Ken Foldes

“Stream of Consciousness” Bio

Part One

I was born and grew up in New York City. My early interests were art and music. I started with pastels and watercolors at the age of 5, and attempted oils only much later. Zorro was one of my early heroes, along with Flash Gordon and Davy Crockett—I was “Zorro” on many Halloweens after. I attended the High School of Art and Design, my first exposure to the “big city” and wider “Broadway Boogie Woogie” world of Manhattan, an experience I treasure. There I took up the saxophone and even made the dance band, whose signature song was “Tuesday Mornings at 7 AM,” written by my music teacher, William Shine, a great dedicated musician. At the time my friends and I, Ken Gorsuch, Rich Carlan, Terry Fox, used to sing “doo wop” on the street corners. The highpoint was when we sang alongside The Duprees and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Then when the British Invasion and the Beatles burst on the scene and Doo Wop began to fade, I took up the piano and the guitar. I should say the Beatles, especially John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and what they represented—the vanguard, the new higher spirit breaking in upon the world that began the great shift from “negative” to “positive” Postmodern History—had the most profound effect on my life and sense for the incredible possibilities within Reality, I was infected with an optimism that has never left me. Then I got into Cooper Union and studied with Richard Meier, one of the great architects of our time. I had a “revelation” of a deep Truth one night while working at my basement drafting table designing a library in the Bronx, along with my friend Paul Amatuzzo, when upon a whim I measured, with my trusty 30-60-90º triangle, the angles that the various joints on my fingers made, and to my amazement there was a perfect correspondence! I saw that there was Reason, Order, Necessity in organic matter, in all things; this was Plato’s and Leibniz’ principle of “sufficient reason,” i.e. there is a reason for everything being the way it is and not otherwise; I then hit upon what I was to call “Organic Geometry,” by which one can understand the inner principles ruling organic form, light and space. The next year I found myself at Queens College studying Philosophy. There I had the good fortune to have as my teacher, John J. McDermott, who profoundly impressed me with the encyclopedic scope of his mind, a genius of the highest order, everyone wanted to “overtally” into his famous “Philosophy 10 Aesthetics Course.” That same year I also met Alan Watts, whom I regard as one of my “gurus,” one of the “high priests” of the counter-culture and Revolution in Consciousness that was underway, which began in SF earlier with Kerouac and the “Beats” – “beat” of course referring to pulse or heart-beat, that of the World Spirit, humanity as a single Being, the “counter” beat of the new spirit that was to turn the world upside down and inside out, preparing us for the “final Act” of History … I visited with Watts on his house-boat, the “Vallejo” in sunny Sausalito on a beautiful blue Cartesian day in June of that year.

Let’s not forget the times, these were the days of the “hippies”; a “hippie” was “hip” or “in the know” — “in on” the Truth that the thing of greatest value was not outside, in material things, but rather inside, and pertained to one’s consciousness and experience (cf., Jimmy Hendrix). “Now that you know who you are, what do you want to be! Baby you’re a RICH MAN, too!!” — You have a SELF, when it is “turned on” or functioning properly then the whole Universe is yours … is YOU! “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be!” JL/PM. Everyone was experimenting with mind-altering chemicals, with everything! —of course the last word on the “drug experience” was pronounced by Watts: “When you get the message, hang up the phone,”—with free-love, new life-styles, exotic dress and music, the sitar, day-glow posters, “Steps Leading to the Mountaintop” by Parker, Maxfield Parrish, “Nirvana” head-shops, Telegraph Avenue, “Easy Rider,” “The Graduate,” “2001, A Space Odyssey,” the Fillmore East and West, Cream’s “Disraeli Gears,” “White Rabbit,” Grace Slick, the search for The Truth, Ultimate Meaning—Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, The Aquarian Age, Savitria in Baltimore, Vicky, Sheila and Reed Morrison—the search for the God within, it was the same heady times that must have characterized those of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—the “first hippies”—whose Spirit drove them deeply into themselves where they discovered the “pearl of Great price” — The Absolute I, Geist, or the God within. It was after several transcendental “out-of-body” experiences and contact with very advanced beings such as Meher Baba and Babaji, that I finally finished my B.A. at Queens College and then went to India to meet certain Masters living in the Himalayas, where I wrote a Song for the World: “Voices singing misty crystal carols to the Sun, Happy Birthday to the World for it has just begun…,” as well as “The Living Light Loves You.” After India I returned to The Big Apple and took my M.A. at Queens College with Darrell Taylor, one of the highest incarnations of Reason I’ve ever known … In 1975, because of my study of Hegel and my pursuit of the God within I became a “born again” Christian, however soon discovered that the body of Christ had yet to advance from the “Church of Paul” to Schelling’s “Church of John.” Then in 1979, while in Duquesne’s doctoral program and with the help of John Sallis, I got a Fulbright Scholarship to study Hegel with Otto Pöggeler at the Hegel Archives in Germany — then after a seven year leave of absence, during which I took courses with Quentin Lauer and Alan White, I returned to Duquesne, finished a dissertation on Kant and Hegel, and got my Ph.D. in 1994 – I then began teaching Philosophy, science, and spirituality at Iona College, St. John’s and Sacred Heart’s University, and presenting papers at philosophy conferences, at the APA, the Hegel & Fichte Societies, and the World Congress of Philosophy, and publishing books and papers in journals as well . . .

Part Two

And here I must stop to leave space for my “message” which is this:

What I have learned over the years from all of my teachers, experiences, and studies with the “Masters of Wisdom” of the East and West—is that

(1) we are all in this thing together, we are engaged in bringing into the world (into consciousness) the Kingdom of God, Foundation, or The Jedi Order (the name’s not important, only the thing is). We are all involved in this, and no one is exempt. Either you are helping, or are obstructing the process, the Work. And

(2) What is to be done has nothing at all to do with changes in the physical/ material plane—but only and everything to do with changes or a SHIFT in Consciousness or Awareness.

You are welcome to read my books and articles on Academia and my lectures and videos on YouTube. My Hegel Book and The Jedi Handbook of Global Education delve more deeply into the “nitty gritty” of things, for example, into the nature of your true “Jedi” Self or “God-Self” and how to actualize it.

Always remember the #1 Truth: “The more you believe it, the faster you will see it!” May you all flourish! Happy and Prosperous eternal New Year! MTFBWY!