The Eugene Halliday Podcast: Recent Episodes
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Eugene Halliday (1911–1987) was a British artist, writer and teacher. Possessing a profound understanding of philosophy, religion and the science of his day, he published 15 books and gave over 250 recorded talks. Much of his work centred on his interpretation of the esoteric ideas behind religion.
The purpose of this podcast is to share Halliday’s teachings.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK).
Rather than discussing evolution in the conventional sense, Eugene Halliday argues that evolution presupposes involution: nothing can emerge unless it has first been enfolded within its source. Evolution (unfolding) and involution (enfolding) are therefore complementary phases of a single cosmic process. The real question is not how forms evolve, but what reality itself consists of.
Drawing on both ancient philosophy and modern physics, Halliday rejects the notion of inert matter. Matter is condensed energy, and because human beings exhibit intelligence, feeling and will, these qualities must already exist within the universal field from which matter emerges. Consciousness is fundamental rather than accidental.
The human task is to reverse the involutionary descent into identification with the body and ego. Our accumulated self-definitions become prisons that bind us to limited states of consciousness. This is the origin of what religious traditions call hell — not divine punishment but self-imposed confinement through false identification.
Freedom comes through developing a reflexive, self-conscious, self-consistent identity rooted in the Logos rather than the ego. Such a being is no longer compelled by circumstance and can act from conscious choice rather than necessity.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 23rd October 1974.
Eugene argues that the apparent opposition between a personal God and an impersonal universal field is false. Beginning with the scientific insight that matter is energy, he critiques both dualism (separate principles of good and evil, mind and matter) and classical monism, proposing instead an infinite, non-dual continuum of sentient power. Consciousness and matter cannot be fundamentally separate, but are different modalities of the same underlying reality.
Every individual personality is a local expression of this infinite field, which is necessarily omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. The traditional term “God” is therefore a convenient shorthand for this all-inclusive, intelligent, creative reality—not an anthropomorphic deity. Sin is interpreted as pursuing finite, ego-centred aims contrary to the wider purposes of the infinite sentient field, of which all beings are inseparable expressions.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
"If opposition is necessary for our growth, how is it so many people and nations have been crushed by this very thing? Can you explain how they have benefited by being opposed?"
So we’re going to consider this question of opposition ... how it is necessary. And we have to be very careful about people and nations. Many peoples have failed to recognise the necessity of the opposition, and the people who do not realise that opposition is necessary, dodge the opposition ... and become weakened.
As soon as you dodge opposition you have started a weakening process.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Eugene responds to a question regarding non-attachment, articulating the relationship between the observer and the observed.
"The observer is consciousness actually serving some object. The observed is the object receiving the energy from the consciousness. Now, consciousness can see quite easily without attachment at all. It can simply see, become aware of the nature of any object...The observer does not have to attach to the object perceived. If he does not attach, he will simply observe and say, “there is an object internal to consciousness”. But if he sends out the energy from himself and goes round the object and appropriates it and says “mine”, he has attached the object to himself. And in the process he has attached himself to the object."
Remember, Jesus says: “Where the treasure is, there is the heart also”.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth". (2 Timothy 2:15; KJV)
This verse implies "...that truth is divisible and yet truth is somehow whole."
TRUTH: "Truth we remember is a TR with another T at the end, aspirated with TH, is the same thing as the Law, the Torah. The T here means the fixed and the R means the differentiator. So truth contains that which is fixed, eternal and that which is differentiating or changing."
How is this so?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Do we need sleep?
What is the function of dreaming?
How can dreaming be be used to help develop the potentials of being?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960.
Is the end superior to the beginning?
"Is our final condition - our 'Big O', our Omega - better than our Alpha?"
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
In this talk, Eugene covers a wide range of topics, including:
- Conservation Laws
- The Function of the King
- Consciousness, Subject and Object
- Authority
- Pavlov's Dog-conditioning Experiments
- Dialectical Inversion
- The Dooming of the Perfect Relation
- Mass Inertia...the Devil
- Marxism, Tom Payne and John Wesley
- Atheist Rationalists
- Truth
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
(Note - the transcript for this talk contains an additional section of audience Q&A which has been excluded from this podcast.)
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
"The word becoming means ceasing to be and coming to be other than it was. So the word becoming covers a concept of being and not being simultaneously... there’s a necessity for a resolution between the being that is, and the being that might be, and the non-being. The non-being and the being together act upon each other and produce becoming."
"So the whole manifest universe is then a process of becoming. And because of this it means that whatever we are now, we are in process of not being. So that even the Marxist would say we are simultaneously ourselves and not ourselves."
"The state of becoming is a transition between an eternal death and an absolute non-manifestation. And the process of unbecoming bound is becoming free."
Referencing the 'three-part man' (head/chest/belly) and the holy trinity ('three in it', Father/Son/Holy Ghost), Eugene articulates the processes involved with individual 'becoming'.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK).
"We are all Sons of God, but we are not First Sons of God. There is One Son that is the first Son..."
"Who is Jesus? Jesus is that original One-ly-Begotten power of the infinite Fatherpower and He is not other than that power self-manifested, so there is no division whatever between Jesus the Son and God the Father."
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) in 1982.
"Now this is very peculiar, that inside the one being...there can be a variety of minds. There can be a ‘pattern-mind’ [i.e. higher mind] that sees all, there can be a ‘time-mind’ [i.e. lower mind] that sees the thing it’s chasing at the moment, and there can be, in between those two, any number of lesser and greater levels."
