Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation & Other Devices by Christopher S Hyatt, introduction by Israel Regardie, preface by Robert Anton Wilson, cover painting by Sallie Ann Glassman, cover design by James Wasserman’s Studio 31, the 1989 fourth revised edition from Falcon Press, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.
“Sufism is only the largest of several Near Eastern and European ‘mystic’ movements which recognize the robotry of ordinary humanity but, unlike the Orient, attempt to Un-do and de-robotize those who have a dawning apprehension of their mechanical state and sincerely want to become less mechanical, as far as that is possible. I am not writing a recruiting manual for Sufism (which is doing quite well without my advertisements): I am merely using the Sufi school as one example of the tradition to which this marvelous book, Undoing Yourself, belongs.
Most readers, if they have encountered such ideas at all, probably identify them with Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, two of the most talented expositors of a school of neo-Sufism which they peddled under the brand name ‘Esoteric Christianity.’ The present book also owes a great deal to Aleister Crowley, who belonged to this tradition but sold his own brand of it under the label of Gnostic Magick. There is also a strong influence here of the bio-psychology of Wilhelm Reich; but all this tracing of ‘sources’ is ultimately trivial. The importance of Christopher Hyatt’s work is what you can get out of it and that depends entirely on what you put into it.
It works, if you work.”
“Aside from such ‘symbolic magick’ (as distinguished from magick ritual, which is a kind of Brain Change experiment), the main reason people prefer to read neurological exercises rather than doing the exercises is the dread and sheer horror which the word ‘work’ invokes in most people. Some great teachers, especially Gurdjieff and Crowley, have literally frightened away thousands of would-be students by insisting on the necessity of HARD WORK (as I also frightened a lot of readers by using those words several times in this essay.)”
“Hey! Catch this! A Secret of the Illuminati Revealed!
Here I want to let you in on a real Secret of the Illuminati, one that has never been published before.
The so-called ‘work’ involved in Brain Change is not like ordinary ‘work’ at all. It is more like the creative ecstasy of the artist and scientist, once you really get involved in doing it. Most people are afraid of it only because they think ‘work’ must be a curse and can’t imagine that ‘work’ can be fun.” — from the introduction by Robert Anton Wilson