Transitions. Recently Peter Caddy has been giving workshops on “Balancing Our Masculine and Feminine Energy” (read creative and receptive, doing and being energies). It’s an unlikely topic for a man who always seemed the model of strong masculine leadership, who served 16 years as an officer in the Royal Air Force and later founded the well-known Findhorn community in Scotland. With a strong hand he reared Findhorn from an overgrown rubbish heap to one of the most successful independent communities of our time — a thriving “planetary village” and spiritual center, with a population of more than 300.
I hadn’t planned on arranging an interview with him; there seemed little point in just rehashing Findhorn’s fabled accomplishments (remember those stories of 40-pound cabbages grown in otherwise barren soil, roses blooming in winter, and other experiments in cooperation with divine guidance, Pan, and the nature spirits?) I remembered descriptions of him in The Magic of Findhorn as being rather straight, stern and stuffy. But what I saw dismantled my expectations. In a clipped British accent, Caddy, now 66, discussed the patterns of his life since leaving Findhorn in 1980, and the masculine-feminine balance he has learned to strike within himself. The words are easy and growing cliched, but Caddy’s manner bespoke the change. He still carries a presence of firm authority but it is tempered by very real gentleness and ease. His stories were fascinating; the changes hadn’t come easily.
In 1962, after five years of managing an elegant hotel, Caddy founded Findhorn with the help of Dorothy McLean and his wife at that time, Eileen. As he describes it, he and Eileen were a perfect pair. He was the builder, forceful and determined, while she was more sensitive and receptive, confirming with her inner guidance the plans that Peter would bulldoze through. Between them they found a balance that proved incredibly effective for more than a decade, as Findhorn grew toward self-sufficiency. But no balance is static and theirs began to show signs of strain. As resident educator David Spangler (interviewed in THE SUN, Issue 83) told him, things were changing. Findhorn was now well on its feet and didn’t need Peter’s brand of strong leadership anymore. He had to learn to be softer, and Eileen in turn had to learn to stand more on her own.
This comment proved prophetic, but there was one thing they hadn’t counted on. As they began to nurture these neglected parts of themselves, their relationship stopped working. Peter, long accustomed to his rigorous lifestyle, resisted slowing down but soon he had no choice. He was hospitalized for a gall bladder operation and the complications left him flat on his back for months. The doctors told him that if he didn’t change his pace his heart would probably give out. It was change, or die. He returned to Findhorn and found that his marriage to Eileen was over. They called a special Findhorn family meeting and announced that Ma and Pa were leaving.
Peter moved to the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he spent two years “just learning to be.” While there, he met Paula, a California woman barely half his age with whom he struck up a romance, or to phrase it more appropriately, a partnership. You see, Peter Caddy is not a romantic. He bases his actions more on practical logic and a sense of divine economy than on his feelings. For him this relationship was no exception. He just saw that it was needed and acted appropriately.
But relationships are always exceptions, and when, in the midst of their deepening commitment, Paula fell in love with a younger man, Peter got a taste of some deep emotions — fear, jealousy, anger, resentment — that he had never before acknowledged in himself. He looks back on that period now with the same enlightened detachment with which he views the rest of his life, but living through it left its mark. After assorted other trials, they did eventually get married and, leaving Maui, moved to Mount Shasta, California. There Paula gave birth to a son, Daniel.
For Peter and Eileen the reversal was complete. While he spent his time quite contentedly taking care of the baby and cleaning house, she was on tour, speaking before thousands of people in India. Of course, just as he was getting used to his new way of life, he found that its contours were changing again. When we spoke last month in my small Berkeley room he had the sparkle in his eye of a new project. He’s back in the familiar role of establishing a spiritual center, at Mount Shasta, in a more truly equal partnership with Paula. Beginning this summer their group, called Gathering Of The Way, is offering an extensive program of experiential workshops led by many well-known spiritual teachers, psychologists, philosophers, scientists and healers. (For information write Gathering Of The Way, P.O. Box 659, Mt. Shasta, California, 96067.)
