Amanda Feilding - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Feilding is the youngest child of Basil Feilding (himself a great-grandson of the 7th Earl of Denbigh and the Marquess of Bath) and his wife and cousin Margaret Feilding. The Feilding family is descended from the House of Habsburg and came to England in the 14th Century. Since then the family has intermarried in the British aristocracy, and is directly descended from two illegitimate children of Charles II of England by his mistresses Barbara Villiers and Moll Davis. She grew up at Beckley Park, a Tudor hunting lodge with three towers and three moats situated on the edge of a fen outside Oxford. The family had no money, so her upbringing was eccentric and isolated.

From an early age she was fascinated by changing states of consciousness and the lives of the mystics. Her godfather, whom she never met, became a renowned Buddhist monk in Ceylon. Having won the school science prize, but being forbidden her chosen prize of books on Buddhism and mysticism, she left school at 16 and went travelling towards Ceylon with £50. The travels ended in a series of adventures in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, etc. Back in England, she studied Comparative Religions and Mysticism with Prof. R.C. Zaehner, Classical Arabic with Prof. Albert Hourani, and sculpture. She later concentrated on research into altered states of consciousness, psychology, physiology and later neuroscience. She gave up sculpture and took up painting.

In 1966 she met and had a long-lasting relationship with a Dutch scientist of genius, Bart Huges, who inspired her with a passion for science and the unravelling of the physiological roots of consciousness and its altered states. Since the late 60s she lived with Joseph Mellen with whom she had two sons, Rock Basil Hugo Feilding Mellen (born 1979) and Cosmo Birdie Feilding Mellen (born 1985). She and Mellen separated in the early 90s and on 29 January 1995, she married James Charteris, 13th Earl of Wemyss, 9th Earl of March, son of David Charteris, 12th Earl of Wemyss, 8th Earl of March under the Bent Pyramid in Egypt.

She gained notoriety in 1970 when she performed trepanation on herself, about which she made a short cult art film entitled "Heartbeat in the Brain", shown only to invited audiences. Trepanation was part of her exploration into the effects of different techniques to alter and enhance consciousness. During this period, she wrote Blood and Consciousness, which explored the hypothesis of changing ratios of blood and cerebrospinal fluid underlying changes in the conscious state, and the theory of the "ego" being a conditioned reflex mechanism controlling the distribution of blood in the brain. During the 1970s and 80s she painted, and produced conceptual artworks to do with consciousness, which were exhibited at the ICA in London, PS1 in New York and other galleries in the US, as well as having to make a living.

Feilding has long had interest in exploring different ways of modulating consciousness for the benefit of the individual and society. She has investigated many different ways of altering consciousness from meditation to the use of psychoactive substances and trepanation.