was 21 and the oldest 78. These ratios - of gender, nationality, and age - appear to be fairly typical of the composition both of Experience Week groups and of the wider Community itself. Two Foundation staff - a woman and a man - likewise in their thirties and of European provenance, facilitated the week. In Findhorn terminology, they were the group's 'focalisers'. It's worth considering here a lengthy but useful clarification of this term::

'We use the term to indicate that our leadership here is different from that of normal managers, directors and bosses. Fundamentally, focalisers have responsibility without authority over others in their working groups. They should be aware of the overall context of whatever is being done,... make sure people's states and situations are considered, stimulate effective group interaction and act as a link with other groups. Focalisers are also responsible for what we call 'holding the energy' - connecting with, and making sure others connect with, an inner, spiritual significance of situations, so that things can happen 'from the inside out'  (Riddell 1990, pp.97-98).

 We met as a group every day. Although attendance at every session was not declared compulsory, everybody was invariably present. Each session began with a ritual known as 'attunement', and invariably included a period of time devoted to 'sharing'. Some words about each of these core practices are in order, for they are central to the methodology of self-realization at Findhorn.

'Attunement' is a practice apparently borrowed in the mid-1960s from a British-based New Age group called the Universal Foundation (Walker 1994 p.136) which became closely associated with the fledgling community at this time (Caddy and Hollingshead 1988, p.113, p.127). Later the practice was clarified by David Spangler, amongst others. To attune, the group - either standing or sitting - holds hands in a circle with eyes closed, facing in. The ritual requires a special way of holding hands: the right hand is offered palm-up, the left palm-down. Whatever esoteric significance this may have, it serves the eminently practical function of facilitating a smooth, relatively fumble-free connection, since in theory at least, all palms are in the appropriate position. A few germane words are spoken by a focaliser and considered quietly for a few moments. Finally a 'squeeze' is passed by hand around the circle to close the ritual, the hands letting go once they have received and duly transmitted it. 

The aim of attunement is to gather and then focus group concentration and intention before a specific task, period of work, meeting or other event. In my work placement - on which more below - it was also customary to finish the morning's work by 'tuning out': this was in the nature of a 'debriefing', in which we were encouraged to reflect on the quality of the morning's work, and to 'let go' of it in affective and psychological terms in order to be receptive to the experiences of the afternoon.

'Sharing' is also a pervasive practice at Findhorn. At least half an hour was set aside at the beginning of each evening group gathering for individuals to speak more or less spontaneously about whatever they wished, so long as it was 'from the heart', as the popular expression has it. Sharing might occupy an hour or more of the evening session, and sometimes parts of afternoon gatherings, if people wanted to speak. In addition, the entire opening and closing sessions of the week were effectively given over to it. 

Sharing is by no means an emotional or intellectual free-for-all. Like other group practices that are now well established in the Community, it is a carefully structured form with highly normative expectations. Our focalisers specified three ground rules for 'sharing'. Firstly, we were to speak out of our own experience; secondly, we were to speak in the first person only, which was known as making an 'I' statement; lastly, we were not to interrupt - whether to agree, dispute or offer advice - when someone was speaking appropriately. A rare exception to the last rule could be a focaliser's challenge, on the basis of the second rule, to a contribution deemed to be overly discursive or abstract in content. Typically the challenge would take the form of the gentle question: 'Is that an 'I' statement you're making?'.

The cumulative effect of the groundrules was to discourage theoretical, speculative or merely 'idle' remarks. Instead, it was my general impression that the careful articulation of words on the part of the speaker, and genuinely close attention from individuals in the group, were behaviours that were quickly fostered. Consequently, contributions could acquire a pathos or dignity as one result of the combination of close listening and open 'body language' exchanged between speaker and listeners. Eye contact was encouraged. Tears, laughter and hugs often ensued as the week progressed. Such behaviour was watered by the pervasive Community climate that featured frequent physical contact and intense interpersonal conversations at most times of the day or evening.

Other activities the group engaged in included non-competitive games, featuring a tag game where you could only 'escape' by hugging someone else; international folk dances, known as 'Sacred Dance'; and four mornings apprenticed to a regular Foundation work department - gardening, kitchens, cleaning etc - thereby mingling with the wider resident community. 