He still seemed a bit straight, stern and stuffy (and quite British) but there was a lightness and good humor about him, a feeling of a man at peace with himself and his work.
Over dinner we swapped stories. In the middle of a light conversation I happened to mention a strong intuitive feeling I once had about somehow getting involved in radio work. Peter put down his fork and looked at me sternly. “Why don’t you follow your intuition,” he intoned sharply, “and find out about it?” (Next month an interview with Michael Toms of New Dimensions Radio.)
— Howard Jay Rubin
SUN: What was the initial vision of Findhorn — its first focus — beyond the large cabbages and all.
CADDY: Findhorn developed from a family, into a group, into a community, and is now a village, an ashram, a spiritual community. It’s a university of light, a mystery school — it’s a mystery how it works as it does. People who are drawn to Findhorn by its light seem to go through just the very experience they need. It’s certainly a graveyard of egos. It’s also a place of synthesis bringing together people of all ages from 25 or 30 different countries, different spiritual paths, backgrounds, classes, cultures, races, to consider all aspects of life — politics, religion, the arts, science, holistic health, economics. It’s a center of demonstration where the spirit is brought down into form, blended with matter — materializing spirit and spiritualizing matter. Findhorn is a myth that gives people hope that they can live together in love.
SUN: What are the biggest challenges Findhorn has faced? Things that are always beautiful usually are myths.
CADDY: I wouldn’t say that. They can still be beautiful although there are challenges. Findhorn faces a blending of the American and British culture. For example, we always used to dine at seven o’clock, having washed and changed, with the girls in long dresses, flowers on the table, candlelight. As the American influence came in, that changed; people were coming in after their work at five o’clock or half-past, without having washed or changed, and eating their meal cafeteria style in a way which rather horrified me. But I thought, well, I have to learn about this. It caused conflict because some people wanted to go back to the old way of doing things and others wanted simply to get through with eating, to get on with the evening’s activities. As everything needs to be a blending, a compromise with love and understanding, we finally agreed on a take-out dinner between six and six-thirty — take it to your own home and eat it as you like — followed by a served dinner from half-past six to seven for which people were expected to have washed and changed.
It is resistance that causes the pain; the less we resist the changes that are upon us, the less painful it will be. Earthquakes and holocausts need not happen on the physical level; they’re already happening in people’s lives on the mental and emotional levels.
SUN: You have referred to Findhorn as a research center. Are there any tentative conclusions you can pull from the research?
CADDY: I suppose it’s research on living together. We’ve found that the best way for a community to work is to give groups of people responsibility for different areas of decision in the community — who should join, where people should work, and so on. That will only work when there is love and trust.
There is other research as well. Some of the experiments in the Findhorn Garden School, for example, are concerned with bringing together a cooperation with nature found in traditional methods of Scottish gardening with appropriate technology and modern scientific developments. Again, it’s a process of synthesis. There are experiments managing a cold and windy climate by growing crops in plastic tunnels and using sacking against black paper which catches the sun. Water drips down the sacking and then runs through tubes to heat the water. This method is now being used in Canada.
SUN: You’ve been working for a long time to help link up centers and individuals to form what you call a network of light. What does this work mean to you?
CADDY: I first heard about the network of light in 1953 when I was an officer in the Royal Air Force. I had a wonderful job allowing me to go anywhere in the world, top priority, as the spirit moved me. I was led to the Philippine Islands on my way to Japan where I met a woman in her 60’s, Naomi, who eventually came to Findhorn. She was a sensitive and together with her group had linked up telepathically with about 370 other groups from all over the world — centers of light — forming a network of light around the planet. We were told that, in the future, my work and Eileen’s work would be to link physically with many of these centers. So, for the last eight years at Findhorn I have spent about half my time touring, visiting other communities, groups, movements all over the world and helping to link them up. There are lines of light linking centers of light which form a network of light. They are linked by computer, by people visiting, through an exchange of magazines and literature and letters, as well as telepathically.
SUN: What is the importance of such centers and the links between them?
