Merrell-Wolff, Franklin (ca. 1887)

American teacher of a system of higher consciousness deriving from Hindu yoga and related philosophies. Born in the late 1880s, Merrell-Wolff was the son of a Christian clergyman but felt himself drawn beyond religious orthodoxy. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in 1911 with a major in mathematics and minors in both philosophy and psychology. He did graduate work at Stanford and Harvard.

Merrell-Wolff joined the faculty as a lecturer in mathematics at Stanford but soon withdrew from academic life to seek metaphysical knowledge beyond sense perception and conception. After 24 years he claimed to have attained a state of higher consciousness, described in his several books.

Although then in his late eighties, Merrell-Wolff continued teaching students at a community in California, originally designated The Assembly of Man and now known as Friends of the Wisdom Religion, located at the Wolff residence, near Lone Pine, California, U.S. Highway 395, about halfway between Reno and Los Angeles. Meetings, at which Merrell-Wolff's tape-recorded lectures are played, take place at the home of Mrs. James A. Briggs, 4648 East Lafayette Blvd., Phoenix, AZ 85018.

Sources:

Merrell-Wolff, Franklin. Experience and Philosophy: A Personal Record of Transformation and a Discussion of Transcendental Consciousness. New York: State University of New York Press, 1994.

——. Pathways through to Space: A Personal Record of Transformation in Consciousness. New York: Warner Books, 1976.

——. The Philosophy of Consciousness without an Object. New York: Julian Press, 1973.