The December 1917 issue of the Temple Artisan contains an announcement for two courses on “Occult Mathematics” by Franklin F. Wolff. The text of this advertisement states “Every form in the created universe has its geometrical base and is the symbol of an inner power. Every student needs this geometrical knowledge.” It is noted that the courses are “offered at twenty-five cents for each lesson,” and that there are six lessons in each course.

The attached file contains a transcription of the first course (“Series One”) of this coursework.(32 pages)

In this note, Wolff sketches a plan for future coursework. The purpose of the course is to approach the problem of consciousness transformation through a program that he names “EQUILIBRATED TRANSCENDENCE.” (2 pages)

This 1937 Chicago course consisted of two series of lectures by Wolff: the first ran from 13 September to 24 September; the second from 28 September until 8 October. Other than one open lecture, the first series lectures are all labeled as “lessons”; the lectures in the second series are not so labeled, and there is some overlap between the two series. There is also a lecture dated 2 November, but it is not clear whether this is part of the series on cosmic consciousness (particularly given the interval in time).

The record of these lectures primarily consists of a set of notes taken by one of Wolff’s students. These notes are bound together with tabs that indicate the date of the lecture. This student was absent from the first (13 September ) lecture, but typed a page that states it was the same lecture as that of 28 September, and the main points of the latter are noted as “Lesson 1.” The tab for the 7 October lecture contains a single page with the sentence “I think you already have this lecture.” The second file following this one (titled “Comments on the Report of the Previous Friday Night Experience”) contains notes for this date, which presumably were taken by someone other than the author of the present notebook.

There are a number of question marks in this set of notes, which are an indication that the student was not always able to follow the lecture. In addition, there are incorrectly spelled names (for example, ‘Young’ instead of ‘Jung’ and ‘Buck’ instead of ‘Bucke’) as well as other misspelled words. Despite these flaws, this is a valuable historical record of these lectures, which includes a number of Wolff’s responses to student questions.

There is one additional record of this course other than the current notebook and the set of notes for the 7 October lecture. Specifically, the Wolff Archive contains documentation of Wolff’s attempt to induce a higher state of consciousness in his students on the first of October. The set of notes for this date in the current file do not specifically refer to this effort; however, the material in the file following this one makes it clear that this effort was either part of, or ancillary to, this lecture.

Lastly, please note that a table of contents has been added as a preface to the notebook found here; this table includes either the title of a lecture or an important topic covered in a lecture. (127 pages)

The first page in this file appears to be Wolff’s outline for the “induction” he conducted during his 1937 coursework in Chicago (on 1 October). This page is followed by a number of reports from students that participated in the induction: the first is a typed seven-page set of “Reports Re Event of Friday Oct. 1, 1937”; there are two loose leaf reports as well (the first is included in the preceding report; the second may be from another lecture). After these reports there are two pages of questions from students and one page of student “comments.” (13 pages: 1 page with outline + 9 pages of student reports + 2 pages of student questions + 1 page of student comments)

This set of notes records the 7 October lecture given by Wolff during his 1937 Chicago coursework on “Cosmic Consciousness” (see the entry two rows above). The subject of the lecture was “Karma and Realization.” The notes conclude with several post-lecture comments by Wolff.

This is an outline for a course given on 4 March 1938. After a review of psychological types, Wolff notes in points 9 and 10 that: “There must be complete freedom of development in the direction of the given dimension, without one function imposing its dictum upon the free play of another function” and “This points toward a society organized on the basis of vertical classification.” Here we see the beginnings of Wolff’s “Vertical Thought Movement,” which we would formalize several years later. (1 page)

It is not clear whether this is an outline for a class given on this date or it is a plan for future coursework. Following a general discussion of Eastern and Western Yoga, Wolff notes that the “the right western method is a decidedly pioneering problem,” and that there are two possible candidates: (1) Psychology, as “best developed in the hands of Dr. Jung”; and (2) Mathematics –“the method that has been effective in my own experience.” Wolff concludes with the statement: “In the present course I am endeavoring to incorporate the method developed in psychology to see if I can reach a wider sector of the public.” (1 page)

The title would seem to indicate that this is an outline for a class given on this date. In this class, Wolff introduces the notion of “Super-Functional Consciousness,” which is the subject of a course that he gave in Chicago the following month. (2 pages)

This is an announcement by The Assembly of Man that a series of classes to be given by “Dr. F. Merrell-Wolff” will commence on September 4 and that it will meet on “Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.” It also publicizes a series of seminars by Mrs. Sarah A. Merrell-Wolff to be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

This is a transcription of eleven lectures that Wolff gave in Chicago from 4 September 1930 to 18 September 1938. In addition to the Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday lectures publicized in the preceding announcement, there are also two Saturday lectures.
This course continues the curriculum of Wolff’s 1937 Chicago lectures, which introduced the “problem of consciousness transformation.” In the earlier lectures, Wolff approached this problem from a philosophical-religious standpoint; in these lectures, he considers the problem from the perspective of modern analytic psychology. Wolff notes that this approach is not to be regarded as more profound than the former, but as one that is particularly suited to Western culture. (143 pages)

This file contains four lecture outlines that used for his 1938 Chicago lectures on “Super-Functional Consciousness.” They are dated 4 September, 5 September, 7 September and 11 September, but Wolff did not adhere to this schedule. Thus, for example, he annotated the 7 September outline as Lessons 3 and 4, which were delivered on separate days.

