Culture and Media

Federal authorities have launched an investigation into a fire set at the site of a future Islamic center and mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, thirty-five miles outside of Nashville. The apparent arson destroyed an earth mover and damaged three other vehicles. The equipment was reportedly doused with gasoline and set on fire on Friday night or early Saturday morning.

More than 180 teachers from Gumaca and Lopez of Quezon province participated in and recently concluded two six-day workshop series organized by Ang Komunidad Para Sa Ikauunlad ng Tao, the Philippine organization linked internationally to The Community for Human Development.
Held separately in the towns of Gumaca and Lopez, the workshop lasted the months of July and August.

Almost 1500 assistants gathered last Saturday in 20 Parks of Study and Reflection in America, Asia and Europe. Young people, elderly people, women, men, students, workers, and a variety of customs, ethnic backgrounds and cultures joined together to take part in a meeting where the collective understanding was the distinctive feature of the day.

A new process of preparatory work for the Disciplines, an internal process of transformation giving access the Profound spaces of the Mind, begins in the Parks of Study and Reflection on Saturday August 14th. In 20 parks across America, Europe and Asia, thousands of people will attend to begin the work of the Siloist School.

The Chilean humanist Tomás Hirsch presented the book “Parks of Study and Reflection, Beacons of the New Spiritual Horizon of Humanity”. He informed about these places of inspiration for a new spirituality. The conference took place at the Book Fair in San Lorenzo, organized by members of the Carcarañá Park of Study and Reflection, near the city of Rosario, Argentina.

In 1999, preoccupied with questions about the fundamental nature of humanity and the most pressing issues of our time, filmmaker Jeremy Gilley launched Peace One Day and set out to find a starting point for peace. He had a mission: to document his efforts to establish the first ever annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence with a fixed calendar date.

In the effort to establish a Park of Study and Reflection in Hong Kong we are informing regarding its details. This ‘Park’ intends to be a place of meeting, discussion and involvement of ordinary people who are disenchanted with the usual offerings of this mechanical-materialistic society that is out of control on every front.

During the recent visit by Silo to the Park of Study and Reflection: Los Manantiales, located 70 kilometres north of Santiago de Chile, a profound hope was installed deep in the hearts of all those who heard his words from the Meditation Hall. “We believe,” he said, “a new spiritual horizon is being born in the world.”

From the time when the human being was first able to produce fire and could count on this source of energy to cook food, defend the entrances of the caves where they lived, warm themselves and illuminate the night, and then raise the temperature in ovens and kilns that allowed the making of pottery, melting of metals, working with glass… up to the creation of life.

Crossing the frontier and producing synthetic life for the first time, the discovery by a group of U.S. scientists, opens many areas of application while leaving open a new horizon for what we consider typical of the human being: the ability to make life. This is an extraordinary discovery that opens up the hope of better understanding the basic mechanisms that drive all life.