Los Angeles County
Biographies
GEORGE EDWIN BURNELL
BURNELL, GEORGE EDWIN,
Philosopher, Los Angeles, California, was born in Hartford, Connecticut,
July 9, 1863, the son of Edwin Burnell and
Mary (Malloy) Burnell. He married Mary Irene Lamoreaux at Chicago, Illinois,
November 11, 1891, and to them was born a daughter, Genevieve Mary Burnell.
Mr. Burnell, who is known today
in all parts of the world as one of the leading thinkers of modern times,
received his practical education in the schools of Minneapolis and Chicago. He
was graduated from the High School of the former city and then went to the
University of Minnesota, from which he was graduated with the degree of
B. L. Following this, Mr. Burnell went to
Chicago, where he entered Morgan Park Theological Seminary, with the intention
of studying for the ministry. He was a student there under the late
Dr. William R. Harper, the noted educator who closed his career as
President of Chicago University. Mr. Burnell
also studied at the Union Theological Seminary of Chicago, and while there
devoted much time to the study of the so-called dead languages, such as Hebrew
and Sanscrit.
For more than twenty-five years Mr. Burnell
has devoted himself to a study of metaphysical subjects, with particular
attention to an interpretation of Sacred Literature. His views on this latter
subject have found expression in a series of remarkable lectures, covering a
diversity of subjects which he has treated in a manner so original as to
attract the attention of scholars throughout the world. He was first brought to
public notice when, as a high school student, he was called upon to deliver an
oration on the assassination of President James A. Garfield. His point of
view and method of thought expression, even at that early age, made him an
object of wonder to savants.
The versatility of his mental processes and his prolific
ability have increased steadily since that time, until today there are of
record more than one thousand reports on various subjects which he has
discussed in his lectures. To enumerate all of these would require a volume of
space, but a few of the lecture subjects will serve to indicate the power and
extent of Mr. Burnell’s philosophical
researches. Among them are:
“Administry,” “Aphorism XV:
Science of Faith”; “Challenge: Chargement of Soul”; “Churning:
Aryan Justice Classic”; “Crucifixion: Cosmic Tragedy”; “Grail Cup: Tragedy of
England”; “Hamlet: Study in Insanity”; “Jalalud Din:
Dynamic Man”; “Meditation: Isolation”; “Merlin: Gospel of Adventure”; “Nibblers:
Mental Lockjaw”; “Parsifal: Summoning Innocence”; “Prophets: Their Biological
Value”; “Pentecost: Only in Word Is God”; “Static Theatre: Message of Drama”; “Vyasa: The Immortal.”
His serial lectures, or groups of thought under general
subjects, include:
“Experience,” “Freedom of Life,” “Immortals,” “Minerva,” “Omar
Khayyam,” “Religion,” “Tragedy,” “Healing,” “Intellect,” “Mountain,” “Parables,”
“Rocking Stone,” “Samaritanism,” “Wealth,” “Authority,”
“Intelligence,” “Intuitional Areas,” “Luminous Areas,” “Meditation,” “Rational
Empire,” “Super-World,” “Virtue,” “Super-Classics,” “Super-Justice,” “Volitional
Empire,” “Super-Jurisprudence,” “Aggression,” “Flambeaux,” “Ens
Rationis.”
These latter series include original discussion and
interpretation of practically every phase of the title subjects. Some of them,
like “Flambeaux,” include two hundred separate and distinct treatments of the
original subject.
In his study of these many subjects Mr. Burnell has followed no previous school of philosophy,
having read the teachings of practically all the great thinkers of history and
then placed his own interpretation upon the subject at hand. He has not
confined his investigations to religious matters, although his reasonings in this particular field have caused him to be
placed on an eminence in the world of modern letters. An indication of his
method of reasoning is found in one of his lectures, which belongs to the group
“Ens Rationis”
and bears the general title, “Lordly Residence.” This is subdivided into two
parts, namely: “Another Abode Than Space” and “Refuge
for the Released.”
