Talk:Franklin Merrell-Wolff

Notes towards some edits

1) It is strange that the only work cited here is a review of American spiritual teachers, especially since there is a major academic study (Leonard, Ron. Transcendental Philosophy of Franklin Merrell-Wolff. Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 1999.) and his works are published out of SUNY Press.

2) The opening lines are a distortion of the events of FMW's account in "Pathways through Space": by his own account, he didn't seek this consciousness but rather found it and then sought to articulate a philosophy around it. It is important to note that he was on the road to being a successful academic, having acquired a job at Stanford, when he experienced what he called Consciousness-without-an-Object. He then quit his job and started up the ashram. The sequence is important for maintaining neutrality on the question of whether he actually experienced this or not (the current phrasing implies that he did not, by default, experience what he claimed).

3) The "philosophy" section should be organized around his two primary concepts: "Consciousness-without-an-Object" and "Introception" -- These concepts were both the most unique and the most significant elements of his articulation and were also the most influential when you look at those who cite him, most notably John Lilly's 1975, "God as Consciousness without an Object" -- FMW had a great influence on Lilly and is cited in a number of his works.

I'll work on getting some edits together for this, but have not yet had time to trace out the citations. However, a quick search does reveal that the Merrell-Wolff foundation does keep a list of articles citing him (http://www.merrell-wolff.org/works_about). Perhaps if anyone knows works on this list, or others, they might chip in and get this article into shape. Etherfire (talk) 03:22, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Article Classification
This article is included in the American_Christian_mystics category but I don't believe Franklin Merrell-Wolff's philosophy had any Christian associations or characteristics. Johnhorton379 (talk) 09:33, 14 October 2022 (UTC)