Seekers in the 21st century

The study is partly inspired by the findings made in e.g. cognitive psychology and attachment theory research, which have shown that followers of the new spirituality at the group level not only share a world of imagination but also certain personality traits that may possibly be associated with an increased and possibly also an underdiagnosed suffering ( Granqvist, 2004). This study will examine the new spirituality from a psychoanalytic perspective. It could be close at hand to then try to find possible connections between, for example, childhood and growing up experiences and the new spiritual interest. However, the focus of this study will be on the "here and now".
Researching new age and the like is notoriously difficult. From where and with which criteria should respondents be recruited, if it is the thought system that is to be the focus. On the one hand, it is possible to choose a functional perspective, that is, to search for people who practice what are perceived as "new-spiritual" activities, for example meditation, yoga or healing and hope that these also include the special worldview that the researcher associates with such activities. However, this is far from always the case. Frisk and Åkerbäck (2013) have made a division into consumers and producers and emphasized that the former do not always share the world view of the latter. It is not certain that these have one either, of course. Granqvist and Hagekull (2001) recruited people from typical new age activities and then tested them with their NAOS scale and were thus able to weed out those with a certain worldview.
Then there may also be a difference in degree of conviction. Geels and Wikström (2006) propose a division into customers, seekers and core team (p. 390f), where the latter to a greater extent include certain beliefs such as a well-thought-out worldview. Perhaps this can be compared to these individuals having a high degree of "inking" of the particular thought system? Månsus (1997) describes it in a similar way, but as a pyramid in three levels.
Another approach could be to select certain beliefs that are assumed to be central to the type of world of thought that is of interest. In this study, the research participants were recruited based on the criterion that they would include the basic ideas of reincarnation, karma and the notion of the individual's gradual progression towards perfection. People who fit this description are assumed to be able to belong to the "new age" as well as certain parts of the "new spirituality".

What should it be called?

A variety of terms are used to designate or differentiate between those interested in this field. Wikström (1998) writes that the term "new age" is often experienced as burdensome by those who are labeled as such. Sutcliffe (referenced in Chryssides, 2007) has expressed: "'New Age' is a construct – that is to say, a term created by outsiders to bring together artificially a number of disparate ideas that may not be linked by their exponents". Chryssides (2007, p. 13) draws a parallel to "Hinduism" which was a 1800th century Western term to bring together a variety of very different spiritual phenomena that focused on different divinities, etc. The author also takes "feminism" as an example, which sorts out many different viewpoints and perceptions. She writes that such designations can be useful after all. Frisk (2007b, p. 119) suggests that one should start over from the ground up and use statistical means to research one's way to suitable divisions of what today falls under new age and the like.
Originally, it was intended that the kind of spirituality that the study focuses on in the text would be called "new age". By including "new age" parts of "new spirituality" could be excluded that possibly did not include the basic ideas above (reincarnation, karma and the gradual perfection of the individual) and by including "new spirituality" the experience-focused or atheoretical expressions of "new age" could hopefully be thinned out. In this way, it was intended that the two concepts could function mutually exclusive. (This construction is included in the title of the essay and was also used in the search to try to attract suitable respondents to the study. During the writing work, however, it became clear that this designation would affect the readability too much. Henceforth, "new spirituality", "the new spirituality ”, etc, to be used and the reader is encouraged to internally translate this into “new age/new spirituality” (or more specifically “new age∩new spirituality”, with the mathematical symbol for “intersection” between the words, that is, what meant is the area where the two types of spirituality overlap).
Perhaps it can be argued that the two words are still about to lose much of their usefulness or precision. Adherents themselves do not want to be associated with "new age" and the term is now mostly used by researchers or in everyday speech and then with a derogatory meaning, society itself also seems to be increasingly "new age" and "the new spiritual movements" are on the way to die out (Frisk, 2007a). The concept of "new religiosity" (Frisk, 1998) as an umbrella term for much of what ends up outside the established forms of religion, however, feels well-founded.