His thought in the first part takes the line that “space
is an entity of origin instead of an eternal, infinite being.” He then proceeds
to explain that all things material dwell in the soul, rather than the soul
being a part of them, and asserts that the soul, having always existed and
being everlasting, is the only real abiding place.
At one point he says:
“The Supreme Person, the only person there is, a
veritable personality, a form, a shape, who created space and the mind and all
beings upon the ground, and placed the sun and the moon and the stars, is never
visible to any being in this creation, with one definite, simple, provided
exception. Suppose a certain strong, irresistible mind should create a personal
being that was just like himself, and surround him with a supposed environment,
and shut him into that by the faculties of his own mind, established upon
certain laws that would definitely force him to move in the limits interminably
of that creation: For such a being there would be no rational possibility of
escape. He could not by any chance break away from that creation, because there
would be nothing to him different from that creation by virtue of which he
could break away from it. If, on the other hand, this strong, irresistible
person should himself, with his own irresistible and strong mind, establish
somewhere in the created personality of this being, or in any one of the beings
with which this created entity supposed himself to be associated, or in any of
the objects which were created about him, and this supreme, irresistible person
should actually, by his genuine form and person, occupy this state of mind or
creation, at that point would be a possible escape. Had there been no such
arrangement in this world, in this universe, there would never have been any
doctrine of escape at all. All there would have been would consist in a sense
of advancing from one form or orbit of experience to another, in the sense of
betterment in the sense of amelioration.
“Most human beings, however much they struggle for truth,
find it difficult to relieve themselves of the feeling that they must change
into a better state before they can be hopeful of the supreme advantage of
insight and emancipation. This is because they have not touched that Supreme
Person at all, nor do they actually know of that spot in the human person,
physical, flesh, or anywhere in the objects of existence which touch actually,
the entity that does not need any change, but being what it is, is truth, is
emancipate, is complete, is genuine, is all-knowing, all-perfect, eternal,
satisfied. Once only actually in touch with that Supreme Person they no longer
look upon the truth as a change of worlds, as a betterment of life, as an
amelioration of conditions, as an advantage or disadvantage, or any other
explanation that concerns good and evil, right and wrong, up and down, in and
out, or any of the arts of opposition.
“Now, as a matter of actual fact, there does exist in the
person, the real form of every entity in the universe, this genuine,
unchangeable being, who is the strong, irresistible mind, who is the abode of
Heaven and earth and sky and mind and all objects, subjective and gross. Human
beings are in the habit of thinking themselves to be certain persons with
certain attachments, responsibilities, conditions, forms, by virtue of which
they are distinguished and known by name, locality, time.
Their birth, their place of residence, whom they belong with, their associates,
their general appearance constitute and make up their
experiential sanity. But this self that does actually reside forever in the
genuine residence contains them, and lives, containing the whole universe, in
actual substance and form, in their own body.
“The debate arose because the location of this Supreme
Person was so definitely described that the text of the description seemed to
inevitably infer that it must be the individual, separate self that was
referred to, instead of the Supreme Person. For the text says:
“‘Where like spokes in the
nave of a wheel the arteries meet,
He moves about becoming
manifold.
“‘He moves about becoming
manifold
Within the heart, where the
arteries meet,
Like spokes fastened to the
nave.
Meditate on that Self!
Hail to you,
That you
may cross beyond the sea of darkness.’
“Now, the description was so definite in the person of
flesh that the debate arose, and prolonged in discussion and led out into
interminable histories, that this self, this eternal self located beside the
arteries of the flesh, containing all the worlds and the Heavens, must be the
separate self that was by some process of association with worlds and
experience to learn how to contain and dominate all things.
“If a person lacks sanction in bettering himself, he
secures it by a sympathetic sense of bettering others; but he does not come any
nearer to that eternal self, concerning whom there is no approach or falling
away. But this very self, near to the arteries of the heart, contained and is
not contained, is the abode of the Universe, the sun and the moon and the
stars, and of all beings; is not upon any journey, but is forever still; does not
have to overcome space to secure a sense of permanent residence; does not have
to overcome time in order to be released from that continual procrastination
which the orbits of things seduce.”
