The ‘Spirits in a Material World’ series has two volumes:

Volume 1 – Conversations with Zyra: Free Will, the Soul, and Everything We Got Wrong

Available in hardback, paperback and kindle versions on Amazon/Kindle

E-book version available on Apple Books, Google Play and Kobo.

Volume 2 – 18 Conversations before Zyra: Belief, Doubt, and Everything in Between

Only available in e-book format on Amazon/Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play and Kobo.

Amazon/Kindle editions click HERE

Google Play editions click HERE (not live just yet; any day between now and 20 Nov)

Kobo editions click HERE

Apple Books editions; search for ‘Andy Chyba’ on the Books app.

Ever since I started questioning my Catholic upbringing, ironically from the point of being ‘confirmed’ as an eleven-year-old, I have had a fascination with ideas about God and gods and the supernatural.

I have gone through phases of being agnostic, evangelically atheist, and humanist. I have toyed with Buddhism and paganism. I remain essentially humanist, but have, in recent years re-assessed and changed my attitudes to spirituality in no small part because of my involvement at a place called Coed Hills Rural Artspace (Coed) and its community of enlightened, inspirational people living a low-impact alternative lifestyle.

Under the guidance and oversight of its founder, Rawley Clay, it has become the nearest thing to a sacred place in my life. It has a non-specific spiritual dimension to it in the way it gives space and opportunity for people to flourish and get close to the land and nature in a non-materialistic way. It enables people to explore and develop their individuality, yet they need to maintain a sense of mutual support and community, albeit loosely and in a quite anarchic way, using a consensus model of decision-making.

Coed also supports a regular ‘Men’s Circle’ and this often strays into issues of the meaning of life and spiritual journeys. I think it was this that prompted me to re-open my mind and reconsider notions of spirituality. To bear witness to a range of non-conventional beliefs, detached from any organised religion, or even religious connotations at times, has been thought-provoking, to say the least.

The initial ideas for this project took shape during the Covid lockdowns and I started interviewing people in January 2021. Having collected a few interviews and beginning to realise the wealth of insight they were giving me, I started floundering as to how best to utilise these rich resources. It was a couple of my interviewees that showed me the way.

Dr Terra Sprague, narrative inquirer and lecturer at the University of Bristol, shared her thesis with me and it was revelatory in both content and style. She had synthesised a collection of interviews about living in small island communities threatened by climate change into a dialogue with the mangrove forests themselves. I was captivated.

Then, one of the residents at Coed shared with me her favourite book, ‘Ishmael’ by Daniel Quinn. It is a unique and enthralling novel of spiritual adventure. Quinn parses humanity’s origins and its relationship with nature in search of answers to questions like how we can save the world from itself. With a gorilla taking the role of teacher, it has stylistic similarities with Sprague’s thesis. This was my way forward.

Whenever I want to organise my thoughts and try to make sense of things, I find writing helps me no end. Thus, my writing is primarily for my benefit. I share it in the vain hope that others might possibly get some benefit in at least considering what I have to say. I may have been evangelical (maybe even a little boorish) at times in my atheism in the past, but I strive not to convert anyone to my perspective now. This book simply encapsulates some of the conversations I have had about individual’s beliefs around religion and spirituality over the last few years.

This series is in two very distinct sections, and I have had a lot to-ing and fro-ing in my mind about which order to present them in. Rationally, the interviews came before my being in ‘Conversations with Zyra’ and the content of the interviews inspire and inform much of that conversation. However, the interviews are lengthy and quite often cover similar ground. I regard them as the source material for this book and as a valuable primary source in themselves. They are therefore archived in their entirety in the companion e-book (volume 2) to the narrative volume (volume 1).

I have to acknowledge the honesty and open-ness, bravery even in some cases, of my interviewees who subjected themselves to my interrogation of their beliefs. That is not a comfortable thing for anybody to do. This is why all interviewees’ names have been changed. Some requested anonymity as a condition of doing the interview, and I then adopted it as a consistent practice across all interviews; partly as a filing system as the names used are alphabetically chosen in chronological sequence. I have taken greater care to anonymise those that requested it, than those that didn’t.

While Volume 1 is the culmination of the project, the interviews are very much worth reading too. There are some remarkable stories therein:

• Herbie’s remarkable spiritual journey and his breadth and depth of knowledge and experience in becoming the Shaman of Coed
• Kevin’s Christian fundamentalism, even more intransigent than Lydia’s
• Munira’s heart-rending and ultimately uplifting journey from Islam to apostasy and freedom
• Nevyn’s integrity and conviction as a spiritualist
• Gabby’s particular brand of casual Christianity that resonates with the majority of UK’s Christians today, I suspect.
• Samuel’s trials and tribulations as a gay Jew.
• Ianto’s transformation through Buddhism
• Owais becoming the Imam of a new mosque at the age of just 30
• My wife’s belief in fairies; more profound and interesting than I had ever realised
• My sister’s own journey out of Catholicism
• The unconventional beliefs of Ferne (pantheist), Jasmin (animist), and Eloise (Baha’i)
• The degrees of un-belief in Brian (agnostic), Dana (sceptic), Pete (atheist), and me (humanist)

It adds up to a huge volume (it started as over 750 pages of A4), so I would not imagine many, if anybody, would read the whole lot, but it is well worth dipping in and out of, I would suggest.

Volume 1’s chapters are split into two parts, with the fist parts being my conversations with Zyra, and the part B’s being extracts pulled from some of the interviews that informed or prompted the preceding dialogue in some way. But these extracts in no way do justice to the whole interviews, hence the need to curate them separately in Volume 2.

Volume 2 also offered the opportunity to publish a few additional things in its addenda. Addendum 1 is called Music Magic / Magic Music and consists of a brief essay on the spiritual dimensions of music, followed by track listing notes for a playlist of vaguely relevant songs I’ve put together while preparing these books, to be found on Deezer, HERE.

Addendum 2 is a set of poems I wrote on one very ‘spiritual’ night, in a tent near Stonehenge on solstice night, under the influence of cannabis-infused absinth!

Addendum 3 is a set of 10 progressive commandments for today.  I wrote them for an ecosocialist forum some time ago, constructed by blending common themes from humanist ethics, environmental justice, labour rights, and social equity movements. These are framed as secular imperatives for the 21st century.

Many thanks to everyone that has contributed to, supported and indulged this project. I will be eternally grateful. (And, yes, that is just a figure of speech!)