It was T.S. Eliot who asked:

• Where is the information in the data?
• Where is the knowledge in the information?
• Where is the wisdom in the knowledge?

The world is awash with data, information, and knowledge. This is the purview of conventional schools and universities. Yet what is needed more critically than ever are transformational learning processes that empower people to engage in personal transformation and to skillfully navigate through these perilous times with wisdom.

In order to do this, education needs to be holographic. People require educational experiences that are fully immersive and multi-sensory, particularly at a time when economic and political conditions are making it increasingly challenging for people to travel long distances to traditional universities and in-person courses. At the same time, developments in web and phone technology, combined with social networking technology, enable learning and virtual community building in ways not possible before. This is where the distinctiveness of Wisdom School of Graduate Studies begins.

Full Spectrum Transformational Learning

The Wisdom School is dedicated to providing what we call full spectrum transformational learning.

Full spectrum transformational learning animates the multi-sensory student. It combines the best of online education, blends it with the latest social networking technology, infuses it with in-person intellectual, creative and ritual encounters, and designs the entire continuum both to catalyze personal transformation and nurture resilient communities.

It is transformational because the goal is to catalyze personal and professional growth and development. It is full spectrum because it offers a range of new online/in-person learning modules designed to be pathways of participation that are fully immersive and multi-dimensional. It builds resilient communities because it cultivates capacities for collaboration and coherence. Full spectrum transformational learning animates the multi-sensory student.

At the heart of full spectrum transformational learning is the creation of portals of learning that endure over time, creating community as a goal equal to that of learning itself. Thus learning and community building become two sides of the same coin: learning as community and community building as learning. Learning and community thus become both the means and the end of what the Wisdom School represents in the full spectrum transformational experience.

Wisdom as a Way of Life

At the heart of the Wisdom School of Graduate Studies is the pursuit of wisdom. If you think about how you know what you know, two epistemologies likely come to mind. One is based on revealed truth, the basis of the Abrahamic religions. Whether Moses receiving Torah, or Christ crucified and resurrected, or Mohammed reciting the Koran, truth in western religious terms is something that ultimately comes from God and is to be believed and obeyed.

The other way of knowing is the scientific method, based on the aggregation of data, testing hypotheses, and developing increasingly accurate theories. Science is the path of rationality and intellectual logic that seeks the certainties of verifiable knowledge.

The ancient Greeks offered a third way of knowing. Socrates honored divine revelation and scientific investigation, but he believed that the greatest commitment around which to orient one’s life is the exploration of ultimate questions. For the Socratic quest, the most profound way of discerning ultimate verities is through truth pursued not truth revealed or knowledge aggregated.

Religions seek answers and are thus based on dogmatic belief. Science seeks knowledge and is thus based on certifiable facts.

The pursuit of wisdom is to live in the questions and thus to be open to personal transformation.The Wisdom School engages with all these ways of knowing in its pursuit of truth.

This means that wisdom is more a way of life than an arid intellectual enterprise. The pursuit of wisdom leads to an ever-deepening alchemical metamorphosis of psyche, heart, mind, body and soul. The Wisdom School is firmly rooted in this Socratic tradition. The notion of truth pursued is the cornerstone and foundation of everything we stand for, and lies at the heart of all our programs, courses and events.

“The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.”

—Emily Dickinson

Is The Wisdom School of Graduate Studies the right fit for me?

Wisdom School is a graduate school for mature professionals who want to place themselves into a larger context of living and learning. Our programs help you to go beyond the boundaries of conventional understanding and behavior and into a more authentic life.

Wisdom School provides a unique opportunity to deepen your spiritual growth and personal development within the framework of academic degrees. Where else can you go where you can engage in deep spiritual and personal transformation and get graduate degrees at the same time?

If any of the following statements ring true for you, the Wisdom School might just be what you are looking for:

• You have had a successful career, but sense that it is not enough for a meaningful life.
• You are mature and are already on a spiritual path, but seek more rigorous and in-depth learning.
• You are seeking an academically integrated approach to personal and professional transformation.
• You care about the big picture and want to explore possibilities for change at a deeper level.
• You are committed to life-long learning in dialogue with fellow seekers—a process, not an end-point.
• You have gifts to share that the world will more readily accept if you are credentialed.
• You desire to integrate the inner and outer aspects of your being.

Wisdom School offers you the opportunity to:

• Lead a more authentic, meaningful life.
• Reinvent yourself.
• Claim your power.
• Discover your self-worth.
• Be part of a nurturing, supportive community.

How does the Wisdom School differ from other graduate schools?

If you think about your prior experience in most conventional schools, you were probably educated to memorize information and express yourself analytically in tests and term papers.

From our point of view, this is important, but not sufficient for true learning. The conventional and virtually exclusive emphasis on intellectual rigor is only one end of the continuum that constitutes real education.

True learning also needs an inner dimension. It needs as much emphasis on body, heart and soul as on the mind. The Latin word educare means "drawing forth" and was originally used for education for good reason. Drawing forth what is within is at the core of of true learning. It is what Wisdom School seeks to catalyze.

We encourage our students to choose for themselves the courses that most enhance their personal, as well as professional development. consistently found that the best post-class papers are the ones that emphasize the relationship between what you are learning during class and how this affects your personal growth. Only if there is soul growth, only if there is as much rigor involving personal renewal as there is surrounding the exactitude of the intellect, is learning transformational.

This emphasis on an integral relationship between learning and personal development is what makes us a wisdom school. It is why we trace our lineage back to the wisdom schools of antiquity, which, like the Wisdom School of Graduate Studies, were motivated by enhancing the soul's journey toward its fullest expression of human potential. Plato, whose Academy was the original university, said that all true learning was a remembering, a process that led to the “enlargement of the soul.”

For us, wisdom is an ongoing process of venturing beyond the boundaries of conventional thinking to embrace a more encompassing consciousness of the possible. It is not something that can be obtained once and for all. It is a continually deepening exploration of ever-greater levels of integration between the inner and the outer dimensions of one's life. Ultimately, the pursuit of wisdom is grounded in the willingness to live in our questions. It is a perpetual inquiry into the mystery that undergirds all life.

History has reached a critical juncture when both crises and opportunities abound. All of us need to be involved in re-imagining our personal lives, that of our communities, and the well-being of the planet.

Quite literally, the future is up to us, and only a new wisdom culture, comprised of highly integrated people, will see us through. How you personally develop, what gifts you bring into the world, and how effectively you bring these gifts to your community, are all critical to how our future will unfold.

If you know you are here to help bring forth the new, drawn to cultivating your gifts within a learning community setting, motivated by a question led life and exploration of mystery, then Wisdom University may be just the right fit for you.

Learning Pathways

Wisdom Graduate School’s full spectrum transformational learning offers a variety of different pathways through which you can embark on your particular course of study or inquiry. They are designed as pathways of participation, including: archival material, video clips, experiments in communal living, virtual seminars, community calls, and—at the core of our graduate school—in-person seminars and pilgrimages. Following are several of domains of study you can experience through these different modalities.

• WISDOM STUDIES
• EARTH WISDOM AND THE PRIMORDIAL MIND
• SACRED LEADERSHIP: The Wisdom Factor
• EXPLORING THE EDGE
• PILGRIMAGES