The Spirituality Revolution: The Emergence of Contemporary Spirituality

It is sometime possible to recommend a book without hesitation. This is such a book. It is exceptionally intelligent, readable, timely and full of hope. Network members will want to read it and pass it on. David Tacey, the author of six books on spirituality, psychology and culture, is Associate Professor in Psychoanalytic Studies and Reader in Arts and Critical Enquiry at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He is among the best of teachers in that he listens attentively to his young students. Drawing too on a broad range of authorities, among them Blake, Yeats, William James, Freud, Jung and Nietzsche, plus contemporary researchers and writers including David Hay, Thomas Moore and Mercea Eliade, he puts his thesis before us persuasively and with great clarity. Tacey is writing about, "A spontaneous movement in society, a new interest in the reality of spirit and its healing effects on life, health, community and well-being". As I have written elsewhere, spirituality is arguably about a seamless link between the one and the sacred or divine whole. It provides people, at both individual and collective levels, with a sense of meaning and purpose, with feelings of belonging and community. It equally provides a powerfully intimate link between people and nature. Tacey's student surveys revealed that, whereas only eight per cent were following formal religions, over ninety per cent expressed a significant degree of personal concern for spirituality. His book emphasises that this is not just some fashionable interest in esoteric matters, or an escape from genuine intellectual enquiry into human nature, but a genuine, emotional and urgent reaction to widespread alienation, disempowerment and disillusion. The spirituality revolution reflects, he says, "A secular society running on empty, restoring itself at a deep, primal source at the very core of human experience". "People", he continues, "have outgrown the ideals and values of the early scientific era, which viewed the individual as a sort of efficient machine. We now have to revise our concepts of life, society, and progress, while preserving the advances that technology and science have given us". This prophetic author has also recognised how renewed spiritual awareness is challenging our existing institutions of religion, politics, healthcare, education and the arts. What he calls revolutionary may reflect a more gradual, enduring and evolutionary process, but this is a small point that does not detract from his frequently eloquent exposition. There are insightful thoughts on almost every page, making you often want to spend time in reflection. Tacey's mature comments, for example on fundamentalism, on the link between wholeness and perfection, on the distinction between spirituality and spiritualism, and his entire critique of contemporary religion (focused mainly on Christianity), so succinctly and reasonably put, are worth the price of the book alone. Network members might be particularly interested in the chapter on, "Youth, cultural crisis and ecospirituality" (Chapter 11). Here it says: "The revelation of the sacred as immanent and worldly comes to us with a specific sense of ecological and environmental urgency, (due to) the imperilled nature of the material world and its threatened biological existence. . . We human beings are vain, proud and self-centred, and we only care about what we are in love with, or what we feel is intimately 'ours'. If we can be made to fall in love with the world, it may be revealed to us that the world is 'ours', the world is us, and that the world intimately matters." Now, there's a creative idea. David Tacey has also managed to grasp the essentially subjective nature of spiritual experience, and is unabashed about it seeming to defy scientific investigation. He distinguishes wisely between method, which he admires, and ideology (referred to as 'scientism'), which he questions. In part of the Introduction headed, 'Where I Stand', in an appropriate and perhaps necessary way, he briefly describes his own spiritually formative experiences. Raised in a Christian milieu in Central Australia, he could not but be aware of, and attracted by, the quite different aboriginal spirituality of the adjacent culture. His ideas of divinity and reality were challenged and transformed, he says, by the local and indigenous traditions and the concern of tribal peoples for a spiritual relationship with the earth. This is an attitude that he finds reflected in heightened ecological awareness among his students. Among the most engaging passages in the book are quotes from essays by these teenagers. I found parts of this book of particular interest because in healthcare, and perhaps especially mental healthcare, we have begun learning to listen to our patients as Tacey has been listening to his students. The book itself mentions a "spirituality gap" between psychiatrists and psychiatric patients. Large numbers of the latter have been speaking about their spiritual lives and problems, to be met often hitherto, sadly, with a response that is ill-informed, indifferent and therefore destructive. We now recognise a great opportunity to help people find and benefit from inner spiritual strength, from powers of healing and endurance, simply by being more open to and accepting of their spiritual lives. It is unnecessary to neglect this simply through ignorance. Reading The Spirituality Revolution is a genuinely educational experience, capable of dispelling much ignorance on this vital topic, and with it both defensive scepticism and any lingering fears of inadequacy. That there are over 800 psychiatrist members of the 'Spirituality Special Interest Group' within the Royal College of Psychiatrists signifies that it is time to close this spirituality gap. This fine book will not only assist us in engaging with and helping our patients. It also has the power to guide and enlighten us on our own spiritual paths, on our separate but similar, inter-connected journeys towards wisdom and equanimity. Many Network members will likewise, I suspect, be particularly interested in the chapter on, 'Losing my religion, recovering the sacred' (Chapter 7). If, by the end of the book, you are not yet able to define spirituality very precisely, you will assuredly understand the subject much better. You will have a new yardstick for your own belief systems and values. You will also have something of meaning to discuss as equals with young people. For these and other reasons, I recommend this book extremely highly and without hesitation.