American Spiritual Philosopher Anthony Damiani grew up in New York City. From an early age Anthony was a fabulous painter, and played the piano with virtuosity. He was passionate about music.
Anthony did not finish college, he said mainly because he got fed up by what was being fed to him. but he continued a life long interest in philosophic ideas. He told us about one professor he really respected and seemed to have been a kind of mentor for Anthony: had been a Jesuit priest formerly, and encouraged the students to think for themselves.
During the war he worked on the docks, loading and unloading ships. He often listened to music on a small radio. Story is that one time he was so carried away by Ilya Mourametz that he fell off the rigging of the ship. He is rumoured to have been approached on the streets of Brooklyn by a Kabbalist who wanted him to be a student.
He married early and he and his wife had their first of six sons when he was 20 or 21.
Anthony had some early mystical experiences, and a profound interest in understanding life. After reading The Wisdom of the Overself he was so impressed that he wrote the publisher in 1946, to make contact with the author, Paul Brunton. A short time later, a letter came back to him saying Brunton would meet him at the Russian tea room on a certain day and time. Anthony took a copy of the Wisdom with him at the appointed time—expecting to meet a robed swami. He reports that he was so surprised to see a very short man in his late 40’s with a goatee, wearing a suit. He asked PB: did you write this book? PB replied: I like to think I had something to do with it. Anthony said that as soon as PB (as he was called) started talking Anthony knew he was his teacher.
For some time time, Anthony would go out to Long Island on weekends to spend time with PB, who was staying at a students house. After some months, with PB having him clean, and other physical tasks, and not talking philosophy with him, Anthony asked him: PB, when are you going to start teaching me philosophy? PB said what do you think I am teaching you?
After some time, PB suggested that Anthony stop the piano, and concentrate on philosophy and meditation. By the late 40’s Anthony had a second son (he would have 6 sons in all, spaced very close to 5 years apart, over there fore a 25 year interval!) He took up a job with the subway as a night toll taker so he could get away and read and meditate in quiet. After some months of falling asleep every night, he shifted out and a year later tried again… this time succeeding in deep meditations. He tells how one time he was deep in meditation and a man with a gun came to hold him up. He just pushed all the money toward him. A while later, when he came back to the world, he was so frightened he messed his pants.
Anthony was intensely passionate: about music, about spiritual philosophy, about life. He left no avenues of inquiry un turned over. He was very eclectic and did not stay with any one tradition. Later on he would write “I can’t believe that Buddha and Christ would be at odds. There had to be a big enough framework to hold them all.”
Some time in the 1950’s, while he was still working in the subway, he helped to build up a famous used book store in Manhattan called Aberdeen’s. At some point, Carl Jung would send occasional list of books to be found. Anthony quipped: “if I found two copies the second always went right to Jung.”
For some years, PB continued to visit and occasionally live in the US. In the late 50’s PB went quiet for a while, some time in New Zealand, and did not re-emerge into communication until around 1964. One night in the early 1960’s, Anthony awoke from sleep and woke his wife “PB has made it. He is permanently established in enlightenment.” At the time, PB was in New Zealand.
Soon after, Anthony had a severe heart attack. At some point he seems to have had a vision, was given a choice which was not really a choice. He could continue on his own practices, or he could open up to being a teacher, and there would be students, many students… but it might shorten his life. He of course chose the way of students and sharing what he had learned.
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He moved his family out of NYC in the mid 1960’s. At some time during or after the war, he was in upstate NY for a while, working on a military air strip. He very much liked the finger lakes region, and probably because of that, when he had a chance, the family moved to the shores of lake Seneca. Anthony got a job as night toll taker on the NY thruway, and by that time had 5 sons. With encouragement from Anthony, his oldest son opened a book store in Ithaca NY in the late 1960’s, The American Brahman Bookstore. Anthony gave a number of his books to stock a used section. Soon students and professors began coming to the store, and they had many questions. It being the hippie generation many students alternated their interest in spirituality with their interest in getting high. They also could have their horoscope made by Anthony’s son, or one of a few others. After a while, Anthony started giving once a week classes based on the books of Paul Brunton to a few regular students. It was not long before there was a crowd, and topics ranging from psychology to mentalism to cosmology to metaphysics were avidly discussed. At 5:30 the doors of the bookstore were closed, and students sat for meditation before a quick meal and class. In those early days two especially talented Cornell University math professors assisted Anthony in his teaching in various capacities. Also at that time, Anthony was still working night shift on the Thruway, as he continued to do for the next 10 years, and would head out for a half hour drive after the class ended at 10pm or so.
