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Professional Biography of Phil Norfleet
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Formal Education
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Phil
Norfleet was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. After
graduation from high school, he matriculated at the
Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge,
Massachusetts. While at MIT, he studied science, mathematics
and philosophy. During that era, the MIT faculty included
many notable individuals in many academic fields; however,
there were two men who had a truly significant influence on
his intellectual development. These men were
Jerry Fodor and
Giorgio de Santillana.
Although
at the time Phil studied under him, Jerry Fodor (Born 1935)
was only a young instructor in Humanities; Fodor
subsequently became one of the most important American
philosophers of the late Twentieth Century. Fodor was the
person who first taught him about some of the greatest ideas
of Western Civilization, particularly the thought of the
ancient Greek philosophers, historians and playwrights; such
as Plato, Thucydides and Aeschylus.
When Phil
was at MIT, Professor de Santillana (1902-1974) was a senior
professor of Humanities and an internationally renowned
authority regarding the history of science. It was Professor
de Santillana who introduced him to the profound
epistemological ideas concerning the connection between
astronomical science and the great mythologies of ancient
civilizations. |
Rutgers University Philosophy
Professor, Jerry Alan Fodor, in the year 2007. |
MIT Humanities Professor, Giorgio de
Santillana, in the late 1960s. |
View of the main MIT
Campus on the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
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View of the University of Colorado at
Boulder, from Flagstaff Mountain. |
Phil
had intended to study electrical engineering at MIT but,
upon encountering his first courses in that subject, he
concluded that he really had absolutely no interest in any
of the engineering disciplines. He changed his major to
mathematics but soon realized that his talent in that area
was insufficient for a successful professional career. For that reason, as well as
significant financial considerations, Phil transferred to
the University of
Colorado (CU) during his junior year. He received a Bachelor of
Science degree from CU in 1966. Subsequently, Norfleet entered the
CU Graduate School where he studied for a doctorate in the
areas of Computer Science and Business Administration.
Unfortunately, although he completed all required course
work, he never completed his thesis and thus never
received his advanced degree. |
Human
Consciousness
Studies
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G. I. Gurdjieff in 1949,
a few months before his death. |
In 1978, Phil Norfleet began to actively
investigate the possibility of attaining higher states of
human consciousness; in particular, he began to study the
writings of the noted
Fourth Way
teachers
G. I. Gurdjieff and
P. D. Ouspensky. From 1979-1981, he participated in
activities of the Denver branch of the
Prosperos
- a Fourth Way Group founded by
Thane
Walker.
Upon his relocation to
Belgium in 1981, he made contact with the
Institute Gurdjieff in Paris which was then led by
Mme. Jeanne
de Salzmann, one of Gurdjieff's senior students. As
time permitted, he studied with a former member of the Paris
group who had established an independent Fourth Way group
located in Brussels, Belgium. This study continued until he
moved to Naples, Italy in 1986.
Between 1986 and 2002,
Phil continued to study Fourth Way writings but was not
involved with any formal groups. However, while temporarily
residing in New Mexico intermittently during the period
2003-2005, He participated in the activities of a
Gurdjieff
Foundation group located in Albuquerque and
subsequently with a group founded by Professor
Paul J. Watson of the University of New Mexico.
Professor Watson's group sought to integrate Fourth Way
teachings with the latest findings of scientific research
into human consciousness.
Since 2006, he has
resided in Gainesville Florida where he continues to study
human consciousness. His personal goal is to integrate the
teachings of the Fourth Way with Neoplatonic Philosophy and
Rosicrucianism. He hopes that the result will be an
effective and practical system of exercises which serious
seekers may employ to achieve higher states of conscious
awareness. |
Career with the United
States Government and NATO
Photograph, taken in the late 1960s, of
the entrance to the Martin Marietta Plant near Denver,
Colorado. Components of a Titan IIIC Launch Vehicle are
ready to be transported from the plant to the launch site at
Cape Canaveral, Florida. |
In 1968,
Norfleet took a position with the United States Air Force (USAF)
Contact Management Division; ultimately becoming the Chief
of Contracts at the Air Force Representative Office at the
Martin Marietta Corporation, Denver Division in 1976. While
with the Air Force, he was involved in the contract
management of several major missile and space projects
including Titan III Launch Vehicles, MX Missile, NASA
Skylab, Space Shuttle and Viking Mars Lander Programs. In
all, he remained with the Air Force for about twelve years.
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In 1981, Phil
accepted a position as Contracting Officer for the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); he was located at the
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE)
near Mons, Belgium. While at NATO, he was responsible for
the contract management of several major Command, Control
and Communication Intelligence (C3I) Systems. In particular,
he was the contract manager for the development of the
Status Control Alerting and
Reporting System
(SCARS) Program, a Strategic C3I program for the control of
all the nuclear assets assigned to the Supreme Allied
Commander, Europe (SACEUR). Norfleet also was involved in
the acquisition of a command and control system to process
NATO early warning radar information and a Tactical C3I
system for the Allied Forces Central Region (AFCENT)
headquarters located at Brunssum in the Netherlands. He
worked at SHAPE for approximately five years. |
SHAPE
Headquarters near Mons, Belgium. |
Photograph of Mount Vesuvius taken from
the balcony of Phil Norfleet's residence on the Vomero Hill
in Naples, Italy. |
In 1986,
Norfleet relocated to Naples, Italy to take a position as
the Director of Contracts for the United States Navy in the
Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern Regions. While at
Naples, he was involved in several major international
undertakings such as negotiating an agreement between the US
Navy and the Turkish General Staff; organizing an economic
symposium in Athens, Greece; and establishing an
organizational detachment for the Navy on the Island of
Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. |
| Phil Norfleet
returned to the United States in 1988 and took a contract
management position for the NATO Supreme Allied Commander
Atlantic (SACLANT)
located in Norfolk, Virginia. While at SACLANT, he was
responsible for major system acquisitions including the
contract management of a "Strategic Level" B-3 (per the
Orange Book) Secure, Command, Control and
Communication Intelligence (C3I) System. He also was
involved in the acquisition of a digital communications
system for the NATO Base in
Keflavik, Iceland
and a "Theater Level" C3I System for the NATO
Iberian Atlantic Command (IBERLANT) in
Portugal.
With the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold
War, work for NATO and the US Department of Defense seemed
to diminish in significance. Accordingly, Phil took an early
"bonus retirement" from Government service in 1994 to devote
his remaining years to other interests, which were important
to him, but had been placed on the "back burner" during his
many years of service for the US Government and NATO. |
SACLANT Headquarters at the Norfolk Naval
Base in Virginia. |
Post Retirement
Activities
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Upon retirement, Norfleet relocated to Panama
City Beach, Florida. During the first 12 years of his
retirement (1994-2006), he traveled extensively throughout
the United States while pursuing philosophical, historical
and genealogical research. Main topics of that research
included the Revolutionary War in the South Carolina
backcountry; Bell Witch Folklore in Middle Tennessee; and
the genealogies of the Norfleet, Campbell and Mayfield
families. Since the year 2003, he has been primarily
involved in metaphysical studies and art history.
Phil has created
a
total of twenty-four Web sites pertaining to his various areas of interest.
As of 2011, four of these sites were still under
construction.
At the present time, he resides in
Gainesville, Florida where he is principally involved in the
study of Neoplatonism and Rosicrucianism. |
Phil
Norfleet with his new Saturn in February 2008. |
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