In May last year psychotherapist Philippa Perry addressed a London audience hoping to learn the most elusive secret of modern society:  How to stay sane.

“If you’re worried about going insane,” she began, “you very rarely are.” She pauses, peering at the audience through her thick-rimmed glasses. “Because those who are truly insane never worry about that.” The crowd chuckles, more reassured than they let on.

Perry went on to tell the group of 900 people who had come to the historic Union Chapel in Islington for a dose of self-help wisdom that she was often asked if we should try to overcome all stress.

A ridiculous suggestion, she concluded.

“We need enough stress in our lives. We tend to go to the easiest, laziest option unless we keep an eye on it. We need to keep learning and stay curious.” That said, if you find yourself constantly on the verge of panic, kicking back and re-watching episodes of Midsomer Murders one night might do you some good.

Shrouded in the gloomy interiors of a 19th century -Gothic revival church, it could almost have been a sermon from a pulpit of old reassuring the flock that life is challenging and there will be dark times. But there was no preacher in the house of the Lord that Monday night.

In fact, Perry was a speaker for the School of Life, a cultural enterprise started by popular British author and philosopher Alain de Botton in 2008 to offer guidance to those looking to find fulfilment and meaning in our increasingly secular society. Lacking any central dogma or deity, the School tries to fill the resulting God-hole with art, literature, philosophy and good company.

The curriculum, covering such everyday contemporary dilemmas as “How to be Confident” and “How to Realise your Potential”, could so easily be written off as an arena for the kind of tragic self-affirmations usually found taped to the bathroom mirror.

But the school, its medium and its message, has made such an impact with the public that it has now expanded to a number of locations across the world from Sao Paolo in Brazil to right here Down Under.

On Australia Day this year, the School of Life delighted Aussie atheists by opening its first international branch in Melbourne. The Collingwood venue was created out of a warehouse shell in three months on a corner site just off the quirkily cultural Smith St. The remarkable project sprung to life with virtually no budget – just a host of volunteers and recycled materials.

One such member is Sofija Stefanovic, Melbourne-based writer and filmmaker whose classes – including “How to have a Better Conversation” and the more writing-focused workshop “Having your Way with Words.” – gave her the chance to share her passions with people from all across Melbourne.

“The nice thing about it is that School of Life is pretty non-didactic – we present ideas. My job is to facilitate and run the class like a teacher. I like that it embraced curiosity and exploration and thoughtfulness.”

“All the people who came to the classes were just amazing, that’s my favourite part of teaching – the people who came there. They were these kind of brainy, thoughtful people who were there to discuss their ideas and talk to other people like themselves.”

Intrigued, I set off to another of the School’s venues, the lavish dining room of the North Fitzroy Star hotel for the last event of the summer program-  “A Dinner with Virginia Woolf.”

Having recently finished de Botton’s latest book Religion for Atheists – described by The Independent’s Christopher Hirst as potentially being “the handbook for a creepy sect of non-believers” – I was eager to see just what kind of evening the School had in store for me.

It might seem strange to look to Virginia Woolf for lessons on living a happy life but, rather tellingly, it was the only event on the summer schedule not already sold out.

While waiting for the event to begin, I chatted with a smiling woman in her middle years about what had prompted us to sit down to dinner with a roomful of strangers. I mentioned my recent interest in de Botton and soon Anita and I we were having an animated discussion about our own search for spirituality without religion.

The hum of conversation was cut short by a young man tapping his glass. Standing, he welcomed us and asked how many people were there because they were primarily interested in Virginia Woolf?

With surprising candour, only a dozen or so people raised their hands. He nodded.

Now, who had just heard about the School of Life and wanted to see what it was all about? A flurry of raised hands, mine included. Sheepish grins.

Our guide outlined how the night would proceed. With each meal course would be discussion points and questions inspired by the life and works of Virginia Woolf. We’d also be moving around the room with each new conversation to ensure that we talked to as many different people as possible throughout the night. Our speaker tonight would be Leslie Cannold, acclaimed author and columnist.

Starting to feel a little like I was in a Monty Python sketch (Philosophy for two? Certainly, sir), I turned my attention to the pamphlet laid out on my place and saw that over starters we would be discussing GENDER. Until then, my new friend Anita and I would be sharing our thoughts on walking for pleasure; a subject apparently very dear to Ms Woolf’s heart.

