Join us for a week of living in the moment, for the moment, surrounded by the peaceful hills of the Tuscan landscape in Pari. With its beautiful palazzo, rustic bar, and numerous quiet places, the medieval village of Pari serves as an alchemical vessel for growth and personal transformation.

“The idea of bringing people in. They could be business people, they could be environmentalists, whatever, and bringing them in without any sort of fixed program, without them giving talks and powerpoint presentations. Just to sit in the room and see what emerges, because they are in a container, it’s in an alchemical vessel which allows something transformative to take place. So that was the idea of Pari as a container.”
David Peat w/ Jena Axelrod in The Absurdity of Certainty.

A gathering of world leading philosophers to explore how traditionally Eastern emphases on holism may inform the global commons.

Engendering a new chapter in East and West communication especially in relation to pressing global challenges.
The Pari Center is pleased to host the June 2023 symposium East and West Philosophy in Dialogue—From Worldview to Sustainable Order. At the eight-day symposium, leading philosophers from the East and the West will gather to explore how traditionally Eastern emphases on holism may inform the global commons. The symposium will convene in Pari at the Pari Center and conclude in Rome at the Vatican with two days of dialogue on the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

David Bohm has been described as one of the most significant and original thinkers of the twentieth century whose interests and influence extend well beyond the field of physics to include philosophy, psychology, language, religion, art, creativity, thought, and education. Underlying his innovative approach to these many different issues was the fundamental idea that beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper, implicate order of undivided wholeness.

During July and August the Pari Center is offering a unique opportunity to hear and dialogue with those involved in the many aspects of David Bohm’s work and to discuss the implications of his ideas for the future. All sessions include audience participation in the form of Q&A and discussion.

There was “a linguistic turn” in Bohm’s thinking, particularly as a result of interaction with Donald Schumacher.  Among other things this led Bohm to propose a new language mode, the rheomode which gives the verb a central role in language structure.  In this session Bohm’s proposals will be considered and critically examined.

There was a time when understanding was unified and spoke to our inner wholeness. This initial vision was lost, leading to a bifurcation of nature that has impeded human flourishing. In the medieval hilltop of a Tuscan town, we will seek to explore and experience the underlying wholeness that was initially present in the spirit of the arts, the scientific mind, and the sense of the sacred.

A Pari gathering/retreat for members of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) plus family and friends will be held in Pari, Tuscany from September 9-16, 2023 (Saturday to Saturday).

The format will be a combination of closed AA and NA meetings and meditation, and some open meetings which everyone can attend.

In this online series we will revisit Galileo’s book, The Assayer, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its publication this very month of October.
Written as a letter in a controversy about the nature of comets, such a foundational text in the history of modern science deserves to be more widely known and read. It contains one of the first and clearest articulations of the scientific method, the famous claim about the mathematical intelligibility of nature, and Galileo’s emphasis on epistemic humility in the face of dogma and authority. Remarkably, in the book we also find Galileo’s programmatic exclusion of consciousness from the purview of science, whose consequences we are still wrestling with today.

Across the broad span of wisdom traditions, one encounter is of key significance: some direct access or contact with the ground of being.

Even in this secular age, dominated as we are by the materialistic, reductionist paradigm of western science, these transcendent experiences still occur, even amongst members of the scientific community.

We will explore the relationship between apparent dichotomoies through which we perceive our universe and place within it. From wave particle duality, to the left and right hemispheres of the brain, to the Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity divide that plays out in the quest to understand Dark Matter, it is becoming ever clearer that the way forward is to evolve past subjective/objective divides and come recognise the Universe as process.

The twelfth conversation in this series will be on Wednesday December 20, 2023 with Michael Murphy.