After formal education in philosophy and mathematics at Stanford and Harvard, Wolff devoted himself to the goal of transcending the normal limits of human consciousness.
[1] Merrell-Wolff and his wife founded an esoteric group called the Assembly of Man in 1928, which congregated in Tuttle Creek Ashram in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Mount Whitney.
[1] Wolff's publications are "an elaboration of the significance of [his] mystical experiences,"[2] described by religious scholar Arthur Versluis as a "consistent and extensive body of work with a unique vocabulary and set of concepts".
[3] In its aftermath, Wolff found himself being in a state of euphoric consciousness he called the "Current of Ambrosia", which he described as being "above time, space and causality".
[2] At the center of these experiences was the realization of "Primordial consciousness", which, according to Wolff, is beyond and prior to the subject or the object and is unaffected by their presence or absence.