Intro
Viewed like this from a spot on earth where the churches are empty and at the end of a university education that has largely been about understanding something about the interior of man and how he sees his life, but where the subject of religion has largely not been touched, one could be tempted to believe that the latter has really played out its role. Just as Sigmund Freud predicted almost a hundred years ago would happen. But that's just not true. On the one hand, a majority of the world's population is still believers and via migration to Sweden and our local area, it is reasonable to assume that religious or spiritual imaginations will continue to play a role in consultation and therapy situations. On the one hand, the process of secularization that has been going on in our part of the world seems to have been replaced by something that is no more rational than what existed here before. Independent measurements show that the Swede has a multitude of notions about existence, of a hinsides reality and of metaphysical connections and phenomena, which science cannot prove. The results are similar in other Western countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. The acceptance or interest in things like reincarnation, notice, telepathy, communication with deceased relatives, etc., is great. While several of the beliefs and phenomena addressed in these surveys overlap with what is commonly called superstition and should have been able to coexist with the long-dominant religion, reincarnation is, for example, a comparatively exotic notion in a Christian cultural circle. In the studies mentioned above, the idea that the individual should be reborn in a new physical body is supported by about one in four respondents. Hammer (2004) writes that "In just forty years, reincarnation has gone from being a view spread among the members of some Theosophical and occult circles to becoming one of the most widely encompassed religious beliefs of our time." All in all, such notions are usually attributed to what is called the "new age" and to certain parts of the so-called "newness". This study will focus on this type of spirituality.