These work placements allowed us to enter at least superficially into the day-to-day life of the wider Community. This is also advantageous from the Community's perspective, as without exception prospective students - ie. those who wish to serve a period of apprenticeship to the Foundation weltanschuaang - must begin their induction by participation in an Experience Week. Mixing with established employees, students and volunteers allows a variety of informal contacts to be made, which can strengthen the integration of new behavioural and cognitive norms. Thus, one of my group with whom I shared a work placement discovered a mutual interest in the subject of spiritual healing with a Foundation student of a few months' standing: at tea breaks they would pursue the topic together in their first language (German). Two other group members intended to enter interim programs at the end of Experience Week prior to longer-term commitment, and thus the work placements offered a foretaste of future occupational permutations. The focaliser of my own work department (I was on general cleaning duties in the Community Centre) encouraged me to polish the table tops 'with special love', for this would bring out the 'spark of divinity' within them. In this connection it's worth noting a popular aphorism in the Community - 'Work is love in action', an efficient synthesis of the neo-Platonic (ideology) and the pragmatic (methodology). At the same time we were enjoined to enjoy the work, and spontaneous conversation, joking and taped music - popular jazz and classical music - were typical punctuation to otherwise fairly menial tasks.

The work placements also confirmed that the intensity of interpersonal contact remains generally high in the Community at large, and is not simply an exaggerated distillate of Experience Week. However, an ethos of 'enthusiasm' seemed particularly redolent of certain strata of the Community, typically new employees, the recently-arrived, or shorter-term students, all tending to be younger people in general, although there were of course exceptions to the rule. Other strata, especially long-term residents and families, appeared to maintain - at least superficially - a quieter, less demonstrative and altogether more private profile, although similiar cautions regarding generalities apply.

Earlier I identified three principal elements or modes of activity built into the structure of the week, and so far we have looked at the first two; the group itself and, more briefly, the ideology of work. The third mode is meditation, and some remarks on this are now in order.

Individual meditation and participation in Community group meditations outwith the formal curriculum of Experience Week were both encouraged throughout our stay, while guided visualizations were used during several of our group sessions. Most of the group at least occasionally and sometimes regularly participated in the daily Community meditation routine. This consisted of morning and noon silent sessions, the format of which ran as follows. People arrived up to ten minutes before the start of each session, which took place in a special room known as the Sanctuary. This noun's definite article is in fact negotiable: typical usage prefers expressions such as 'Sanctuary begins at 8.35am' or 'Are you going to Sanctuary?'. At one site ('the Park') the Sanctuary is a purpose built wooden chalet; at the other ('Cluny'), it is a large room converted for the purpose. Footwear and coats are removed in a vestibule area, where silence already prevails, and people take their places in the Sanctuary proper as they choose, most in comfortable armless chairs, some on meditation cushions akin to large hassocks. Both rooms are plainly decorated: one has a weaving of an abstract sunrise hanging on a wall, and net-curtained windows; the other is high-ceilinged, with several green plants in a large bay window and an illuminated stained glass panel on the opposite wall picturing the roots and branches of a flourishing tree. Each room contain about eighty chairs and a dozen cushions arranged in a circle around the centrepiece, a low table displaying a large candle in the middle of a flower arrangement (somewhat incongruously perhaps, given the Community's aesthetic of nature, these were high-quality artificial displays). The twenty minute session is usually preceded by a few words or perhaps extracts from texts such as Eileen Caddy's 'Opening Doors Within' (Caddy 1987) or the channeled volume 'A Course in Miracles' (Foundation for Inner Peace 1975), read by a volunteer on a rota system. This volunteer will have switched on a red light outside the Sanctuary door before taking up her/his introduction: this warns latecomers that a group meditation has begun, and a sign asks that no-one should then enter. Equally, the understanding is that no-one will leave the meditation before the end without good reason. Finally a metal bowl is struck, which gives a low, reverberating note, dwindling into the silence. It will be struck again to conclude the session, at which point most people make their way out, although some linger on in meditation, or read extracts from the Eileen Caddy book mentioned above, which is structured as a perennial diary.

I participated in the group meditations on several occasions, and on no occasion was the Sanctuary more than about half-full at most. Both rooms are always available for individual use, and it was common to see two or three pairs of shoes in each vestibule at almost any given time. Atmosphere and behaviour at the Sanctuaries was uniformly grave, in marked contrast to deportment elsewhere: interpersonal contact - including facial expressions - was generally avoided.


'Experience Week' examined: the authority of self-realization

Such is an overview of the main elements of the week. What do they accomplish? What is the aim of the week?

