TESTIMONIALS
Jeffrey Clive Gale (1938-2022)
Founder/Director, World Peace Gardens Network
Dear Dr Daffern,
I was shocked to hear of the untimely death of my dearest friend Jeffrey Gale. I first met him at the Schumacher College Totnes in 1993. Every day he cycled from his home at Totnes to the Schumacher College to meet me and exchange views on the subtle aspects of ahimsa. I was selected by the then college authority for a scholarship to attend a month long course on ecology with Fritjof Capra, the celebrated author of the Tao of Physics. It was a residential course so I was accommodated in a room of the special hostel they had created for the inmates of the course.
Jeffrey Gale became keenly interested in ANUVIBHA’s plans and projects and the Children’s Peace Palace at Rajsamand, so soon after my courser at Schumacher he came to India to contribute to the architectural design of the Peace Palace which was still coming up. He stayed at our Peace Palace for about a month. He was fascinated by the scenic grandeur of the palace situated on top of a hill overlooking a beautiful lake and gave new insights to the founder of the peace palace who had incorporated his suggestions to make it a model for children’s training in a culture of peace and nonviolence. My friendship with Jeffrey Gale resulted in a personal bonding. He did come twice to attend my international conferences. In 2009 when I was in London for three weeks to deliver a series of lecture on global nonviolence covering other religious traditions too he came to meet me at the venue and became an intimate friend of the Jain community of London. He was a spiritual soul, a philosopher who spent most part of his life radiating the message of peace through ahimsa.
He travelled a lot in quest of peace and was deeply spiritual at heart. He was intimately associated with my another intimate friend known as Carol Bruce, who came to meet me at Schumacher College in 1993 as well as at the venue of my lecture on ahimsa in 2009. She was a spiritually elevated soul who influenced Jeffrey Gale tremendously. He didn’t have enough material resources but he was contented and lived a life with a purpose. His passing away is my personal loss. I pay my humble tribute to the pious soul who inspired many. He had created a big network with his peace gardens campaign. Though he is not with us physically he will always remain present in our hearts in spirit. I am myself in the last leg of my life having already completed 87 years. With each passing year my strength depletes – a sign of aging. But all of us have one objective, i.e. to create social excellence and as long as I live I will continue to popularize a culture of ahimsa.
Dr. S.L. Gandhi
International President of Anuvrat Global Organization (ANUVIBHA)
This obituary is to announce the sad news of the death of Jeffrey Gale, who has died in Totnes, Devon on 14 August, 2022 at Totnes Hospital. He had been unwell for a few months now.
His relationship to the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy (IIPSGP) goes back a long way. I first met him as a friend of Dr Carl Shapley in the mid 1990’s and we worked on various educational projects from then on. Dr Carl Shapley was the son of the late Harlow Shapley, who was Prof of Astronomy at Harvard University and a friend of President F.D. Roosevelt and Albert Einstein. Carl used to tell me and Jeffrey, with some pride, that his father had “put the S into UNESCO” as originally it wasn’t going to include science. Harlow made sure it did. Carl had set up the New World Academy in Florence in 1978, appointed me Vice Chancellor, and introduced me to Jeffrey Gale in about 1994 as “a brilliant artist, he can help you in your peace education work” and we became firm friends after that. We often used to meet up at New World Academy meetings, which could happen anywhere at a moment’s notice: Devon, East London, Worcestershire. At the time I was dividing my time between Bredon Hill overlooking the Vale of Evesham and East London, where I was educational Director of the Gandhi Foundation and running their School of Nonviolence, and also teaching at the University of London. Jeffrey was a frequent visitor to our meetings at Kingsley Hall, where R.D. Laing in the 1960’s had run an experimental psychotherapeutic community using LSD as a therapeutic tool. I had helped restore the top floor as a kind of ashram to Gandhi, since he had lived there on his last famous visit to London in 1931, and ran classes for the University of London Extra Mural Studies Department there. Jeffrey would often turn up with his ambling walk, showing some drawings or other, usually to do with world peace. He was a natural home-grown Gandhian. No need for him to wear homespun cotton. You could tell he was the real deal. Like me he had a thing for India, and we had both gravitated to meetings of the Svetambara Jain community called Anivibha, led by Acharya Tulsi, one of the great Jain saints of the 20th century, who had known Gandhi personally and met every single Indian Prime Minister since Nehru, and walked hundreds of thousands of miles for peace. Satish Kumar, who ran the School of Nonviolence before me, was also one of his protégés, as Satish explains in his autobiography No Destination. Even Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) was originally a disciple of Acharya Tulsi. Funny how things turn out sometimes isn’t it ? I have been to conferences on peace and nonviolence in India about 10 times and would often hear that, “Oh, so you know Jeffrey Gale? Yes, he was here too recently” wherever I went.