CADDY: We’re going through a time of transition, a time of change, a time of crisis. But that’s good. The Chinese word for crisis means “opportunity to change.” There need to be points of stability, of strength, to provide inspiration and education and help to the surrounding countryside, points all around the world in every country.
SUN: How do you view the much-abused term “new age”? Do you see it as a feast or a famine?
CADDY: Every 2000 years there is a new age. We’re moving from the Piscean age to the Aquarian age. This is causing a certain amount of turmoil as the energy we’ve drawn from the old world is falling apart; that makes news, that’s what we read about, see on television, read in the newspapers, hear on the radio. But we don’t hear so much about the new world, the new age that’s emerging full of life, vitality, and energy — people building the world they choose. This is what I see happening all over the world. I can move from center to center, from group to group, and not become involved in the old world at all.
SUN: But can one really separate from the old world or is the way of change to integrate the two?
CADDY: I think it’s a matter of consciousness. As Marilyn Ferguson says in her book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, many people in all walks of life, in all professions, are going through changes as these new energies come in and they are a bit embarrassed about it. They keep quiet. But then they find others in their profession, whether it’s medicine, government, or science, and they link up, forming groups and networks which bring about change.
This is the most exciting time that has ever been on this planet — we can either destroy ourselves or move into a new, wonderful, golden age. There have been many prophets of doom, gloom, destruction, earthquakes, California slipping into the sea and they’ve done a good job of wakening us to what can happen if we go on as we are, if we don’t change. It’s being put to us — change or die. And I believe that humanity is changing. When a mother is going to give birth to a child, it’s so important that her thoughts be loving, positive, beautiful, and directed towards that baby because they affect its growth. Collectively, we are giving birth to a new age and it’s important that our thoughts be loving and positive so it’s a beautiful baby. It is resistance that causes the pain; the less we resist the changes that are upon us, the less painful it will be. Earthquakes and holocausts need not happen on the physical level; they’re already happening in people’s lives on the mental and emotional levels. Almost everyone is going through changes, particularly in relationships.
SUN: Do you read the newspaper?
CADDY: Yes.
SUN: What thoughts do you have about what’s going on?
CADDY: You don’t get truth when you read newspapers. It’s not what is really happening but all the turmoil of a dying age. I believe that we create our future by our thoughts which is why it’s so important that they be positive and creative.
SUN: What do you mean by a positive thought? When I hear “positive thought” I think of a negative thought.
CADDY: If you always see the positive you draw the positive to you. If you think negatively you draw the negative to you. That’s the danger of negative prophecy: it can become self-fulfilling. When people think negatively, when they prepare for destruction, they help to bring about the worst. That needs to be changed.
SUN: That kind of positive thought sounds like one of the keynotes in the laws of manifestation.
CADDY: Absolutely. It’s the keynote in creating anything: to be positive and bring about the best, to see the perfect and bring about the perfect.
SUN: What is the step between the seeing and the bringing about?
CADDY: Action. God helps those that help themselves.
We can take the easy way — following the still, small voice. Or hearing that loud voice of the personality, we can choose the hard way, banging our heads against many brick walls. We have the choice of which way to go.
SUN: What is your view of political work? Is it all a politics of self-change, of consciousness? Do you see a use for working in the world politically?
CADDY: Unfortunately, politics is the last to be affected. Any country gets the government it deserves; there won’t be a change in politics until there is a change in people, the people who elect the politicians. Now, thank heavens, Barbara Marx Hubbard wants to run for vice-president within the Democratic Party on the platform of creating a positive future. She won’t be elected but that’s what she’s going for with a lot of new age support.
SUN: In working with Findhorn and looking at other communities, what do you find keeps them together and what pulls them apart? Are there any general things you find that help communities stay together, any ingredients that are needed?
CADDY: Love is what keeps a couple together and also a community — the bond of love always balanced with light and discipline. You need the two, a balancing of the energies of light and love. I think many communities fail in the early stages, particularly in the United States, due to a lack of leadership. Leadership is half a dirty word these days and people want to do everything by consensus right from the start. That does not work in my experience. Leadership is needed to begin and then gradually it can be handed over to groups and group process.
