Overview

RAISING THE HOUSE & SETTING THE TABLE

Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has prepared her food, she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. (Proverbs 9:1)

Seven Pillars exists to support the advancement of wisdom in the global culture. By wisdom is meant knowledge that is rooted in the experience of the heart. This is knowledge that recognizes the universe as the living expression of a sacred unity.

Seven Pillars is setting a table around which lovers of wisdom of all backgrounds are invited to come together to converse and collaborate. Our dialogues and initiatives bring attention to the issues behind the issues in today’s headlines and galvanize momentum for interfaith solidarity, spiritual growth, ecological awareness, and beauty in action.

Seven Pillars’ table takes various forms at various times, and will include private and public dialogues, networks of communication, seminars and courses of study, and voluntary projects. All who seek a fuller integration of the inner and outer dimensions of human life are warmly welcomed.

INFLUENCES, GEOGRAPHY, AND PARTICIPANTS

There have been special moments in human history when people have come together in an effort to sum up the wisdom of the world. This was a task carried out by hermeticists at Alexandria, by Arab philosophers and scientists at Baghdad, and by Vedantic sages and Sufis and others at the Court of Akbar in Fatehpur Sikri. Each of these is the story of a house of wisdom. Today the world has many economic think tanks, political think tanks, military think tanks. What is needed now is a new house of wisdom, one for all the great traditions of the world, as well as the burgeoning wisdom in science, in the arts, in all that comes from the heart of human experience.

While past houses of wisdom were fixed in their geography, Seven Pillars is not. The House of Seven Pillars has rooms in multiple places, real and virtual. In 2008, events will be offered in New York and California. The interspiritual and transdisciplinary approach of Seven Pillars means that our activities will draw upon a wide and diverse spectrum of leading thinkers. In hosting an inclusive visionary conversation of this kind, our intention is to serve the cultivation of a vibrant planetary ethos that will resonate with the truest aspirations of the rising generation and become a catalyst for the emergence of a more beautiful world.

DEVELOPMENT & OFFERINGS IN 2008

In its first year Seven Pillars will articulate its foundational principles, the Seven Principles of Love, introduce its method of Heartful Dialogue, and commence preparations for the courses to be offered within its four core areas: Cosmology, Prophetology, Mysticism, and Chivalry.

Heartful Dialogue

The 20th century became a century of bloodshed; despite its faltering start, the 21st century could become one of dialogue, one in which compassion, the seed of nonviolence, will be able to flourish.
– The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

Seven Pillars will initiate one-on-one and small group meetings among leading thinkers. Previous and currently scheduled participants include Christopher Bamford, Sister Miriam MacGillis, Dorothy Maclean, David and Julie Spangler, Reverend James Parks Morton, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Lee Irwin, Paul and Charla Devereux, and William Irwin Thompson.

Seven Pillars Inauguration

Seven Pillars will hold its official launch on Labor Day weekend, 2008, at the Abode of the Message and Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York. This weekend will bring together friends and supporters of Seven Pillars to jointly explore and celebrate the core values of the wisdom school’s mission.

Course Development

Following the Inauguration, a series of offerings will be progressively introduced to meet the need for deeper engagement and study within the areas of Cosmology, Prophetology, Mysticism and Chivalry.

Cosmology – This track will investigate the complementary nature of science and spirituality, with an emphasis on re-conceiving and experiencing afresh our place within space, time, and the living field of being.

Prophetology - This track will study the history of divine revelation from a perspective that recognizes all dispensations of sacred knowledge as aspects of the planet-wide self-disclosure of spirit in history.

Mysticism – This track will explore the terrain of the inner dimension of human existence, bringing life and awareness to the spiritual heart and related organs of subtle perception that collectively reveal the unity of being and illuminate the purpose of life.

Chivalry – This track will engage the tradition of spiritual chivalry in its Eastern and Western manifestations, and seek to articulate and energize a universal expression of this tradition that meets the requirements of today’s heroic quest, emphasizing the virtues of pure love, compassion, self-sacrifice, discipline, camaraderie, generosity and hospitality.