Stuck in a rut of working, shopping and minding the kids? Two young professionals tell Adrienne Murphy why they're bringing 'visionaries' here to stimulate debate

The golf course might seem an unlikely place for enlightenment, but it was here that Peter O'Brien and Graham Molloy - two successful, 30 thirtysomething south Dubliners - first shared their common interest in consciousness, the human condition and the need for a global shift if the human race is to survive.

Three years after their first deep conversation, these Celtic Tiger cubs have launched a new promotions company called Visionaries, dedicated to bringing to our shores leading luminaries and problem-solvers in philosophy, spirituality, psychology, ecology, sociology, economics and human relations.

Graham Molloy, who works in the music industry, wanted to sharpen his golf game, and it was during the lessons he took from professional golfer Peter O'Brien - son of the famous jazz pianist whose name he shares - that the broad subject of inner and outer transformation first arose.

"While he was teaching, Peter would talk about getting centred, staying in the moment, living in the now . . . spiritual stuff that I was very interested in," says Molloy.

O'Brien explains: "I've done a lot of psychological work on myself, and I also know a lot about sports psychology, so we were using all that in the lessons. We discovered that we'd both done meditation and spiritual workshops, that sort of stuff."

Soon after, O'Brien and Molloy travelled to London together to a talk given by Eckhart Tolle, spiritual teacher and author of the bestseller, The Power of Now.

"That's when we began discussing the idea of bringing these visionary types to Ireland," says Molloy, "people that you'd normally have to travel to see. Remember how rock bands never used to come here, and then suddenly they were including Ireland as part of their tour circuits? We thought, why not do the same with the world's leading visionaries?"

What exactly are the criteria for the "visionaries" that they're after?

"We don't want to confine it to people in the spiritual field," says Molloy. "It's anyone who can inspire and create awareness in any field. Broadly speaking, it's people who have something important to say about the human condition."

O'Brien adds: "The problem with only sticking with the mind-body-spirit stuff and that whole movement of personal development, with its focus on the individual's transformation - which of course I'm all for and believe is necessary - is that it seems to lack a global view. 'Sort yourself out, forget about everything else, keep consuming, sure it's all perfect anyway' - this seems to be one of its messages. But sticking with that alone fails to recognise that the world's in a bit of crisis, and that it's make or break time for human civilization. The fact is that we've hit oil peak, and the only energy that's powering our planet is on its way out. Everybody is living off it and nothing's been set up to replace it. Something has to change soon or else it's kaput. And there's people out there who've got maps that can help us organise our economic and social structures in a better way. We want to source them and get them over here.

"Now is such an exciting time to be alive. As far as consciousness and human evolution is concerned, trying to meet today's challenges will probably cause one of the biggest shift periods that we're ever going to experience," O'Brien adds.

It's not hard to see that these two idealists could become targets for cynicism and slagging. O'Brien and Molloy are well-heeled professionals who make a great living out of work that they love. They've feathered their nests nicely. Why try to bring change when they've got it so good?

"When people hear about Visionaries, some of them will think, 'What a pair of middle-class w**kers'," says Molloy. "Certainly we're very privileged to be in a position to set up something like this - that's the truth and it's the truth we're after. This isn't taking any moral high ground by any means, but most people don't care about the kind of things we're talking about. They do their work and mind their kids, do their shopping and buy their consumer materials. They think all this shoe-gazing is a boring waste of time and they simply want to get on with their lives, and that's fine.

"But other people feel socially disconnected and spiritually at sea. You can see this all over Western society, but in Ireland, because the consumerist culture took hold over such a short period of time, in just one generation we can see a huge change in values."

When the spiritual teacher Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known as Amma, came to Dublin last November to give out free hugs, an estimated 10,000 people turned up in the RDS, whereas only 5,000 went to see her in London, Molloy points out. "What does that say about Irish people?" he asks

"It seems to be the case," says O'Brien, "with a lot of people who think the way we'd be thinking, that at one stage there was unhappiness. I know I've had a dose of depression, and felt what the dark side is like, and when you're there you look at the world in a different light."

Besides bringing some of the world's leading lights to talk here - Sir David Attenborough, Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky are on the hit list - Molloy says they hope that Visionaries "will become a collective of people from different areas who are interested in transformation".