Robert Lawlor (1938-2022)

Robert Lawlor (1938-2022)

We are saddened to report that Robert Lawlor, an author and translator instrumental in the founding vision of Inner Traditions and our reforestation project Hacienda Rio Cote, passed away peacefully on November 29, 2022, on King Island, Tasmania, at the age of 84.

Robert Lawlor was born August 11, 1938, in Schenectady, New York. He attended SUNY New Paltz and studied art at Pratt Institute before becoming a pioneer in foam sculpture in the 1960s. Unfortunately, the chemicals used in the process were toxic, precipitating a health crisis that led him to explore macrobiotics and the Bach Flower remedies. He then hitchhiked across Turkey to India where he discovered hatha yoga teacher Ambu at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. This connection led him to Auroville in India, a community dedicated to the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Robert first met Inner Traditions founder and publisher Ehud Sperling in the early 1970s, when Ehud was a clerk at Weiser’s Bookstore in Greenwich Village, New York. Robert was in the United States to raise funds for Auroville and was looking for books to take back with him. Upon meeting, Ehud and Robert immediately bonded over esoteric and spiritual topics and exchanged reading lists.

Ehud suggested Thomas Taylor’s classic Theoretic Arithmetic of the Pythagoreans, which led Robert to suggest R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz. Ehud already had an interest in Schwaller’s work because he had been reading Isha Schwaller de Lubicz’s Her-Bak books. When Robert mentioned how he had spent a number of years studying with André VandenBroeck, one of the foremost students of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, and how both Robert and his wife, Deborah, had gone to France to study with Schwaller de Lubicz’s daughter, Lucy Lamy, the seed was planted in Ehud’s imagination that one day he and Robert would bring the English translation of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz’s magnum opus The Temple of Man into being.

Many years later, Robert introduced Ehud to Lucy Lamy in the south of France, where she maintained her late father’s household, including his extensive library, homeopathic lab, and original manuscripts. In 1998, Inner Traditions fulfilled Ehud and Robert’s vision with the publication of the deluxe boxed set The Temple of Man, translated lovingly and thoroughly by Robert and Deborah over the course of several decades.

In the late 1970s, Robert and Deborah moved to Tasmania. They continued their studies of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, and Robert wrote the book Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice, published by Thames & Hudson, a classic still in print. Along with Keith Critchlow, John Michell, and Rachel Fletcher, Robert was part of the original faculty of the Lindisfarne Association’s summer school for architects, which was founded after the immense success of the Lindisfarne conference on sacred architecture held in Crestone, Colorado in 1979.

In 1989 Robert visited the Inner Traditions publishing house in Vermont, and the beginning of a new and intense collaboration began. He and Ehud had not seen each other in 10 years, yet their reconnection was immediate, as if not a day had passed. Robert and Deborah had parted ways and he had moved to Australia. There, he met an actress, Joanna Lambert, at an acting class and fell in love. Robert explained the purpose of his visit to Inner Traditions: to seek help in publishing a book by Aboriginal rights activist Bobby McLeod about alcoholic rehabilitation based on Bobby’s Aboriginal roots.

Although the concept was interesting and inspiring, Ehud felt that there was a greater need for a book on Aboriginal culture as a whole. Both Robert and Ehud had puzzled over what came before the great civilizations of Egypt, China, and India. All the great scholars, including Schwaller de Lubicz, had stopped with these great cultures. What came before those civilizations were the hunter-gatherers, often thought to be primitive, but the Australian Aboriginals, as well as other Indigenous groups throughout the world, showed otherwise. Someone needed to show the world the depth of cultural devotion and the unbroken spiritual lineage spanning millennia of the Aboriginal people of Australia.

After receiving Robert’s first draft, Ehud traveled to Australia to live with Robert and Joanna for a month and work on editing the book. Realizing the crucial need for illustrations and imagery to immerse the reader in the world of the Aboriginal Dreamtime, they got in touch with the National Museum of Victoria (now known as Museums Victoria), which holds the world’s largest collection of Aboriginal art. The museum said they couldn’t help them, but Ehud charmed the curator and she agreed to meet with them on New Year’s Day to see the collection, which was not on public display. Robert and Ehud arrived at the museum on New Year’s Day and were taken into an enormous former ballroom where every square inch was filled with art and artifacts, including Aboriginal canoes, burial logs, and implements.

The collection also included the entire Baldwin Spencer photographic archive, filled with sacred and secret images from the depths of Aboriginal culture. Ehud and Robert carefully selected 200 of the most unique and important photos. Together Robert, Joanna, and Ehud’s dedication made Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, completed in 1991, one of the most important books on Indigenous culture Inner Traditions has published.

In further support of the publishing vision of Inner Traditions, Robert introduced Ehud to Alain Danielou, one of the foremost scholars on the religion, history, and arts of India. Thanks to Robert, Ehud and Danielou immediately struck up a close association, and Inner Traditions became Danielou’s primary English-language publisher for the rest of his life. Days before he passed in 1994, he received a copy just off the press of his last work published by Inner Traditions, The Complete Kama Sutra, considered the best translation of this classic of world literature. And synchronistically, Robert’s final written work, about the cycles of time known as the Yugas, was based on Danielou’s book While the Gods Play.

Outside of publishing, Robert also helped Ehud with the initial vision and creation of the Costa Rican reforestation project known as Hacienda Rio Cote. In the early 2000s Ehud had just completed building a home in Costa Rica. Robert and Joanna called Ehud from King Island, Tasmania, and asked him to find land for them in Costa Rica so they could relocate. Ehud found several hundred acres adjacent to the Rio Cote national forest and the Rio Cote river that flows out of Lake Cote, which the Indigenous Maleku consider the heart of the world.

Robert and Joanna traveled to Costa Rica to meet up with Ehud and see the land. They met with a builder and architects and found the perfect site on the property to build a home. But it was more land than they wanted or needed, Ehud agreed to split the property with them. After spending a week designing the project, Robert and Joanna went back to King Island. Sadly, Joanna passed away shortly thereafter, and Robert decided not to make the move on his own.

Since Ehud had already paid a deposit on the property, he decided to buy the entire 300-acre parcel and start a reforestation project. As of 2022, the Hacienda Rio Cote reforestation project has planted thousands of trees and received hundreds of students from the US to help with the project. In 2020, HRC built a lodge to accommodate visitors to the reforestation project.

Although we are saddened by Robert’s passing, we know his spirit lives on through his writings, translations, and teachings. And, as one of the seeds of the Dream of Inner Traditions, we carry the knowledge deep in our hearts that Robert would appreciate each new book that we publish. To continue building upon the reading lists that Ehud and Robert started more than 50 years ago is surely one way to help Robert’s passion live on.