I’ll admit I was sceptical. But as forced as our conversation started out (“so, uh, do you prefer walking in the town or the countryside?”), we’d soon managed to rekindle the congenial patter that had kept us engaged in the first place. We’d just fallen back into a comfortable rhythm (turns out she preferred walks by the sea) when our starters came. We thanked each other for the company and, with some regret, started looking around for someone to talk to next.

After a bit of awkward manoeuvring and trying to catch the eye of someone new, the crowd managed to settle into fresh positions around the tables as the waiters slipped in with bread and dip.

Round two.

In Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton explains the rationale behind meals such as these.

“Like so many institutions in the modern city,” he writes, “restaurants are adept at gathering people into the same space and yet lack any means of encouraging them to make meaningful contact with each other. Patrons will tend to leave restaurants … having merely reaffirmed existing tribal divisions.”

Borrowing from the original tradition of the Christian Mass as a communal meal to commemorate the Last Supper (known initially as agape feasts, after the Greek word for love), de Botton outlines a model that he believes will reclaim that sense of unity and belonging while shifting the focus from dogma to discussion.

In these meals we see religious customs from across the world reappropriated for a secular purpose – a conversation menu to replace the instructional Haggadah of the Passover Seder, readings of the lives of the saints supplanted by the (no less inspiring, or dysfunctional) examples set for us by writers and philosophers struggling to come to terms with the same questions that challenge us today.

Over starters, my new partner, Jessie – a woman slightly older than the first – considered a world where we could slip between genders as easily as the Woolf’s waifish Orlando.

Would we be prepared to experience life through the eyes of the opposite sex? What sort of world would be looking back?

We talked about what it had been like for both of us growing up decades apart, separated as we were by the years and a rogue Y chromosome. In between bites of bread she told me about the times she’d wondered how many opportunities she wouldn’t have been forced to give up, had she been born a man.  Society brushed aside women once they’d reached a certain age, she said, as though they had nothing more to offer once their beauty had faded and their children flourished on their own. We barely talked about Virginia Woolf at all. The course came to an end, and we moved on.

With each new course and each new question I found myself saying less and listening more.

As the night drew on I began to realise what the School of Life was trying to accomplish. They weren’t trying to get us to talk about how the life of Virginia Woolf could influence our own. They were just trying to get us to talk.

By sitting us down at a meal with dozens of people we’d never seen before, the School was dragging us – if only for an evening – out of the same old circles of friends and co-workers we form around us throughout our lives. Confronted by people from different backgrounds and opinions than our own, you’re forced to reflect upon the way you see the world – and why.

During dessert, I found myself pontificating on the endurance of passion compared to love until, discovering that my latest partner  been happily married for longer than I’d been alive, I realised I probably didn’t know everything there was to know on the subject.

Although the idea of framing a secular search for meaning within the scavenged remains of faith-based institutions may seem strange to many modern atheists, Alain de Botton clearly believes that there’s still much we can learn from traditions that have – for better or worse – united communities for millennia.

‘Religions are in the end too complex, wise and fascinating to be abandoned simply to those who happen actually to believe in them’

With the Melbourne School gearing up for its second term, some members can’t wait til next summer to reconnect with the friends they’ve made along the way. Based on their experiences at the School, Sofija and her fellow School of Life teacher Lorelei Vashti have put together an enterprise of their own: walking writing tours of Melbourne. Elated, Sofija tells me about how the teachings of the School inspired their move.

“Nietzsche and Virginia Woolf and all these great writers talk about how good it is to walk and to get your ideas flowing from moving around. So we put those two together and decided to start up this little enterprise of our own called PaperTrail Tours.”

“It’s all about collecting experiences, putting them into words, thinking about things that are familiar in a new way and opening up your imagination.”

As for discovering the meaning of life, the School doesn’t claim to know the answer.

Just before my Dinner with Woolf came to an end, my first partner of the evening walked over and wrote down the name of a book on the role of physics in spirituality she thought I might find interesting.

There are worse places to start.

First published in Issimo Magazine February 2014