30-year anniversary of the death of Leon MacLaren – a review of his life and work

Biographical details

Leon MacLaren was born in 1910 in Glasgow.  His father, Andrew MacLaren, was MP for Burslem, and a great advocate of the teaching of the American economist, Henry George, and his land reform policies.  Leon MacLaren trained as a barrister and was admitted to the Bar in 1938.

At the age of sixteen, Leon MacLaren contemplated how his life could best be put to the service of humankind. Describing the experience, sitting by a lake in Wimbledon Park, he recalled:

It became very clear to me that there was such a thing as truth, and there was such a thing as justice, and that they could be found and, being found, could be taught. It seemed to me that that was the most valuable thing that one could pursue.

Years later, in 1937, aided by his father Andrew MacLaren, Leon MacLaren decided the time was ripe to establish a school, which came to be known as the School of Economic Science, to teach the principles of economics as a science based on justice. Classes were conducted in the Socratic way with students being encouraged to use their own powers of reason, drawing on real-life experience.

Soon, after a successful launch, war broke out and classes could only be run on a limited basis.  After the end of the war, the School took a lease on a building at 11 Suffolk Street off Trafalgar Square where it remained for many years. 

Despite the success of the courses, after many years, Leon MacLaren came to realise that economics alone was not enough to establish a full understanding of truth. So he turned his mind to philosophy, drawing principally on the works of Plato and the esoteric teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.  Philosophy courses offered in the late 1950’s attracted a large following and extra rooms had to be rented to house the new students.

Leon MacLaren constantly challenged his students to transcend their limitations, to lay aside their ideas and opinions, and to search for and live by the universal principles underlying the surface appearance.  In 1965 he went to India to meet Sri Shantananda Sarasvati, Shankaracharya of the northern India. He recognised Sri Shantananda Sarasvati, a leading proponent of the Vedantic Philosophy of Advaita, as a true teacher of universal law, and thereafter visited him regularly until the year before Leon MacLaren died.  

Leon MacLaren dedicated his life to working with others to explore the fundamental principles in their chosen subjects including groups of economists, lawyers, calligraphers, school teachers, scientists, painters, sculptors, architects, Renaissance scholars, linguists, musicians, playwrights and dancers.  Those who were privileged to work with him in this way found they were able to discover more about themselves, gain a deeper appreciation of their subjects and refine their skill and its application.

Philosophy 

It’s a most astonishing gift, the truth about yourself.  There’s nothing quite like it, because the knowledge of the Self opens up the knowledge of everything.

(Leon MacLaren)

For Leon MacLaren, it seemed that, above all else, the study and practice of philosophy was for the purpose of finding and realising the ‘ultimate truth’ of oneself and all else.  

Writing in 1966 for the introductory course in philosophy he said:

Truth lives in each of us, waiting to be revealed, but does not act as master. In truth, each is made whole, in truth all are united… No happiness is like that in which whole people move together, manifesting the truth in all of them, showing unity in diversity and permanence in change.

Truth has no face by which it may be recognised, nor body by which it may be known, yet the man who has found truth in himself knows, and sees it in everything.  While he knows it and sees it in everything, he is free from error.

In later years, his search for the truth was guided by the teachings of Sri Shantananda Sarasvati, an exponent of the Vedantic Philosophy of Advaita, non-duality.  On the subject of Truth, Sri Shantananda Sarasvati said:

Truth about anything can be judged very simply.  Truth is that which is always the same, never changing, indestructible, neither improves nor decays.  If these maxims are not found in the subject in question, then it couldn’t be true.

Now, looking for truth, one finds that only the Self is truth, for it is always the same, never changing, indestructible, neither improves nor decays.  To get near the truth one has to get nearer the Self.  The way is to go inwards.

Work with artists

Leon MacLaren had a love of art and was himself a talented musician. He played the saxophone in a jazz band in his early life and was an accomplished pianist. He also composed several pieces of music inducing: In The Beginning, Isha Upanishad and Rig Veda, using a seven-tone scale described as the ‘natural octave’, taking his lead from Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.

For much of his life, however, Leon MacLaren used his energies to inspire and work closely with other artists including groups of painters, musicians, calligraphers, dancers, writers and architects.  On the advice from Sri Shantananda Sarasvati, Lean MacLaren endeavoured to find ways to help these artists gain ‘mastery over themselves’, ‘mastery over their chosen subject’ and ‘a vision of the glorious future of that subject’.   

