The Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship

Mrs. Reynolds writes to inform Wolff that her husband Frank has passed away. She shares that the evening before he died, her husband was reading Wolff’s book and that he had penned some reflections upon this reading. She then asks Wolff to write her and explain the meaning of these reflections, which she enclosed with the letter. (Unfortunately, these writings were not found with the letter, nor has a response to Mrs. Reynolds been found.) (1 page)

This letter from Gertrude Adams was composed on two different dates while Ms. Adams was traveling from Chicago to visit friends and family in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. It is addressed “Dear Teachers,” and Ms. Adams notes that she is enclosing a small contribution for the convention fund and she wishes Wolff a happy anniversary on his first “Fundamental Realization” some twenty years earlier. On the second date (August 7, 1956), she writes from Grand Island, N.Y., which lies in the Niagara River along the Canadian-United States border.

This letter is not dated, and thus the attribution of 1949 is no more than a guess; it is possible that it was written a decade earlier. In this letter, Wolff addresses a number of questions that his stepson has posed; specifically: (1) How can a disembodied entity meet its ego?, (2) What is it that is left when an entity goes through Kāma Loka?, and (3) What is an entity?

This file contains the correspondence between Wolff and Mr. Charles Zemont, which consists of letters that range over a span of twenty-seven years. The first letter is from Mr. Zemont, who writes to commend Wolff on his book, Pathways Through to Space. He notes that the “book was a great companion after I had a Transition a few years ago,” and then states that the main purpose for his letter is to ask whether the “Experience” Wolff reports in the book repeats itself.

Wolff responds:

In this exchange of letters, Mr. Geshell writes that he has been thinking about a comment that Wolff made in a Lions Club speech, which he paraphrases as follows: “That almost any means are justified and should be taken to reduce the power of the political ‘entity’ in the United States. ‘Money power’ no longer holds a restraining position with reference to ascendency of political power.”

In his response, Wolff makes two points:

This is an exchange of letters between Wolff and Harry Murphy from 1948 and 1949. Mr. Murphy would become a close acquaintance of both Wolff and his wife, Sherifa.

This is an exchange of letters between Franklin Wolff and Mael A. Melvin, who—like Wolff—left academia to seek Recognition. In the first letter in this file, Prof. Melvin introduces himself to Wolff: he has left his position as an associate professor of physics at Columbia University, and he, his wife, and their young son are currently caretakers at a theosophical camp on an island in Puget Sound. Prof. Melvin would like to visit Wolff over a three-month period the following January through March 1949.

Mr. O'Donnell writes to tell Wolff of his appreciation for Pathways Through to Space, and to inquire as whether about the availability of Wolff's book, Yoga: Its Technique and Practice, which is mentioned in Chapter XXV of Pathways. (1 page)

This file contains the initial exchange of letters between Wolff and Reid Gardner, as well as another letter written by Wolff to Mr. Gardner a few years after their correspondence began. The two exchanged letters for at least twenty-six years, as Wolff mentions a letter he received from Mr. Gardner that was dated December 23, 1973.[1] So, there should be more letters in this file, and in fact, Wolff mentions others that precede the last letter in this file.

This letter from Aldous Huxley was a report to Elizabeth Baum on his reading of Pathways Through to Space, a copy of which Ms. Baum had sent to him. Unfortunately, only the first page of this letter is in the Wolff Archive.