Anthony would provoke people to think deeply, and also encouraged them to learn to be still in sitting meditations. He had no problem saying one view one week, and the next putting forth almost the opposite view from another tradition. He encouraged people to ask questions, disagree, and most of all think for themselves. He was not satisfied with hand waving explanations: he wanted the details of how the universe came from the infinite source, the meaning of unique life on earth, how we came to know what we know, and the symbolism of the vast cosmos.
Anthony and some of the students smoked heavily, and all drank much coffee-- not always caring well for bodily health. But he also said that the psychic pressure of so many students continually around required that he do something to keep his nervous system going… hence the smoking and coffee. He reported that when he first started teaching at the bookstore, he was so jangled by the task of teaching, that sometimes in the middle of class he would go in the toilet and vomit!
In 1971 he donated 5 acres of his land in Hector NY for a philosophic study center. One of the students had built log buildings before, and it was decided to build a meditation and retreat building out of logs. It was quite beautiful in design--the logs were Hemlock, cut from a nearby stand, and all the work but the foundation was done by a crew of students. The first of what would be four buildings was dedicated Oct 29, 1972 3:57pm as Wisdom’s Goldenrod Center for Philosophic Studies.
From 1972 to his passing 12 years later, Anthony did most of his teaching, research and writing at the Center. As many as 50 or 60 students meditated together at 5 or 5:30, attending as many as 5 classes a week. He made himself available for personal questions as well as discussion of ideas.
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During this period Anthony led over 2000 classes lasting 2-2.5 hours, numerous seminars to prepare for classes, explore new ideas, or work out problems in philosophy, and occasional weekend seminars and meditation sessions. Topics ranged from the nature of the ego and how we can know, to the heights of ultimate reality. [quote “fathom the unfathomable…”] At times there was a class on a different tradition every night: neo-Platonism, Buddhism, Vedanta, astrology, psychology being some of the most visited. Audio cassette tapes which exist for about half of these classes have been digitized and form the main basis for our archives. Anthony also was an artist, and during the span of teaching years he drew, in a series of notebooks, about 350 diagrams. Many variations of these were used in the classes to illustrate ideas, and later as a basis for a cosmological philosophy, posthumously published as Astronoesis.
Anthony also traveled to Columbus Ohio a couple of times a year to give a weekend seminar to a group of students there, and twice traveled to Sweden to give seminars at the invitation of students there.
In 1978 began construction of a library building. At the suggestion of PB, a member of the group went to India to see HHDL, and invited him to visit WG. HHDL said he would visit if he came to the US. Surprisingly, in October 1979, on his first visit to the US, HHDL visited WG for 3 days and gave a seminar to > 100 people, and dedicated the library in the spirit of the Rime, inter-denominational Tibetan tradition.
In his classes and seminars, Anthony was continually trying new ideas and approaches, provoking students to think more deeply, questioning, and inspiring us to look within. Often Anthony would take a question or idea and explore it for some weeks in a variety of traditions, each on a different night.
Many of his students visited with Paul Brunton in Europe, and PB visited WG in summer of 1977 for six weeks. Near the end of his life, several students from the group went to Swizerland to help PB and learn learn to organize his vast writings. After PB’s death, WG received for arranging and publishing the vast array of ideas written by PB, eventually to be published as The Notebooks of Paul Brunton in16 volumes.
Anthony passed away in October 1984 from complications of lung cancer. Just a few days before he died, Anthony met with HHDL, who agreed to be a mentor to the group after he passed away.
His students and new folks continue his legacy at Wisdoms Goldenrod Center for Philosophic Studies.
Looking into Mind Copyright 2019