We are happy to reissue Sir George Trevelyan’s trilogy, A Vision of the Aquarian Age, Operation Redemption, and Exploration into God.

After George transitioned in 1996, the British newspaper The Times obituary read,

“AN ELDER statesman of the New Age movement, Sir George Trevelyan saw the mission of his later years as an ‘exploration into God’. From the moment when in 1942 he first tagged along to a lecture given by one of Rudolph Steiner’s students – “I have no doubt”, he later said, “that this event in my life was staged by higher destiny, and that the time was ripe for a leap in consciousness” – he began to work towards the promotion of an alternative spirituality.”

We leave you with George’s original introduction here.

THIS BOOK is in no sense dogma to be believed. It is an attempt at exploration of Ideas which are alive and can therefore enter our consciousness and bring change. We can all recognise the faculty for apprehending an idea for its very beauty. We seize it out of the ether, with a feeling “that’s lovely, that gives meaning to life”. And then, all too often, the cold intellect comes in and says, “Oh, no you don’t! You can’t prove that and you must not accept what cannot be demonstrated to the senses”. But we are exploring the supersensible worlds. The technique is to take these ideas (if we like them) and learn to live with them as if we believed, while at the same time reserving judgement and watching life in the light of them. Then there is no need for argument, that debased form of human exchange. Ideas of this sort are alive and will therefore draw to themselves a certainty as one lives with them.

A remarkable change is taking place in the intellectual climate of our time. The holistic world view is penetrating our consciousness and superseding the rational materialism which is surely proving inadequate to explain our fantastic universe. Really we are recovering what was called the Ageless Wisdom of the ancient Mysteries, which knew that the Universe is Mind not mechanism, that the Earth is a sentient creature and not just dead mineral, that the human being is in essence spiritual, a droplet of Divinity housed in the temple of the body. This vision, once apprehended, lifts the basic fear of death in our death-ridden culture. The body may be destroyed, but the soul! spirit in each of us is deathless and immortal.

Our age is filled with prophecies of doom and breakdown, which are obviously alarming. But the greater truth is that there is no death without rebirth, no renewal without the breaking down of outdated structures and habit patterns. Just because the world is so mad and so bad and so dangerous, it is valid to look at the apocalyptic picture. This suggests that behind disaster is a transforming power at work out of the Living Whole, which can cleanse the planet, sweep away much that is negative and bring in a New Age. We certainly approach years of dramatic change. Technocratic man in greed, avarice and ignorance has failed lamentably in his stewardship of the planet and the Living Earth hits back at him in ever increasing disaster.

But the grasping of the holistic world view leads directly to the emergence of an alternative lifestyle, working with the Living Earth and not merely raping and polluting her. This means nothing less than the emergence of a new human species, filled with a love for all life and a readiness to serve the Whole in caring, cooperation and compassion. It has been called MULIER/HOMO NOETICUS a human being balanced male-female, of developing consciousness. This may give meaning to the statement “the meek shall inherit the Earth”, for behind NOETICUS is a divine power which in the long run is absolutely unconquerable.

Certainly the vision of the spiritual nature of man and the universe brings the conviction that the human potential is unlimited and that we stand at the threshold over which a quantum leap in consciousness is possible.

Cosmic consciousness, a blending of mind with Universal Mind, is being achieved and demonstrated by more and more people. This world picture by no means implies that we just sit back and let God do the job. Human initiative is the vital factor, but we are working with energies of life and being from the ocean of Divine Intelligence which can bring about change. There never was such a generation in which to be alive. “Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh”.

Sir George Trevelyan Bt (1906-1996) was an educational pioneer, a founding father of the New Age movement, furniture maker and visionary - a man with a mission to teach enlightenment in what he saw as a world of chaos and tumult.

In his youngest years, following parental example, Trevelyan had been an agnostic, but in 1942 he attended a lecture that revealed to him the spiritual dimension of the world. Thereafter his study of anthroposophy profoundly altered his view of life and laid the basis for much of his future work.

After World War II he became the Principal of a college of adult education in Shropshire where he spent 24 years. The college drew large and enthusiastic audiences for courses on subjects such as ‘Frontiers of Reality’ and ‘Spiritual Awakening’. Trevelyan attracted leading speakers and took an active part himself in almost all the courses.

When he retired in 1971, he founded the Wrekin Trust to continue this work. An educational charity, the Trust did not espouse any single doctrine or dogma; its purpose, rather, was to help people find the path most suited to them, organising conferences - including meetings of mystics and scientists, doctors and healers - on the holistic world view, introductory approaches to various disciplines and a curriculum for ongoing spiritual training. His inspiration was derived from the medieval concept of the university, which was concerned to find methods and systems of knowledge leading to union with the One - as revealed by the Latin word universus, meaning ‘turned to the one’.

Trevelyan invented ‘the network’, encouraging the setting up of small energy centres, which could draw strength from one another. Among those he helped to inspire were the Soil Association, the Findhorn Trust, the Teilhard de Chardin Society and the Essene Network. The last 15 years of his active life were spent in a ceaseless round of lecture tours and meetings. During his time he wrote three books:  (sic) A Vision of the Aquarian Age (1977), Operation Redemption (1981) and Summons to a High Crusade (1985). He saw his later years as an ‘Exploration into God’, which was also the title of his last book, published in 1991.

Man as a spiritual being chose to use his intellect to render matter into its smallest condition and master it. The price we had to pay was the loss of vision of the subtler worlds of being and spirit. The question now is whether we can learn creatively to handle that freedom and work with the ocean of creative life.
George Trevelyan

Source, www.rightlivelihood.org/trevelyan