The key motif binding Experience Week together is the notion of one's personal soteriological quest. Through a skilfully-executed process of re-education and peer-group confirmation, a resolution was offered to the kind of diffuse existential anxiety, anomie or rootlessness often articulated by members of our group and typified in Berger et al.'s 1974 account of the 'homeless mind'. The resolution on offer is structured along the following lines. Firstly, the pursuit of meaning, significance or ultimacy - the salvific quest, however precisely conceptualized - must be prised from its familiar sociocultural context and relocated within the orbit of the 'sacred'; in other words, it is effectively desecularized. Secondly, this resacralized quest is reoriented to the quest for the divine, which is accomplished via what might be termed a reflexive methodology in the broad tradition of Greek (and later) mystery religions, epitomised by the inscription on the temple of Apollo at Delphi: "Know thyself". Thus the interior world is posited as the ultimate source of the phenomenal world. My self holds the key to the core of this resacralised cosmos, which is in Findhorn terminology the 'god within'. The quest for existential authenticity becomes a quest for a self at home in the world and at one with god: the manifestation or realization of a 'true' self beyond the vagaries of time and place. The bones of such a soteriology are sketched in guidance of  Eileen Caddy's:

"You are absolutely free
 To choose your own path.
 Therefore seek and follow it
 And in the end you will reach your goal:
 Your self-realization of Me
 The divinity within you"    (Caddy 1977, p.40)

'Self-realization', then, is the aim of Experience Week and the unique source of authority in Findhornian religiosity. Leaving aside the (most interesting) question of the nature and qualities of  such a realised 'self', we may more modestly ask here: how do the mechanisms of the week - the three elements discussed above - encourage such a realization?

The three group ground rules establish what in general terms we might call a 'methodology of the self' that is eminently practicable and accessible - important features for a soteriological movement cutting across traditionally-conceived geographical and educational boundaries. Thus, by speaking only from one's own experience, and in the first person, the field of reference to what is - the world in a wider, 'objective' sense - is effectively restricted to what the self's 'radar screen' is able to pick up. Only what is registered within this field can be known with authority, and consequently allowed 'reality' - a 'reality' that is hence always contingent upon the self. This makes for a satisfying congruence between an unruly world and an ordering self, since disorder remains always convenient: a cosmos made contingent upon the self can never outstrip the self's ability to transform and transmute it when necessary. Many at Findhorn - and elsewhere in the New Age movement - claim that such an epistemology encourages one to take responsibility for what one says and does, through the vigilance and depth with which one monitors one's immediate surroundings and interactions. Thus in a 'successful' methodological application, it is claimed that when negative psychological states and destructive behaviours are recognized for what they are, they may subsequently be transformed through the agency of a holistic self waxing in wisdom and a sense of deep connection to its wider context or 'host', the world. The transformation of the latter is then seen only to be possible, or even conceptualizable, by measure of self-transformation, and the transformation of this 'self' likewise only through the ultimate connection - to the source, the 'god within'.

Peter Clarke's general remarks on New Religious Movements are apposite here:

'Realizing and perfecting the self consists of  being the cause of all one does, of determining events rather than being determined by them, of exchanging one's status of slave to events and circumstances for that of master of all that happens. It consists of becoming a creator' (Clarke 1991, p.151)

Such a methodology appears to yield a conception of 'reality' effectively circumscribed by the 'reach' of personal intention, action and influence, in which the notion of 'objectivity' becomes ideological anathema, to be replaced by an idealized subjectivity. The idea of sharing a view of the world becomes problematic: instead, the interdependency of any number of worldviews becomes the norm, underscoring the Smutsian holism implicit in Findhorn metaphysics (see Smuts (1926) ).

The sum is an ambiguous methodology. On superficial acquaintance at least it appears to be individually empowering, in that it redirects attention progressively nearer to the source of personal consciousness, thus clarifying the latter's mechanisms and subsequently emphasising - at least theoretically - their inherent refinability, indeed, perfectibility, as agents of a self reconceptualised as the paramount creative agency. This is to discover an existential theosophy nascent within the methodology.