Jeffrey was an artist, an architect and a specialist in landscape gardening, who later in 2000 founded the World Peace Gardens Network. We had always kept in touch over the years. One memorable educational event took place in 2001. I had moved out of London to be based in an ashram in Powys, Wales, and then 9/11 happened. I organised an event at Hawarden, Wales under the aegis of IIPSGP called The Educational Implications of 9/11. Right from the start I was not 100% convinced this was down to Osama Bin Laden and 19 Muslim “terrorists” armed with box-cutters. I told my American friends who were rushing to war to “suspend judgment” and look for some hard concrete evidence. So we organised the event at Gladstone’s St Deiniols library and invited some leading thinkers to come and speak about the implications of 9/11 for education. This conference has now grown into the International Historical Commission into 9/11 (see https://iipsgp.wixsite.com/ich911) which remains the only gathering of historians trying to make sense of what actually happened on 9/11, which so grievously kick-started wars all over the Middle East and led to the death of millions, not to mention the West spending trillions on invading and occupying Afghanistan, to eventually replace the Taliban with the Taliban. One who answered the 2001 call was Jane Goodall, famous for her work researching whether chimpanzees are innately aggressive, and in what respects (she said not). Also attending was someone I had met through my Irish peace work (which had helped lay the invisible groundwork for the Good Friday Agreement of 1997 – see https://iipsgp.wixsite.com/thetrcbi)) called Prince Frederick von Saxe- Lauenberg, a larger than life character who had been around several blocks and back in the pursuit of peace, using his semi-aristocratic status to get things done. He had met David Trimble over a peace garden to be set up in Northern Ireland. Anyway, he and Jeffrey met at this event and became also good friends.
In 2000 Jeffrey had founded the World Peace Gardens Network after a visit to the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation. Jeffrey and I had both been there speaking at a special event for peace in which various intellectuals were invited to put in our pennyworth for some ideal routes to peace. Jeffrey decided that what would help peace was a network of gardens specifically designated as “World Peace Gardens” and he got Glencree to agree to being the first one. Founded in 2000, over the next 20 years this network grew to encompass peace gardens in many parts of the world, as can be seen by consulting our website at: https://www.worldpeacegardensnetwork.org/
Jeffrey was originally from the Isle of Man, as have been many other famous esoteric thinkers and poets. He later went back there in 2021 to visit a poetry event where he was invited to read some of his poetry, but tragically while there he caught COVID and was hospitalised, and then a few months later in 2022 had an accident and broke his hip. It was a very sad and pain-filled Jeffrey who was finally discharged to live at home, unable to really get out of bed.
I last saw Jeffrey in 2018 when he came to speak at the Leonard da Vinci Study day in May 2018 after I moved to France in 2017 and we went to the burial place of Leonardo Da Vinci together back in 2018. This visit inspired me to set up the Leonardo Da Vinci Peace Prize and to envision the idea of a Nonagon as a top floor on top of the Pentagon. Jeffrey was to have done the detailed architectural drawings for what the Nonagon would look like, but sadly he was too ill to ever complete this task. You can read about this here: https://thomascloughdaffern.wordpress.com/2018/05/09/the-leonardo-da-vinci-peace-prize/ And here is me giving a talk about the Leonard da Vinci Study Day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNI1NXoLDLw&t=13s
It was on May 2nd 2018, which was the 499th anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci’s death, that IIPSGP held an international peace study day at the European Peace Museum here in Central France. We had invited scholars, artists, scientists, writers, polymaths and new-renaissance geniuses to come and give a presentation on any aspect of Leonardo Di Vinci’s life and work. We delved a little into the mysterious claim that Da Vinci was an initiate of a certain European Esoteric tradition which was seeking to reconcile the best of classical Paganism with illuminated Christianity. It was this precise mix surely which was the hallmark of the European Renaissance at whose hub, like a beneficent spider, sat Leonardo. In this talk Jeffrey Gale, wearing his hats as architect, artist and peace thinker, and founder of the World Peace Gardens Network, gave his own appraisal of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work, based on his many years of study. Here we have the film of the talk given by Jeffrey at the Leonardo da Vinci Study day in 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWcg_Q-9Xpg
Here is my own talk about the Leonardo da Vinci Study recorded on May 2, 2019 which was the 500th anniversary of his death - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjD8hlFZFhg Right towards the end of his life Jeffrey Gale was talking about coming back to France and had a still-valued boat ticket to catch the ferry to France. Sadly he will not now be able to come.
