Dr David Tacey is Reader and Associate Professor in the School of Critical Enquiry, La Trobe University, Melbourne. He teaches courses on religious studies, analytical psychology and cultural studies. He is the author of eight books and over a hundred essays and articles on these subjects. His main interest is tracking the 'spirit of the time' in contemporary society. David's current university teaching areas include 'Jung's Cultural Psychology', which is a popular undergraduate subject; 'Spirituality and Rites of Passage' on Aboriginal religion and contemporary poetry; and 'Writing Transcendence', a higher level subject on the theme of transcendence in Jung, Hillman and continental philosophy. David is on the international teaching faculty at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, and gives short courses in Zurich every July. He is on the editorial boards of several international journals on Jungian studies, analytical psychology and religious studies.

The task of individuation is a 'homecoming' to the true self, and involves divesting ourselves from the trappings of the false self and discovering the interior authority of the voice within. This is a difficult process, since society is not interested in the true self, but expends most of its energy bolstering the false self. Moreover, the idea of the true self is seen as an illusion, and thus the movement toward homecoming is made even more difficult. Personal transformation is a deeply intuitive activity and involves close attention to the messages and soundings of psyche.

In 1927 Jung wrote an essay called 'Mind and Earth', and he suggested that the earth has an unconscious effect on the mind. Earth seems to mould or influence mind in subtle ways, shaping our behaviour and thoughts, without us realising it. Different places have different effects on the mind, and Jung's essay was written after his journey to North America, where he felt the land had had a strong effect on European migrants, 'indigenising' them in their sleep! How do we imagine the relationship between psyche and earth? Jung psychologised the Neo-Platonic idea of the anima mundi or world soul, and that idea will be explored in this lecture.

Jung argued that we have to encounter our own darkness if we want to achieve wholeness, and that, paradoxically, darkness is for us the way to the recovery of spiritual light. Western culture and religion have celebrated goodness and light for a very long time, and we have tended to despise the darkness, triumph over it, or relegate it to the margins, through suppression and repression. As such, there has been a tremendous piling up of energy and vitality in the so-called 'dark side' of the human psyche, and this darkness has to be explored if we seek to find the vitality that can transform our selves and our world. Jung believed that the dark side - normally seen as the 'enemy' of life - held the key to spiritual renewal and psychological growth.

In a letter to P.W. Martin in 1945, Jung wrote that it is not merely psychological technique or the analyst's knowledge that cures the patient, but it is 'contact with the numinous' that allows the patient to heal. In a sense Jung was saying that it is the encounter with the deeper dimensions of mind, or what tradition has called soul or spirit, that enables healing to occur. What are the implications of this view for mental health and the healing professions? How can contact with the numinous be facilitated? Must each person find his or her own way to the numinous? In what sense does contact with the numinous initiate our healing, and how does this work?