Franklin Merrell-Wolff offers an interpretation of a passage from The Voice of the Silence regarding what is there called the “Arya Path” or the “Path of the Great Renunciation.” He begins by outlining the Realizations that form the basis of his philosophy and then reads and comments upon a letter in which he suggests the possibility of becoming a Tri-Kaya able to work for the redemption of those locked in to either the sangsaric or nirvanic consciousness. He suggests that this may open up “the possibility of a new dispensation in which the purification by suffering is replaced by the Purification through Joy, in the transcendental sense.”

Franklin Merrell-Wolff offers some words of introduction to a rerun of the audio recording “On the Meaning of Redemption.” Wolff considers this discourse, along with “Sangsara, Nirvana, and Paranirvana,” parts 1 and 2, to be a record of the most important things he has ever said on the subject of redemption.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff offers a critique of the negative formulation of metaphysical questions given by Nagarjuna in the Buddhist sutras. He suggests that what Nagarjuna is negating is not the possibility of knowing transcendent consciousness, but rather that such a knowing and such a reality is not contained within the conceptual order of our universe of discourse and must be known by awakening a function of consciousness other than sense perception and conceptual cognition. He goes on to clarify Nagarjuna’s position by quoting from Lama Anagarika Govinda’s work entitled The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhistic Philosophy and expands upon this by reference to the development of transfinite numbers by Dedekind and Cantor. Wolff then takes up the question of the meaning of space when conceived as the Root of all that is by considering fundamental statements from The Secret Doctrine regarding the symbols of “absolute Abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity,” and “absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness.” He makes a distinction between the seeming voidness and objectivity of a “perceptual space” that is affected by the presence or absence of objects within it, and the substantiality and subjectivity of Unconditioned Consciousness as the “Universal Container” that is unaffected by the presence or absence of objects within it, but which can be known in a state of Realization.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff continues his discussion of space as a symbol or representation of the Ultimate. He offers commentaries on quotations regarding the meaning of ‘space’ from The Secret Doctrine by examining references to Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance, and Fohat. He asserts that these facets of the Root Consciousness offer three potential approaches to the Root; namely, through: (1) an orientation to a Universal Consciousness; (2) an orientation to the principle of Substance; and (3) an orientation to the principle of Dynamism. Wolff suggests that three practical consequences grow out of this threefold unity and the notion that thoughts are the producers of things: (1) a new interpretation of the meaning of ‘projection’ as a modern psychological term; (2) a theory of magic; and (3) a statement of the reasons why control of thought becomes very important.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff responds to a letter from a student who raises questions concerning ontological conceptions found in the Theosophical literature and in the work of Sri Aurobindo. Wolff discusses the meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s conception of Absolute Transcendence and compares it to the Theosophical conception of the Rootless Root, which remains unaffected by the presence or the absence of a universe or of an involution and evolution. He goes on to define subject-object consciousness as a vector line connecting a knower and a known; non-phenomenal consciousness, on the hand, is conceived of as a container akin to an n-dimensional space. Wolff affirms that the turning of our awareness away from the vector-line orientation toward the spatial orientation is the very crux of the yogic problem. He then goes on to compare the concepts of substance, consciousness, and dynamism with what Sri Aurobindo designates as “Sachchidananda,” and he examines the notions of theism, pantheism, and panentheism. Wolff concludes by concurring with the writer that perhaps the conception of “Fohat” found in The Secret Doctrine fulfills the same office as that attributed to “Supermind” in the Aurobindian philosophy.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff continues his response to the letter from a student on the subject of determinism and freedom. He acknowledges that there is an inner and external determinism on the pragmatic or empiric level and formulates the issue as being between an absolute conditioning in one case and a relative conditioning that permits real choice in the other. Wolff develops three lines of argument bearing upon this issue: the psychological argument, the scientific argument, and the dialectical or ontological argument. He makes the case for the psychological immediacy of seeming freedom by examining our immediate awareness of an external world and of other human beings. He goes on to outline the scientific basis for the theory of determinism and argues that this basis in undercut by our modern notion of physical law as statistical rather than causal. He concludes by presenting a dialectical argument for resolving the problem of freedom versus determinism based upon implications derived from the dualistic character of our empirical consciousness.

Franklin Merrell-Wolf explores the references to ‘Absolute Consciousness’ as it is employed in The Secret Doctrine and offers a detailed analysis of and a cross correlation between these statements with others found in The Mahatma Letters and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. He notes that in some passages the term ‘Absolute Consciousness’ could be construed as the consciousness of a being, and in that case it would be relative to that being and therefore not absolute. He also points out that it could not be a consciousness of content or phenomena, in as much as that would imply a conditioned consciousness.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff continues his analysis of the term ‘Absolute Consciousness’ as employed in The Secret Doctrine. He first considers the meaning of relative consciousness and then reviews the Realization that he calls the “High Indifference” before proceeding to offer a reference in The Secret Doctrine that tends to confirm this Realization of Consciousness-without-an-object-and-without-a-subject.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff discusses the nature of theosophical knowledge and its presumed objective and universal validity. He acknowledges the distortions in our thought that arise due to the relativity of our base of reference and our psychological type, and concludes that since we do not have certain answers, we must operate on the level of probable truth. He discusses the limitations of empirical science and the normative sciences of logic and pure mathematics, and concludes that although we do not find certainty in our exoteric science, we may have it in our esoteric science. Wolff quotes a passage from The Secret Doctrine describing the methodology by which its body of knowledge was obtained and verified. He asserts that while this knowledge is empirical, and therefore not absolutely certain, it attains a higher degree of certainty than any other empirical knowledge; and, that like the normative sciences, it implies the possibility of a truly objective knowledge. Wolff concludes this discourse by addressing the rationale for maintaining this esoteric knowledge in trust for humanity until it has reached the level of moral responsibility to make proper use of it..

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