Alternatively, it might be a solipsistic position. Certainly the various ground rules operative in the group setting encouraged a sense of a series of monologues by, rather than an exchange of dialogue amongst, participants. However, it is important to remember the unique inductive role that Experience Week plays in the regulation of formal relationships with the wider society, and in particular with those curious enough about the Community to wish to visit. One of its initiatic functions is thus as an idealised typification of social interactions at Findhorn and consequently it stimulates novices' enthusiasm along these lines. Thus it implicitly encouraged the kind of behavioural exaggeration that may not be typical of the developed or 'mature' social norm in the Community, as I've already noted above. Further research is clearly required in this area. Nevertheless, autarky - the self-sufficiency of the individual - appears to be an implicitly plausible conclusion. Through both participant-observation and formal questionnaire data collected during Experience Week and on other occasions, I would venture the observation that a typical behavioural model at the Community might usefully be described as 'psychosomatic empowerment', manifesting as an existential sense of 'subjective' self waxing or inflating as a corresponding sense of 'objective' world wanes or deflates, until self and world become effectively co-extensive.

The Experience Week groundrules also implicitly discourage any form of critical enquiry. Such an approach is generally considered to be the destructive functioning of an ego experienced as separate or apart from the world. In its place acceptance or non-interference is the norm. Sharp edges are further softened by the encouragement of elusive affective processes such as intuition, empathy, compassion and contemplation. Tears were consistently valorised as an 'opening of the heart', conferring existential authenticity on the shedder. They appeared to be a desirable initiation for participants, an empirical sign of 'inner' activity, symbolic of trust in the overall process. Their role in the week was underscored by an early example: in a quietly charismatic evening session called 'The Inner Life', a long-term community member choked back tears while reading the celebrated final section from T.S Eliot's poem 'Little Gidding'.


Conclusion

This account necessarily oversimplifies what is in reality a non-systematic and hence highly-resilient theology (cf. Clark's notion of the 'plastic quality of new age beliefs', quoted above), broadly based on a rhetoric of 'epistemological individualism' (on this, see Wallis 1984, p.100) manifested via a methodology of personal serial experimentation. While the possibility of 'heresy' is not an obviously viable issue in New Age religiosity, nevertheless criteria can be identified that serve to mark boundaries - however permeable -  beyond which the contemporary New Age hermeneutic only atypically ventures. In other words, certain themes, ideas and patterns in both  content and method are already recurring in the movement's short history. Central to these elements is a theology of self, indicated in the very first words of guidance Eileen Caddy recorded, in 1953: 'Be still and know that I am God' (Caddy 1988, p.28). The ontological ambiguity of such a radically decontextualised exegesis lies at the heart of the New Age construal of religious authority and it is arguably a major factor in its diffuse appeal across the Euro-American religious spectrum of the late Twentieth Century.

The general shift of authority encouraged by Experience Week - from the ratiocinative to the emotive, from the cerebral to the somatic, from the systematic to the pragmatic, from the differentiated to the holistic - reflects the historical shift of attention in the Findhorn Community in particular, and the New Age movement in general, away from spiritual hierarchies, extraterrestrial councils and a transcendent divinity, and, in line with the preferences of the Human Potential Movement, towards the psychological and microcosmic mysteries of the human organism. This self contains the hermeneutic key. The New Age gives way to, simply, 'New Age'; eschatological event to inner process and - most usefully from the movement's point of view - relative obscurity to popularity.

The self said to be precipitated in the soteriological process is no antinomian self, however, but a theological construct routinized through a schedule of principles and practices skilfully introduced to our Experience Week group in the course of just one intensive week. The nature and qualities of this intensely subjective and thoroughly interiorized self-identity - sometimes termed the 'Higher Self' - and its precise relationship to the 'god within', have been beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, I have sought to indicate exactly how and why a methodology of self-realization might work. In this connection, Paul Heelas's remarks on the concern of what he terms the 'self-religions' with 'socializing the subjective' usefully place Experience Week - considered now as just one example of sophisticated  New Age methodology - in a wider perspective:

'The self-religions have developed techniques which locate or construe the subjective in such a fashion as to...make this realm predictable, secure, liveable and, in a nutshell, social (p.70)... based on the premise of the autonomous individual who has to be organised or structured to be fulfilled or explored (p.81)' (Heelas 1982)

But while the group as wider context or host is central to the structuring and hence significance of what appears to be, in effect, ultimately a privatised experience, its authority remains always contingent upon, and therefore secondary to, that of the individual. For whilst powerfully idealized, 'the group' in fact functions as a means to an end, as a subordinate device to gather, affirm and disseminate an elective aggregate of selves.  

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Note:
A version of this paper was first given at the British Association for the Study of Religions annual conference at the University of Wolverhampton, England, in September 1995.

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