Preface

Ten years later, the plan was to publish a booklet covering the many important events that had taken place in Acem during the first decade of the new millennium. Since Acem had grown into an international organization with more people learning Acem Meditation outside of than within Scandinavia, the booklet was to be written in English. However, it soon became clear that there was a need for a book in English that covered the entire history of Acem. That was the starting point for this new book about Acem’s first 50 years, which covers the period from the founding of the organization on January 27th, 1966 until its 50th anniversary on January 27th, 2016.

In this book, each year has been assigned its own chapter. The most significant events have been highlighted at the beginning of each chapter. The first ten years of Acem’s history took place in Norway, but from 1976 and onward, each chapter has subsections for different countries and regions within or outside of Scandinavia.

The book also includes chapters on the development of various aspects of Acem’s teaching and organization. In addition to the historical overview in the introductory chapter, there is a chapter about the development of Acem’s psychology of meditation in the 1970s, followed by a chapter on the development of deepening retreats starting in the 1990s, and finally a chapter that discusses how Acem was able to sustain its expansion financially.

Comments and contributions from fellow initiators in Acem, who themselves have been central parts of Acem’s history, are highly appreciated. I am particularly grateful for comments from Are Holen, Rolf Brandrud, Torbjørn Hobbel, Ole Gjems-Onstad, and finally for comments from Halvor Eifring, who has spent a great deal of time helping to improve the manuscript. The responsibility for possible errors rests with me.

I am also very grateful for Torbjørn Hobbel’s book design and his time-consuming search for illustrative photos, and for Ann Kunish’s painstaking copy-editing work.

The development of Acem through half a century has been a fascinating story, and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to take part in it.

Oslo, June 2021

Tor Hersoug