Eric Hughes passed away Sunday evening, March 6th, 2016 after suffering a stroke. He was 84 years old.

Winner of the Edward Albee award for his play “The Empty Room”, Eric had a deep love of theater and the opera. He worked as a copy editor for many years both in Manhattan and in upstate New York.

He met his partner of over fifty years, Sam Spanier, in Manhattan. Sam, an accomplished painter who had been a student of the Gurdjieff work with Madame Jeanne de Salzmann in Paris, became a disciple of the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. Both men went to Pondicherry and had profound spiritual experiences from their contact with her which changed the course of their lives.