He had also spoken about buying some land in France where he could set up a peace garden of his own, since he knew that land is very cheap here in La Creuse in Central France and it would have made an ideal base for a local peace garden.
Through IIPSGP, Jeffrey had met Frederick von Saxe-Lauenberg and had worked with him on developing the World Peace Gardens Network. Recently Frederick and Jeffrey had joined a team led by Pyrrhus Mercouris of Greece (nephew to the late Melina Merkouri) to try to get EU funding for a Hippocratic Heritage Research Project, based on the medicinal herbal gardens that Hippocrates always insisted be grown next to the Asclepion healing centres where his students developed modern Western medicine. Jeffrey loved herbal and medicinal healing plants and so was excited to be part of this project, but just before his death Jeffrey learned we had been unsuccessful in this particular funding bid, which was no doubt a disappointment to him. But we still hope to see a Hippocratic Garden being planted in or near Totnes.
Jeffrey was an expert on the history of Nicholas Roerich and his paintings and I once heard him give an excellent lecture on this topic long ago in Lyme Regis where he lived for a while. Roerich was one of the great influences in his life, being a Theosophical Buddhist and a follower of Maitreya Buddha who had travelled all over central Asia looking for the entrance to Shambhala. A useful book by Andrei Znamenski, Red Shambhala (2011) documents Roerich’s extraordinary life, along with his mystic wife Helena Roerich who channelled Morya the great Theosophical Master (about whose own story see the biography of Blavatsky by Jean Overton Fuller). Jeffrey was also a member of the Totnes Russian Society, which meets periodically to discuss all things Russian, and they invited me down once to give a lecture to them in Totnes Museum, about my studies into Russian Philosophy, conducted during my History degree at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, and subsequently for my PhD. In 1990 I had gone to a Congress Of Peace Philosophers in Moscow when Gorbachev had still been President of the USSR and was elected coordinator of Philosophers For Peace, going on to set up IIPSGP in 1991 at the University of London. I recall Jeffrey and the rest of the group were fascinated as I spoke about the strong links of mysticism and philosophy in Russian history, going back to the freemasonic circles of the Enlightenment era, founded in Russia by a Scottish Jacobite called James Keith. Like me, Jeffrey was an internationalist and peace lover and at the end of his life, was appalled at Putin’s betrayal of the real Russian dream of peace by invading their sister nation of Ukraine without rhyme or reason, based on paranoiac fantasies of anti-Westernism dreamed up by pseudo-philosophers like Dugin. Jeffrey was also despairing at the stupidity of Brexit, and organised me to come and give a talk in Totnes against Brexit back in January 2019. I was able to urge him to read the seminal work The Road to Unfreedom by Prof Tim Snyder, which proves beyond a shadow of doubt the role of Putin in tipping the scales to win Brexit with his GRU thugs and likewise in forcing Trump onto the American people, both of which were a necessary prelude to his megalomaniacal invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Putin’s game plan all along has been to destroy the EU, which is why I moved to France in 2017 – to strengthen the pan-European intellectuals trying to resist this nonsense (see https://worldintellectualforumeurope.weebly.com). Jeffrey understood all this but was too weak to do much about it towards the end.
Jeffrey also took part in a special weekend I ran for IIPSGP up at Cae Mabon in North Wales on the Greening of Education, way back in about 2005, hosted by story-teller Eric Maddern. Jeffrey also helped IIPSGP in several of our moves and once he turned up to help us move into the ashram in Wales at Forden where we lived from 2000-2003, bringing with him two other helpers from Glastonbury. This was typical of his kind nature and generosity of spirit. We also used to meet at regular Big Green Gatherings and other festivals and he was a much loved member of the UK summer festivals scene. One of the things the World Peace Gardens Network would like to do is to establish a kind of permanent Little Green Gathering World Peace Garden, so if anyone has some land going spare we could use for a peppercorn rent, please let us know.