On 24 October 1994, there was a celebration of the life of Leon MacLaren in the Royal Festival Hall in London, for which an accompanying booklet was published containing contributions from the artists who worked closely with Leon MacLaren in this way.  These are some extracts (abridged) from that booklet.

Calligraphers

To those who wrote to him, Leon MacLaren always responded with a handwritten letter by a calligrapher.

The tradition of writing, according to Leon MacLaren, is very fine; the connection to the instrument of the hand and the heart with a clear mind has huge spiritual potential leading to a high degree of perception.  Scribes in monasteries often became people of high calibre and many priors began their career in the scriptorium.

One of the instructions from Leon MacLaren was to let the pen write and join up with the knowledge within you, such knowledge included the recognition that in the rhythm of creation a line rises, falls and comes to rest in stillness.

Visual artists – painters and sculptors

Leon MacLaren always insisted upon the very highest standard of work within the conditions of the time and he pushed everything to its limit, in order to go beyond its limit, alternating ruthless critical analysis with love and encouragement; all with good humour and great friendliness, entirely sensitive to the needs of each artist and the requirements of their work.

The largest and most ambitious project was the decoration of the inner hall at Waterperry, otherwise known as the Artists’ Hall.  Leon MacLaren’s idea was that this would be a complete concept including sculpture, carving, glass engraving and painting.  The text for it was taken from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: “The self was indeed Brahman in the beginning.  It knew only itself as, ‘I am Brahman’.  Therefore it became all.”

Architects

The formation of the Architects’ Group followed the purchase of Waterperry House in 1971, as the house needed various alterations and improvements.  The group took a significant step forward when Leon MacLaren conceived of a project to create a vast interior space at the heart of the house, which became known as the Artists Hall.  This was to be harmoniously designed using a system of musical proportions based on the natural octave and to be fully decorated in fresco work depicting traditional stories from the Vedantic tradition.  Given the scale of this vision, MacLaren expanded the Architect’s group to include engineers, builders and other related professionals and required that the architectural work was to be designed to last for at least three hundred years.

The architects were encouraged to develop an understanding of the relationship of architecture to the natural elements in creation providing a base and order in which design could unfold.  Space and its qualities of stillness, harmony and proportion.  Air and its qualities of movement, circulation and ventilation.  Fire and form, natural and artificial lighting and heating.  Water and its ability to hold or bond the parts of the building together.  And finally Earth the full expression of the architect’s intent in materials and finishes.

Musicians  

Music featured early in the philosophy courses offered by Leon MacLaren, where the law of octaves as given by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous was included in its studies.  Leon MacLaren used the musical octave as an example of this law but expounded more fully the qualities of the individual notes of the major scale.  These qualities can be summarised as follows:

do: great stability, constancy

re:  uncertainty

mi:  contentment

fa:  new potential

sol:  self-confidence

la:  surrender

si:  yearning, poignancy

do:  contemplation, unification

The insight into the subtleties of the musical scale and the richness of the language of music based on this scale led some students to set up a Music Group.

Leon MacLaren wrote a book on music in which he expanded the basic exposition of the octave which formed the centre of the studies of the Music Group.  The most striking feature of the book was its clear generation of notes of the scale using multiplication and division by numbers two and three only.

Some of the Music Group composed music.  The emphasis was on setting fine words as responsively as possible and in the use of the modes produced by the natural octave. 

Dancers

‘Where the hand goes, the eye goes,

Where the eye goes, the mind follows,

Where the mind is, there the heart is also,

Where the heart is, there love arises. 

(Ancient Sanskrit Verse)

This verse describes the direct line of attention through the body, mind and heart, demonstrating how, in dance, both the performer and the onlooker are known to be the same.

Following the guidance to search for the truth in any subject studies, there was an attempt to discover and convey in the dance the stillness that is behind, and that pervades any action; to demonstrate the truth that only body and limbs perform the actions, and to discover the intelligence, freedom and beauty in dance.

Theatre directors and actors

It is hard to describe the extraordinary effectiveness of any direct contact with Leon Malaren.  It was as though a light shone on any subject he chose to consider and everything seemed possible.  His advice was invaluable.  It was the same as he had given to many of the visual artists and musicians: to be guided by the sound of the words.  The words must always come first.