Bulletin

Issue: July 2006

News

Trinity of minds, multiplicity of ideas, unity of title

It must rank among the most remarkable research coincidences.

How did three prominent scholars in three different fields on three different continents, unaware of each other's existence, come to write books with the same title on the same subject?

Each of the three books was published under the title The Spirituality Revolution.

The first, by cultural theorist, Dr David Tacey, Associate Professor in La Trobe University's English Program, was published by Harper Collins in Australia in 2003.

It was followed by the second in 2004 by Robert Forman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts in the USA and the third in 2005 co-authored by Paul Heelas, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster in the UK.

Such is the coincidence, and such is the subject matter, the rise of spirituality, that several hundred mental and physical health professionals will meet at a congress in London in November organised to discuss the books and their contents.

Dr Tacey and Professors Heelas and Forman will be the three keynote speakers at the congress, organised by the Wrekin Trust and the University for Spirit Forum.

The Network is a worldwide group of several thousand psychologists and health professionals who explore the boundaries of the human mind, going beyond the old biomedical model of human life.

Over the three-day congress called 'The Grassroots Spirituality Revolution', the three authors will meet, both privately and publicly in workshops and seminars, to discuss their independently sourced views on spirituality and how these views converge and diverge.

Dr Tacey has read Professor Heelas' book but not that by Professor Forman. He says that all three have focused on the reasons why spirituality is becoming stronger in the world at the same time that formal religions are losing their adherents.

'In former times, the terms religion and spirituality went hand in hand. Spirituality was once the core of religion but now people want to be spiritual but not religious,' said Dr Tacey, a specialist in psychoanalytic and psychological readings of literature and culture.

'This situation puzzles and concerns today's dwindling faith institutions. One reason is that the old idea that people should remain with the religion into which they were born is almost gone,' Dr Tacey said.

'This marks the end of the era of blind acceptance of faith. People are much more willing to seek alternatives to the religious beliefs they inherited. One result is that in the Western World, many people are changing their beliefs.

'The fastest growing religion in the West is Buddhism because people can follow a spiritual path without having to believe in God. They are more likely to follow the lack of logic in Tibetan Buddhism than the lack of logic in Christianity.

'Spirituality is recruiting many new adherents and among them are psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical professionals. Psychologists and psychiatrists are interested in its effects on mental health and medical professionals in its effects on physical health. 'Spirituality keeps up our spirits and this has attracted the interest of psychiatrists.

They once belonged to one of the most secular and nonreligious professions but they are now starting to investigate spirituality and its benefits.

'I teach a subject called Spirituality and I am finding students are much more interested in this than they were even a few years ago.'

A well known commentator on religious affairs, Dr Tacey has two new books coming out this year in London and in New York - How to Read Jung and The Idea of the Numinous - making a total of eight books. He will also feature in two new television shows going to air later this year on ABC and SBS.

Although an academic and not a clinical psychologist, he is to be made an honorary member of the International Association of Analytical Psychology based in Switzerland at a congress next year in Cape Town. This is in recognition of his professional services to psychology and psychoanalysis.