Jeffrey lived a long life and accomplished many things, but of course he was still wanting to do yet more. When we went to Amboise together in 2018, we learned that when Leonardo Da Vinci died, with King Francis 1st of France present, the King noticed Leonardo was crying. He asked Leonardo: “Why the tears?” and Leonardo said: “Sire, it is because I have left so many things not finished, not completed, and I feel regret that I have wasted so much time...” King Francis told Leonardo that if that was all, then he could die easy, because although he had left much not finished, he had nevertheless accomplished a great deal, and given his colleagues and indeed future generations much to chase up in the coming centuries.
The same could be said of Jeffrey Gale. He was a pioneer, a peace thinker and a grounded eco-designer. He accomplished much, but left a great deal not finished. So let’s get on with them shall we?
For many years Jeffrey was a colourful and much loved ornament of the Totnes and wider UK community. He had a finger is so many pies that even he had probably lost count. But if, like me, you admired his calm, rational form of eco-mysticism, and his strong commitment to peace in all its dimensions, inner and outer, and his love of music and art, and his deep knowledge of the esoteric history of art and architecture, then he was pretty irreplaceable. One of my favourite of his stories was the time he hitchhiked to India via Spain and managed to live for several months in the house of Salvador Dali en route and to become friends. Jeffrey had an iron will under his gentle exterior, as all true peace and nonviolence activists have to have, and so he did make it to India, hitchhiking all the way, and earning his keep by doing roadside sketches of people in the towns he passed though.
His funeral is currently being organised, and if you wish for an invitation to the ceremonial scattering of his ashes, please contact me, as a group of his closest friends are currently organising this and also working hard to safeguard his legacy going forward. As Chair of the ongoing World Peace Gardens Network, we are also planning to publish a Book Of Remembrances of Jeffrey’s life and work, so if you have interesting memories of him, please write up an essay of how you met him and which part of his long life’s journey you walked beside him for, and we will publish it in the book.
Above all, say some prayers of well-being for Jeffrey as he faces his onward journey into the spiritual kingdoms, where he will no doubt be welcomed back to get on with his other real work once again, as we all will be in time.
Dr Thomas C Daffern
Chair, World Peace Gardens Network, https://www.worldpeacegardensnetwork.org/
Director, International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy www.educationaid.net
On behalf of all Giffords and those at the ASHA Centre we would like to say what a beautiful creative soul Jeffrey was. He helped to found the Peace Gardens initiative and we hope that we will soon have a peace garden at the ASHA Centre in the Forst of Dean to remember his vision of a kinder, more peaceful and beautiful world in harmony with nature and our higher selves.
Zerbanoo Gifford
THE ASHA CENTRE (Transformational Education for Young Adults)
I can only say that once you met Jeffrey you can never forget him not for anything bad but for all the good things about him. I am only too pleased that through my charity work I was able to meet him and make such a lasting impression on him as he did on me.
God speed Jeffrey and enjoy the adventure that you are now on.
Wendy Douglas
Secretary/Events Organiser
ManxAid Charity, Isle of Man Registration No. 1042
I wanted to share a couple of reminiscences of the man because there really was something special about him and the way he approached life. Jeffrey had considerable presence and quiet power though he never seemed to exercise this in any other way than through peaceful words and gestures.
He also had a great capacity to surprise and though I wouldn´t ascribe to him mystical powers, he did seem to be able to turn up in the most unlikely of places at just the right moment.
I have two recollections of bumping into him in Southern Spain and finding him completely at ease and unsurprised at us meeting - as if coincidence was the most natural thing in the world. Once, I found him painting watercolours in the community where I was living and he barely looked up from his work at my entrance! Another time I saw him, by chance (apparently) walking with a friend along a street in Nerja - the Andalucian town to which I had moved. Whatever difficulties I may have been finding establishing myself in a new, strange country, these challenges seemed to flow over and past Jeffrey who looked like he had already been living there for 25 years!
That I think was our last meeting, and whilst it is sad to think I will not see Jeffrey again, I carry such a strong image of him - as well as a sense of his energy (and his off-white suit and ever-present floppy cap) - that I shall not forget him. And whilst I´ve said nothing of his work and his creative projects, I remain inspired by several conversations we had about sacred architecture and the possibility of extending the peace garden project into Spain.
Thank you Jeffrey and keep inspiring them wherever you go next!
Jon Stein
Spain
Wishing you well on your new journey dear Jeffrey...
'May the long time sun shine upon you, all love surround you, and the pure light within you guide you all the way on.'
(Copyright 1967 Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who once stayed with him)
Love and light,
Paul and Mo Taylor