One of the important lectures by Mr. Burnell,
and one in which he told his listeners frankly what he thought of them,
analyzing their mental attitudes in great detail, was entitled “Nibblers:
Medicine for Mental Lockjaw Applied.” In part, he said:
“I can almost tell the nibbler by looking at him – and
some of them are here. But that is not the particular point about it. The
particular point is, they cannot open their mouths and
bite. They have lockjaw of the soul.
* * *
“It is stated that the truth which is proposed by this
teaching is not offering any human being a remedy for his condition. He is
supposed to approach it under the auspices of the idea that his condition,
physical mental, is not such that the only infinite truth, the eternal God,
could condescend to remedy. Patchiness – ethical training, religious fervor,
cultures and symbolism, the reading of the poets – emancipations from
prejudices, that occur through associations with material investigations, which
we are obviously in the presence of testimony sufficient to prove that
individuals in such associations attain to certain mental maturities, – how can
I say it to you, that such maturings are worthless?
How can I say it to you that faithfulness and devotion are blasphemy? How can I
say it to you so that you will see that everything you do to become what you
are is an insult to what you are?
“And how can I say it so that you will get done with this
mental meandering, this prowling and browsing? When will you stop, and not wait
for the Sphinx to petrify you with dismay? What shall I say to you that there
can come an evanishment to your career of failure?
What can I say? Think you that that omnipotent soul and omniscience within you
cares for your mediocre surrenderings, your wages in
meditation, and presentation of yourself to the teaching and all the several
things you do every moment in your life to win a little better credit with your
own mental premises, as if you should appoint unto yourself a path and then pat
yourself on the back for walking in it for the sake of an accumulation of
approval? Is it not insanity? – set yourself a stunt, accomplish it and sing
your applause! And the eternal soul says, ‘I am against thee and all thy
progress.’ For the simple reason that the truth is what you are – not what you
are going to make yourself; not even what you are going to discover yourself to
be.
“Omniscience is not on a journey of discovery. Then, you
say: ‘What is this that has cheated me so that I should think so differently of
myself, so unsatisfactorily.’ What? Because you cannot stand it to have somebody
who knows, walk up to you and ‘twist you around’, as Plato says, ‘in that
violent and criminal fashion that is required.’ Plato used to say – and he was
a very mild man, not a violent man at all, and he said: ‘Not one of the walking
images of their own estimation, not one of these painted pictures on their
cosmic airs, looking at their own opinions, at their own convictions and
certainties, doing devotion to their own laws and prejudices and imprisonments,
not one of them shall ever have escape from the case in which he has secreted
himself, until there shall come along one magnificent, reckless, ruthless
awakened soul that will tear him from the socket of his hypnotism.’
“Listen! Awakening from mental prejudice is surgical, –
the birth-pains thereof. I know where the arnica box is; I know where the
chloroform bottle is. Ten million are taking mental chloroform in the United
States now. Why? Because they were prescient of the
birth-pangs of their mind. How many people, let
me ask you, how many people out of these ten million are going to enter into
the new mind-born race? * * *
“I will tell you something now: That unless you are going
to get somebody to wring the neck of your estimates, the great figures of the
elements and the astral busy-bodies will know what to do with you. That is not
a threat. That is just reading your own mind – that is all. That is reading
your own covenant. You signed a covenant with the elements of this world, also
with the elements of your mind, that if you did not attain immortality you
would be distributed, for beings who would, beings yet unborn. Why, then,
should I talk to you? Know that in the world, unless so be that you have
sincerely, in the depths of your soul, signed a covenant with the truth, signed
a covenant in the very blood of your will with the truth, – what truth? THE truth. You do not even know of it. It is buying a cat in
a bag for ignorance to covenant with truth when in the conviction that they do
not know the truth.
