Wolff had a profound respect for Sri Aurobindo, whose name he first came across in 1949 while reading Vincent Sheean’s book Lead, Kindly Light: Gandhi and the Way to Peace.[1] That same year he received Aurobindo’s book, The Life Divine, as a Christmas present. Wolff relates what happened next:

On looking through the table of contents, I came across a chapter heading that made my eyes bulge out: “Knowledge by Identity.” I had some years previously, in fact in 1936, invented the title “Knowledge through Identity” for expressing a certain state of cognition; and this was the first writing that I found any language like that anywhere and I was immensely interested. So, of course, that led to ten years of saturation in the literature of Aurobindo, and I’ve given many lectures, and I’ve tried to communicate something of his yoga to the sadhakas, because I don’t care whether one follows the yoga that I followed or not. I only care that Realization shall be attained by any way that may work, and there is no one way that is the sole path for all creatures.[2]

The recordings listed under this category are the earliest found in the Wolff Archive, and date back to an incomplete set of recordings of a series of lectures and classes that Wolff gave in Chicago during 1951 titled “The Meaning of Realization.”

[1] Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light: Gandhi and the Way to Peace (New York: Random House, 1949).

[2] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Lectures to University Students,” part 4 (Flagstaff, Ariz.: February 1968), audio recording, 3.