SUN: Did your own role as a leader in Findhorn change from an initial strong, authoritarian stance?
CADDY: Oh yes. It needed very strong leadership in the beginning, sometimes even bulldozing of opposition. We were right on the spearhead, a place which meets a lot of opposition. When you know full well that something is right, that it’s in the divine plan, you need to be quite impervious to criticism and opposition and just go for it. I couldn’t have done that without the confirmation and support of Eileen’s inner guidance.
SUN: So the leadership of Findhorn was the outwardness of your leadership and the inwardness of hers.
CADDY: That’s right. It was separated out; I had masculine energies and Eileen had feminine. It was a balance of light and love, of mind and heart, intellect and intuition, action and being, left side and right side of the brain. We complemented each other, together making a whole. That was needed to start Findhorn. But then, in 1972, David Spangler said to me one day that I had over many lifetimes developed the qualities of leadership, of faith, of will, of strength — certainly necessities to start Findhorn. But now it had been started, was beginning to grow up, and didn’t need that sort of leadership any longer. It needed a much more feminine drawing out of people and I needed to develop the feminine part of myself. It was a bit hard to be told that after so long a time developing those masculine qualities.
I went into the hospital just after that to have my gallbladder out, thinking I’d be in about ten days. Everything seemed to go wrong; I was out flat on my back for a month. Eileen would come in and say that all was very, very well. David said that all was going according to plan, that I was flat on my back for that month so I could be still with nothing to stop the development of the feminine side of myself. And those changes did start within me.
SUN: What precipitated your leaving Findhorn?
CADDY: It wasn’t sudden. I went back from the hospital full of will and purpose, saying to myself I must be more loving. Of course, you don’t do it that way; you have to invoke love and it is a gradual process. But we found that as Eileen developed her masculine side and I developed my feminine side our relationship didn’t work. It was just difficult though we really tried. Four years ago, in June, I called a special meeting of the community and told them that I thought they were growing up, becoming adult, and moving into their eighteenth year it was time they stood on their own feet and became responsible for themselves. I was leaving. I told them Eileen and I were separating for us each to assume our own spiritual growth — Eileen to develop the masculine side of herself and me more of the feminine. I went to Maui, a very feminine, loving place and it was there that I learned to slow down. I’d been overdoing it for too long and was warned if I didn’t slow down I wouldn’t remain on this planet. Like humanity today I was told to change or die. With that sword of Damocles hanging over me I learned to go more slowly, be more sensitive, to be laid back.
SUN: There must have been some grinding of gears at first.
CADDY: Yes. I’d drive fast, walk fast, do everything fast. I eventually learned to balance my action side.
SUN: Did you learn it alone?
CADDY: No. I had gone to Maui with another partner, Shari Jae, who was very right-brained and of the heart. We knew when we came together that it was for a limited time — to help me go through these changes — and at the end of that time our relationship would change. We had been together in Maui for a year and a half when we went back to Findhorn for a conference. I shared with the community what had been happening to me and somebody asked how I had changed. It’s very difficult to say yourself how you’ve changed and I asked Shari Jae, who was sitting in the front row, to come out and tell them. She gave a demonstration of how I used to walk and how I was now walking.
On the way back to Maui, it was made clear to me that Shari Jae and I wouldn’t be working together, that the time had come for another change. She’d given up everything to be with me and needed to reestablish her job and home. So that door was closed. It also became clear to me that Maui wasn’t to be my home in the future, nor was Findhorn, nor Australia, nor New Zealand.
I went to the Institute of Conscious Evolution to do a number of workshops. Susan Campbell, the director, asked me to do one on masculine/feminine balance because this was what I’d been going through in my life. I didn’t particularly want to do it but she insisted. At that seminar there was a tall girl who answered a question — an awkward question — very clearly but with a lot of love. I thought, there’s somebody who balances light and love. I didn’t see her again until several months later at a networking conference at Mount Shasta. She had just arrived at Mount Shasta to live. I was on a lecture tour, giving out a lot every evening, and unable to sleep at night. Somebody offered to buy me a bottle of brandy so I could go to sleep. This tall girl, Paula, was sitting there and said I didn’t need booze, I needed love. She stood up and put her arms around me right in the middle of the dining room and I thought, she has got a balance of love and action. I didn’t see her again during this stay at Mount Shasta but sometime later had a letter in Maui from her enclosing two checks made out to me that had been in a book she’d bought. I wrote back and said I’d be in San Francisco for two days and it happened that she was sent down on business those two days. So we met. We went to a place to have a meditation and then continued it where I was staying. I don’t get things in meditation; I get them when I’m in the bath or when I least expect it. When I asked her if she got anything in meditation, she described a being which appeared to her in a vision and told her that I was to be the father of her children. Other things happened in that meditation confirming for me that what she said was right although I didn’t know what it meant. And I didn’t know how we were going to engage the material half, going around the world and so on.
SUN: But you did get together again?
CADDY: Yes, at Mount Shasta. Paula hired a tent so we could spend the time on the mountain. Instead, it rained all day and we stayed in the house and had a very deep sharing, deeper than with anybody else. Over a candlelight dinner, an inner voice said I should ask her to marry me. I told myself, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not getting married again. I’m not marrying somebody less than half my age whom I don’t know and don’t love. But this voice went on and on and finally I always have to obey it. I asked her to marry me. And she said, “Oh, I thought you were never going to ask me.” She knew all along.
SUN: What’s happening now at Mount Shasta?
CADDY: First, Paula and I had to begin our relationship together. Fortunately on the soul level we were really one in our objectives and purpose because on the personality level there was much to balance. She felt I was much too feminine after my time on Maui and I felt she was much too masculine. A typical British person and officer in the Royal Air Force for fifteen years now married to a very strong girl from Texas and California. The difference in cultures was quite a challenge.
Then there was the birth of Daniel who is now just over six months old. It started off as an underwater birth and ended up as a Cesarean in the hospital. I looked after Paula when she came home. I did the shopping, the cooking, the washing up, the housework, the laundry, the changing of diapers, looking after Daniel, looking after the puppy, answering the doorbell, answering the telephone — and sometimes all these things happened at once. I really understood what it felt like to change roles and it was an important thing for me to experience.
When that was done, as if it wasn’t enough, I thought I was at Mount Shasta just to create a family and a center from which to tour. But it became clear that we were there to establish a center, a place of synthesis where spiritual leaders in different disciplines — politics, religion, the arts, science, psychology, holistic health, business — would come to experience the energy field of Mount Shasta, a place that has long been known as a center of spiritual power. Stewart Mineral Springs was recognized as a place of healing by the Indians, established as a spa in the nineteenth century, and allowed to fall into disrepair. It’s kept its natural charm but is equipped with mineral baths, sauna, and jacuzzi. In addition to the workshops held throughout the week, we also have a weekend North American Indian purification sweat. I think it’s important to bring together the native American Indians, the native peoples who are the true guardians of this planet. We have much to learn from them; they understand Mother Earth.
SUN: What is happening with your masculine/feminine balance at this point?
CADDY: I think I was too feminine in Maui. But now, starting a center, my qualities of will, action, and strength are needed and have balanced the more feminine sensitivity, drawing out of other people, and love.
SUN: What are your feelings about the women’s movement in this country?
CADDY: The pendulum always swings too far as it has now. At the same time, many of the men have grown too laid back and feminine — they’ve gone too far as well — and need to become more balanced, more masculine.
SUN: Robert Bly, in an interview in New Age called “What Men Really Want,” spoke of finding a deep masculinity and described men as having rejected a shallow masculinity and grown too feminine.
CADDY: I agree. Many men on the west coast of America have grown too feminine just as certain California women have grown much too masculine. They both need to get back to a greater balance.