“Let me tell you a little psychological fact: Suppose you
do not know what the truth is at all – you have just heard the word; you have
heard certain psychological symptoms advertised as being characteristic of
those who have the truth; that is, that they will be able to heal the sick, raise
the dead, and do those little items; characterized by certain marvelous
astonishing behaviors, – but supposing on the strength of that advertisement,
which seems so grand and so great, like as if it would say to you, ‘If you know
the truth you shall escape all evil, the very universe will crawl to you and
offer its services to you like a slave’.
“That is quite an advertisement, you see, and the more
ignorant you are the more the advertisement takes. Listen! Suppose you have
accepted on that advertisement and you have some difficulties you would like to
have settled up, – maybe your bodies are occupied by one of these infestations
called disease; maybe your affairs are rather crumbling and disappointing;
whatever it is, the advertisement of the knowledge of the truth reaches you and
appeals to you not only on the ground that it is the truth, but on the ground
of your greed. * * *
“This is the one thing that I wish to say to you: If you
can think of anything to say to yourself that will distress you, say it. It is
very awakening, don’t you know. I suppose that the device of evil as a total
unreality is most excellent. Destroyed in the awakening.
I will recommend, therefore, this one thing to you that even though you carry
with you the conviction that you are an ignorant being, not yet born in the
mind, so that when you are even, say, a mind-born man or woman you can hardly
contemplate the meaning of it, so convinced are you of what it is to be a
sense-born being, existing in the several items of human experience that are
credentialed to you by the senses; that is, a sense-born being. And when we say
mind-born, your mind bats its eyes and blinks and wonders about what divine
thing that may be. * * *
“There is a tremendous stream of mental refreshment flowing
throughout the civilized world. These are days, great days, and history shall
busy itself with the most stupendous intellects that the cosmos can furnish.
See that you stand in with that imminent and almost inevitable possibility of
being born mentally. I say therefore, this: Keep your mind in the atmosphere of
liberty. Do not contract any covenants with any of the propositions which your
ignorance shall suggest; and when that mind opens its mouth to breathe for the
first time the airs of its life, it shall find about you and within you a
magnetism of freedom, an atmosphere of freedom, so beautiful to its new,
dawning existence. The mind-born people of these states shall be pre-eminent in
the several years that are immediately to come; and those who do not receive
this quickening of the mind shall become as animals in the presence of this
kingly race.”
Mr. Burnell’s philosophy deals
with the belief that the realization of truth will be the solution of the
problems which beset mankind and that this solution cannot be brought about
through the laboratory method of the scientists.
Mr. Burnell, in his life of
study and investigation, has been a searcher for truth and his teachings, while
not in the form of dogma, have spread to the corners of the earth by their own
momentum; for among his listeners are some of the most serious-minded men and
women of the world today. While not in any sense a cult, his followers have
taken his messages as the results of sincere effort to interpret and explain
higher problems of existence. In all of his researches he has had the
sympathetic aid of his wife, who is a student quite as sincere and successful
as himself.
Although he has been a student all his life, Mr. Burnell, an independently wealthy man, has also been successful
in practical lines of business endeavor. In 1889, when he was attending college
in Chicago, he, in partnership with a schoolmate, participated in a realty
operation that netted them a large profit. This particular accomplishment
involved the opening of Auburn Park, a suburb of Chicago.
When he located in California several years ago, Mr. Burnell became interested in the development of farming
lands as an investor and is today an officer and stockholder in several
corporations engaged in this business. They include the California Irrigated
Farms Company, of which he is President and Director; the San Joaquin Farms
Company, of which he is President and Director, and the Rich Groves Land
Company, in which he holds similar office.
Another phase of the man is that of clergyman. Although
he never affiliated with any church, he is a qualified minister, having been
licensed to preach and to perform other ministerial offices by the Supreme
Court of Minnesota.
He is a Phi Delta Theta man and a member of several
clubs, including the California Club, Los Angeles Country Club, Jonathan Club,
Los Angeles Athletic Club and the Olympic Club of San Francisco. His outdoor
recreation is obtained from golf.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
20 May 2011.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Pages
679-681, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2011 Marie Hassard.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPIES