Tag Archives: Studio 31

Undoing Yourself

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.

Christopher S Hyatt Undoing Yourself from Falcon Press

“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

Ishtar Rising

Ishtar Rising: Or, Why the Goddess Went to Hell and What to Expect Now That She’s Returning by Robert Anton Wilson, cover painting by Sallie Ann Glassman, cover and book design by James Wasserman’s Studio 31, the 1989 first edition from Falcon Press / Golden Dawn Publications, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Robert Anton Wilson Ishtar Rising from Falcon Press

Although this is the first edition of Ishtar Rising, the book was actually and originally published by Playboy Press in 1974 as The Book of the Breast.

“Psychologist, novelist and former Playboy editor Robert Anton Wilson takes you on [a] journey through esoterica and erotica, explaining why Eve in the Bible and Eris in Greek myth were both involved with nefarious apples … why the Great Goddess of the ancients went to Hell, and why most of us go to Hell in our dreams occasionally … why female pacifists baring their breast in front of the Pentagon were unconsciously repeating an ancient religious ritual … why celibates have burned so many ‘witches’ … and more!”— back cover

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Cosmic Trigger II

Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth by Robert Anton Wilson, cover painting by Aiden Willard Cole, cover design by James Wasserman’s Studio 31, the 1991 first printing from New Falcon Press, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Robert Anton Wilson Cosmic Trigger II from New Falcon

“Since the ultimate map of all maps which includes all the territory of existence does not exist, and we cannot even imagine how to produce it, the best we can say of any reailty-tunnel—sensory or mathematically abstract, philosophical or ‘superstitious,’ created by our tribe or by a different (and therefore ‘inferior’) tribe, ‘scientific’ or ‘political’ or ‘artistic’—can only consist of, ‘This map here seems to work pretty well for my purposes, in most cases, so far.’ (Or, in more academic language, ‘The data does not yet justify revising the theory.’)

Every ‘reality’ remains relative to the instrument used in detecting or measuring it. In most cases, for most humans, in ordinary life, the instrument that determines our ‘realities’—or reality-tunnels, more accurately—remains our nervous system in general and our brain in particular.” (156)

“If I have managed to make Korzybski clear the reader should now understand that the redness of roses belongs to the realm of our sensory experience, while the no-color of atoms belongs [to] the realm of our most abstract brain software. You should also see why social scientists have largely given up the word ‘reality’ entirely and speak of glosses or grids or models or (the term from Tim Leary I find clearest of all) reality-tunnels.

To attribute ‘reality’ to any one level of abstraction, from the most sensory to the most theoretical, implicitly damns other levels to ‘non-reality’ even though they, too, represent normal human experience.” (157)

“One man from CSICOP recently wrote, ‘Wilson describes himself as a ‘guerilla ontologist,’ signifying his intention to attack language and knowledge the way terrorists attack their targets: to JUMP OUT FROM THE SHADOWS for an unprovoked attack, then slink back and hide behind a belly-laugh.’ (Emphasis added, of course.) You can see that this poor man feels under attack and probably looks beneath his bed at night to see if I or some other Witch might be lurking there. He also never had a teacher who told him using the same word three times in a short sentence creates a dull mechanical style suggesting a dull mechanical mind.” (215–216)

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.

Cosmic Trigger

Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson, illustrated by John Thompson, foreword by Timothy Leary, afterword by Saul-Paul Sirag, cover painting by Sallie Ann Glassman, cover design by James Wasserman’s Studio 31, the 1989 third printing from Falcon Press, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Robert Anton Wilson Cosmic Trigger from Falcon Press

“I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING

This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribben, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must ‘believe’ something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence.”

“Cosmic Trigger deals with a process of deliberately induced brain change through which I put myself in the years 1962–1976. This process is called ‘initiation’ or ‘vision quest’ in many traditional societies and can loosely be considered some dangerous variety of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology.”

“Briefly, the main thing I learned in my experiments is that ‘reality’ is always plural and mutable.”

“There is a great deal of lyrical Utopianism in this book. I do not apologize for that, and do not regret it. The decade that has passed since the first edition has not altered my basic commitment to the game-rule that holds that an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.”

“This book does not claim that ‘you create your own reality’ in the sense of total (but mysteriously unconscious) psychokinesis. If a car hits you and puts you in the hospital, I do not believe this is because you ‘really wanted’ to be hit by a car, or that you ‘needed’ to be hit by a car, as two popular New Age bromides have it. The theory of transactional psychology, which is the source of my favourite models and metaphors, merely says that, once you have been hit by a car, the meaning of the experience depends entirely on you and the results depend partly on you (and partly on your doctors). If it is medically possible for you to live—and sometimes even if the doctors think it is medically impossible—you ultimately decide whether to get out of the hospital in a hurry or to lie around suffering and complaining.”— Robert Anton Wilson, preface to the new edition

 

The Hermetic Library Reading Room is an imaginary and speculative future reification of the library in the physical world, a place to experience a cabinet of curiosities offering a confabulation of curation, context and community that engages, archives and encourages a living Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to contribute to the Hermetic Library Reading Room, consider supporting the library or contact the librarian.