I feel that the Piscean age, our present pattern of civilization, has emerged from the cradle of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic seaboard and has been very masculine, scientific, left-brained, and action-oriented. To balance that, future patterns of civilization will emerge from the Pacific basin, west of the Andes, west of the Rockies, Australia, New Zealand, parts of the Far East, Hawaii and will be much more loving, intuitive, of the heart, right-brained. This is a needed balance. Women and the feminine principles are moving out into what has been a man’s world — into business, politics, medicine. These moving feminine energies are causing a lot of confusion in people’s eyes, confusion in relationships and in the world as we learn to adjust to them.
SUN: What do you see as the relationship between romantic love and spiritual love?
CADDY: Any relationship I’ve had has always been guided by the spirit, guided from a higher level. It’s come from the spirit to the mind to the emotions and lastly to the physical. Maybe I’m unusual. I don’t think I’ve had a romantic relationship; it’s always been for a spiritual purpose. Eileen complained that there wasn’t any romance in our relationship. For me the whole thing was God-guided; there didn’t seem to be any time for romance.
SUN: Guidance doesn’t exclude romance, does it?
CADDY: I suppse not (laughs). I don’t know.
SUN: How do you understand the relation between our own free will and the guidance of a higher will?
CADDY: I think our souls, our higher selves, have chosen our path, chosen our appearance, chosen the lessons that will come on this earth plane to work. We’re given various opportunities and we have the free will to follow or not to follow that inner guidance, that inner direction that knows the opportunities. We can take the easy way — following the still, small voice. Or hearing that loud voice of the personality, we can choose the hard way, banging our heads against many brick walls. We have the choice of which way to go.
SUN: What are your views on raising children? What is important?
CADDY: A balance between love and discipline. The ABC of the spiritual path is discipline and obedience and if you haven’t learned that when you’re young it’s very difficult when you’re older. It’s no good hearing an inner voice if you don’t obey it, if you lack the self-discipline needed to follow it. At the same time, children need a lot of love to show them that it’s safe.
SUN: Are there any particular ways you open yourself up to hearing that inner voice?
CADDY: I don’t think I really hear a voice like Eileen does. I just have an inner knowing, when I respect it, and I have learned to follow that intuitive flash. At the end of the war, Eileen and I were having dinner in a London restaurant. Halfway through my cup of coffee I had an inner flash, an inner intuition to go visit somebody called Jack. At my leisure I finished my cup of coffee and then said, “I’m off to see Jack.” He lived nearby but I just missed him, by seconds. I couldn’t understand it because I’m usually on time. I came back and shared what had happened. Someone turned to me and said Jack had a revolver with him and had gone to commit suicide. I had thought more about my comfort and finishing my cup of coffee than following that inner prompting to save this man’s life. He didn’t actually commit suicide but I believed he had. I learned this lesson once and for all.
Some years later, just out of the Royal Air Force, I was again with Eileen in a small cafe in Oban, a town off the west coast of Scotland. Halfway through my cup of tea I had an inner prompting to go see somebody on the south coast, about a hundred and fifty miles away. All I had in my pocket was a shilling, just five cents. To the mind it was ridiculous but I didn’t listen to my lower mind and was out of that cafe like a shot. There was a woman coming down the road in a car and I stopped her and said, “Excuse me, are you going to Tyndrum?” That was the only place I could think of, about 24 miles down the road. She was a spiritual woman, going all the way to London, and we had wonderful talks. She had a great big hamper of food including a whole chicken and we had a wonderful picnic. If I had finished my cup of tea I would have missed her. I did go all the way to the south coast but that’s another story. Coming back, I got a lift on a truck trundling up the Great North Road and came to a place called Grantham. The traffic lights were red and as we stopped I looked down to the right. There was a girl in a fast, open sports car with an empty seat. I said to the truck driver, “Cheerio, I’m off.” I asked if I could ride with her, she said yes, and away we went. If I’d hesitated I’d have missed that lift, she’d have been away. She was going all the way to the west coast driving between eighty and ninety miles an hour. And she had masses of sandwiches. I got to Carlisle wondering how to get further to Oban. It was getting dark. My intuition said: fish lorries travel through the night. I got a lift on one. The driver was very sleepy; he had been driving for seventeen hours. I said, “Why don’t you let me drive?” I’d never driven a lorry in my life. I drove all through the winding roads of Scotland, through the highlands, while he slept. He was so delighted when we got to Oban in the early morning that he bought me a huge breakfast. There was still another example of following one’s intuition.