There are two copies of the 4 September lecture, and the verso of p. 2 of the first copy has a name and note written on it. (9 pages)

The date “9/11/38” is written in hand on this outline, but the subject matter (the libido) is covered in the Chicago lectures delivered on 16 September and especially 17 September. (1 page)

The date, lesson number, and some of the content of this outline fall outside the range of the lectures on “Super-Functional Consciousness” that Wolff delivered from 4 September to 18 September. In the outline below (dated 26 September 1938), Wolff mentions two additional courses (“Subtle Unfoldment” and a cumulative course), so the current outline may be part of this coursework. Of note in this outline is Wolff’s “three-fold meditation for the state of Quiescence.” (2 pages)

In this undated note, Wolff sketches a “class practice” involving stopping thoughts. It is not known whether Wolff taught this technique in his Chicago classes, but it does seem to have a connection to point III-a of the outline dated 21 September 1938. (2 pages: original + transcribed)

The title, date and content of this outline imply that Wolff engaged in additional Chicago coursework after his 1938 lectures on “Super-Functional Consciousness.” Wolff notes that this is the first lesson in a cumulative course that builds on the 1937 class titled “Toward Cosmic Consciousness” and the 1938 classes “Super-Functional Consciousness” and “Subtle Unfoldment.” No documents have been found in the Wolff Archive that pertain to the subject matter of the latter course, which dealt with “possible incarnation on a subtle Sangsaric plane of consciousness either before the attainment of Liberation, or subsequent to that Attainment.” (2 pages)

These notes presuppose some of the concepts of Wolff’s lectures on “Super-Functional Consciousness,” but contain a number of ideas not found in these lectures. Accordingly, it may be a lesson plan for one of the two additional Chicago courses that Wolff mentions in the outline dated 26 September 1938. (5 pages)

In this Chicago lecture, which was given around the time that he was writing “The Vertical Thought Movement,”, Wolff notes that Hitler’s idea of a strictly regimented society with a superior culture is a “great contradiction.” (6 pages)

This is a series of extemporaneous lectures on the “Holistic” that Wolff gave on four consecutive Sundays beginning 7 September 1952. These lectures were recorded, and a snippet of the first lecture, a good deal of the second lecture and the entire third lecture can be found in the Audio Recordings section of the Wolff Archive. There is no recording of the fourth lecture in the archive.

These lectures were transcribed (presumably from complete recordings) and then edited into the format that is found here. The Wolff Archive also contains the first draft of the transcription of the third lecture in this series, which was completed by Fay Orr (Newman); it is in the file that follows, and contains Wolff’s handwritten edits. The last few pages of the final version of the transcription of the second lecture were missing, but these missing pages were found in an earlier draft form. Accordingly, these pages have been added to the current transcript (Lecture 2, pp. 12.5-16; please note that p. 12.5 overlaps p. 12 of the finished version).

Wolff has clearly been influenced by the thought of Aurobindo in these lectures. Thus, for example, in the first lecture Wolff uses Aurobindo’s notion of supramental descent in discussing “The Evolution.” In the lectures that follow, Wolff’s concern is to develop a concept that allows for the integration of “The Evolution” with “The Transcendental,” or the finite with the infinite. Toward this end, he introduces the term ‘Holistic’ and seeks—through a discussion of the mathematics of the transfinite—a proper symbol for this notion (it is symbolized as ‘א_∞’). He then sketches what he suggests “may sometime be the form of a new kind of mathematics” that allows us to conceive of the “Holistic Infinity” as “composed of an infinity of individualities every one of which is infinite, interfused and yet, also unique.” (85 pages)

This is the first draft of Fay Orr’s transcription of the third lecture in Wolff's Holistic lecture Series. It contains Wolff’s handwritten edits. (22 pages)

In this note, Wolff distinguishes two meanings of ‘organic’ and ‘organism’ as well as ‘mechanical’ and ‘mechanism’. He also makes a comment on these notions from the standpoint of the Holistic program. (1 page),

This list of seven questions may be from a class that Wolff held on this date; the topic of the lesson is not known. (1 page)

It is not quite clear whether this document, which is incomplete (its first three pages are missing), is part of a letter or a response to an individual during a lecture series. It is definitely from the early 1950s, when Wolff and his wife began the “Holistic Assembly.” Wolff gave a series of lectures on the “Holistic” in 1952, and it may be the case that this document relates to some meetings held about this time (for example, on p. 5, Wolff states “in the conference of last Wednesday, your psychological presentation quite clearly involved a theory of epistemology, of logic, of value, of ethics and of metaphysics that are quite clearly divergent from other extant theoretical presentments and present problems for philosophical criticism.”)

The document contains Wolff’s responses to five of seven questions posed by an unknown individual: Wolff states that “the foregoing covers my reflection to date, and I find this material interesting and all the more so for its having a problematical character.” He says of his interlocutor that “I think you have got hold of something pretty profound, that may well be the greatest advance in western psychology to date.” The five responses here cover: (1) The question as to whether psychology, as contracted to philosophy, carries the greater integrative potential; (2) Pseudopodal formations; (3) Egoism and logic; (4) Cellluar apex cones; and (5) “Polar orientation and the rotation.” (10 pages)

On 24 January 1970, Wolff held an “induction talk” at the home of Helen Briggs in Phoenix, Arizona (Briggs was Wolff’s step-daughter-in-law). This lecture was recorded and is titled “Induction Talk” in the Audio Recordings section of the Wolff Archive. Those in attendance were asked to write a brief account of their experience during the lecture, and these accounts make up this report. (5 pages)