Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Experience and Philosophy

A Personal Record of Transformation and a Discussion of Transcendental Consciousness: Containing His Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object and His Pathways Through to Space

By Franklin Merrell-Wolff

Subjects: Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791419649, 458 pages, January 1994
Hardcover : 9780791419632, 458 pages, February 1994

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Table of contents

Preface

Pathways Through to Space

1. The Light Breaks Forth
2. Concerning Meditative Technique
3. Cosmic and Transcendent Consciousness
4. The Record Continued
5. Evolution and Cosmic Consciousness
6. Myself
7. Jesus and the Way
8. The Ineffable Current of Bliss
9. Concerning the Spontaneity of the Self
10. Seek Me First
11. Expression from Different Levels
12. The Record Continued
13. Nirvanic Bliss
14. The Record Continued
15. The Grand Adventure
16. Alternative Roads to Recognition
17. Being Born Again
18. An Experience with the Fire
19. The Drama of the Triune Man
20. The Meaning of Omniscience
21. The Record Continued
22. The Celestial Virgin
23. Beauty
24. The Record Continued
25. Both by Thought and Feeling
26. The Sea of Consciousness
27. I Who Speak
28. How to Understand Mystic Writings
29. Concerning Opposition Aroused by Sages
30. The Record Continued
31. The Level of Real Equality
32. The Greatness of Man
33. The Moral Problem
34. Solar and Planetary Recognition
35. Recognition and the Physical Body
36. Concerning Occult Powers
37. The Underlying Force in Religion
38. Knowledge Through Identity
39. The Meaning of Substance
40. Communion in the Company of the Realized
41. Recognition and Egoism
42. By Many Paths
43. The Record Continued
44. The Relation of Karma to Recognition
45. The "Awakening" The End of All Religion
46. The Conditions that Favor Recognition
47. The Nature of the Higher Knowledge
48. The Record Continued
49. Sleep and Death
50. The Well of Ignorance
51. Beyond Genius
52. The High Indifference
53. The Evidence for the Higher Consciousness
54. A Poetic Interlude
55. The Real and the Unreal
56. Integration
57. The Gold Mine
58. The Power of Illumination
59. Expression and Transcendent Consciousness
60. The Symbol of the Fourth Dimension
61. The Nature of Ponderable Matter
62. Real Equality
63. The Predicament of Buddha
64. The Adept World
65. Manifestation without Evil
66. The One Element
67. The Current of Numberless Dimensions
68. Concerning Duty
69. Philosophic Reconciliations
70. Recognition as an Act of Transcendence
71. The Record Continued
72. The Problem of Government
73. Compassion
74. The Symbolism of the Butterfly
75. Concerning Asceticism
76. Poverty and Obedience
77. The Higher Consciousness and the Mind
78. The Atlantean Sage
79. The Barriers to Recognition
80. The Nameless
81. The Record Continued
82. The Point-I and the Space-I
83. Sangsara
84. Nirvana
85. Conceiving and Perceiving
86. A New Word
87. The Conflict between Space and Time
88. The Final Record
89. The Supreme Adventure
90. Addendum to the High Indifference
91. Conclusion: Two Years Later

The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object

Part I: The Ground of Knowledge

1. The Idea and Its Reference
2. A Mystical Unfoldment

Part II: The Aphorisms on Consciousness Without an Object

3. The Levels of Thought
4. Aphorisms on Consciousness Without an Object
5. General Discussion of Consciousness Without an Object
6. Commentaries on the Aphorisms

Glossary

Index

Description

Here is an account of the enlightenment experience and its consequences written by a trained philosopher and mathematician who is also a master of English prose. Merrell-Wolff experienced enlightenment, became established in the state, and wrote clearly about the value and nature of the knowledge he attained. This is a record of transformation in consciousness written during the actual process itself, supplying an unusually intimate view.

The author faces the epistemological problem directly—the problem of demonstrating the reality and value of knowledge springing from mystical roots. He gives serious attention to the philosophical and psychological criticism, writing with an eye to the pitfalls indicated by such criticism. He did not write only for those who believe easily.

After graduate work at Harvard, Franklin Merrell-Wolff accepted a position as professor of mathematics at Stanford. A few months later, he abandoned a promising academic career in order to facilitate his quest for a third way of knowing—a way apart from sense perception and conceptual cognition. "I found myself in sight of the limits to which our present egoistic consciousness has reached, and also had found adumbrations of another kind of consciousness where alone, it seemed, solution of the antinomies of the subject-object consciousness could be found. "