SUN: Immediately.
CADDY: Yes, immediately, on that flash, not hesitating. If you hesitate, all kinds of doubts come in; your lower mind reasons the stupidity of it, giving all the reasons why you shouldn’t do it.
SUN: What is happiness for you? Are you happy?
CADDY: Yes, certainly I’m happy. When you know you’re doing the right thing, doing what is in the divine plan, then everything flows and you’re happy.
SUN: Are you always certain of knowing?
CADDY: I’m pretty certain.
SUN: And your feelings about working with a guru?
CADDY: It is a step along the path. A guru can only take you so far on the path and then you must turn to the guru within. When the gurus came on the scene in this country, after the drug scene, it was to show that there was another way. But now, as we move into this new age, a good guru should make himself obsolete as his disciple turns within.
SUN: When you find yourself beset with doubt and fear, or guilt, or jealousy how do you work with these emotions?
CADDY: When I went to Maui, David Spangler told me that I was going there to experience emotions. Rarely had I experienced anger or jealousy. I’d been very much on the path of life and action. I didn’t understand why I used to get emotional sometimes — it didn’t make sense, it wasn’t reasonable. One Christmas, Paula and I were to meet in Maui. She was in San Francisco, in a man’s world, selling tax shelters and experiencing the masculine side. She was to join me ten days before the holiday. A party had been arranged and we were to meet all the people I knew on the island. But when I phoned her up, having obtained a lovely apartment for us, she said she wasn’t coming for several days because she needed to sell more tax shelters to make some money she owed. I was very upset about that; she was worrying about money while I was worrying about relationships and love. It showed how I had changed, how we both had changed. When she finally came, she told me she’d fallen in love with a younger man at Mount Shasta, a healer. Destined to be with me, she was in love with somebody else. That put me through fear; I couldn’t compete with somebody half my age. I felt doubt, anger, jealousy, resentment — a lot of emotions I’d never felt before. To my mind it didn’t make sense — of course all would be well and all would work out — but I still felt the emotions. In the end I said to God: I can’t compete with this. There’s nothing I can do. I hand it over to you.
After the holidays, one of Paula’s friends wrote to her and said, “It’s not a choice between two men but a choice between the path of the soul and the path of the personality.” The path of the soul was obeying God’s word and the work we had together, and on the other hand was a strong physical, emotional, and mental attraction for another person. That made sense to me; it was as the old year passed out that she made the choice to go with the new. It was a crucifixion experience for her, a crucifixion of the personality, something we all go through sooner or later. I needed to experience all the emotions on Maui that I had never experienced before in my life and that was how it was set up for me. She had her process to go through and I had mine.
SUN: What is this process of crucifixion of the personality?
CADDY: I believe that each of us, sooner or later, following the footsteps of Jesus the Christ will experience the birth of the Christ within. This is equivalent to the first initiation when one has to release everything on the physical level. Then there is the baptism — everything on the emotional level — and transfiguration — everything on the mental level. With the crucifixion, the dark night of the soul, one is stripped of everything — materially, mentally, emotionally, even one’s hopes and ideas. One is left with nothing. After the crucifixion comes the resurrection, a marriage between man and God. Whatever one has given up is given back a hundred-fold to be used in God’s service and not in the service of the self.
SUN: Part of this crucifixion process seems to be reaching outward for nurturance and support and happiness, finding it constantly pulled away, and slowly learning to reach inward.
CADDY: It is said that in the new age there will be no need for crucifixion but I don’t know of anybody who has been able to avoid it so far.