Eugene discusses these different minds, highlighting the importance of applying a governing concept as a permanent reference centre for being, one that will continue beyond death.
Of course, for those who believe that death represents your total annihilation, then "...eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." However, if this belief turns out to be wrong, you risk spending eternity as a lost soul.
Proceed with caution; do not waste the opportunity you've been given.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
This episode is a series of Easter readings by David and Zero Mahlowe, based on various of Eugene's writings.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
Eugene continues the discussion on Lucifer, commencing with an analysis of the work of Carl Jung.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
(Note - this talk has been spilt into two parts. If you're following along in the transcript, Part 2 commences under the heading 'Carl Jung'.)
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
Do we need Lucifer?
Eugene responds to a question from the audience:
"I just said that I’ve fallen out a bit with Lucifer...after what you’ve told us over the last few weeks, it doesn’t seem that he’s necessary at all...I don’t need Lucifer. That’s the thing I’ve been thinking of lately."
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
(Note - this talk has been spilt into two parts.)
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
"When you identify with your gross material body, you are identifying with the slowest beat that there is where you are. It isn't the only beat there, it's the slowest one. It is identification and the need for gross material experience that causes this focusing on the slow, because the slow is easier to learn first. But riding on it, there's another beat, and riding on that a very, very fine beat..."
"First a physical body, then a spiritual body". (St Paul)
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 24th June 1984.
What is freedom?
Freedom is NOT the absence of all constraint.
Freedom is NOT the following of impulses indiscriminately.
Rather, freedom is "...a gathering together and appointing a periphery to one's being, and a definition within that peripheralised zone of one's fundamental unique idea of one's own being contribution to Cosmos, and then following that with all the power of your trine nature, thinking, feeling, willing...".
"Is it possible to be unsatisfied if you can do that?"
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 29th May 1977.
Eugene responds to an audience member's question regarding the 'Bardo Thodol', or 'Tibetan Book of the Dead'.
In terms of our being, the Bardo refers to the intermediate zone between life and death. It is the realm of dream.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
We begin with a question from the audience:
"...effectually, we have to work from the conceptual apparatus that we have, and this appears to be slower than the emotional apparatus. In other words if we get involved in a situation that we conceptually decide we can do something about beforehand, but it already precipitates itself before the concept can get a hold of it. And I was wondering, what was the method of attacking it, to stop it?"
In his response, Eugene articulates why serial thinking is slower than our immediate awareness, and the processes involved, referencing the 'three-part man'.
Ultimately, our goal is not to learn how to inhibit our response to a stimulus, but rather to become 'transparent' to the stimulus, so that it passes through us.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
The talk begins with Eugene reading a question from the audience - Are we ever tried more than we can bear?
It is a common view amongst theologians that we are never tried more than we are able to bear the trial. How is this so? The key is to avoid looking backwards and acting based on the conditioning of your past experience.
You must respond with immediacy to the stimulus presented. Only then can you be free of your conditioning and ensure an adequate response in the here and now.
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit".
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, on 13th June 1963.
Eugene is asked a question about the lack of power. The question is, "How do we consider impotence on the three levels of being?" (i.e. the drive or will centre, in the belly; feeling, in the chest; ideas, in the head.)
"We are going to consider how we deal with impotence on four levels of being. The three-part man is tied together on the spinal cord as coordinator. We will write in will, feeling and thinking on the three levels of being, coordination on the spine, and we will proceed to examine what it is that causes impotence on any of these levels."
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, on 1st November 1961.
What does the fact that certain behaviour patterns in others produce feelings of resentment signify for the being who experiences such feelings? What is the best way:
a) of overcoming these feelings in oneself?
b) of making others reflect on their behaviour?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Eugene discusses the differences between two kinds of awareness - the masculine and the feminine - and the historical to-and-fro between lunar, matriarchal cultures and the solar patriarchal cultures.
In the modern context "...all people being born today...are tending towards a hermaphroditic state. That is, they are tending to balance the male and female sides of their being...". A person with the outward appearance of a boy is not necessarily an old-school militarist man of initiative and violence. They could be a "...very, very quiet, subtle weaver of patterns of feelings and of ideas, a wheedler as much as a man of violence."
"Simultaneously, because of this female emergent in the so-called male, the females have had to start thinking to themselves, 'Can we find a masculine principle inside ourselves so that we can rescue ourselves from being toys for warriors, considering the warriors don’t exist?'"
How does a girl get in contact with the male side of her being?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
How do we tell the difference between intuition and conjecture?
Eugene defines 'intuition', before explaining its importance in the next stage of evolution for human beings.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
(NB - There was an error in this recording, resulting in a loss of audio at approximately 45:05. A paragraph has been deleted; please review the transcript for the missing passage.)
This is a narration of Eugene Halliday's work "The Nature of the Zeitgeist", published by the International Hermeneutic Society in 1988.
"The term 'Zeitgeist', literally translated 'Time Ghost', was formulated by German philosophers in the nineteenth century when the idea of history as a developing organic process first made itself deeply felt in the consciousness of man. Until this time, and this is still largely the unconscious habit today, men had thought of other men at other times as very much the same as themselves...."
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 25th June 1985.
Will there be a second coming of the messiah?
This presupposes that there was a first coming.
Eugene discusses what is meant by messiah, how many comings there have been, and how many are likely.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960.
Eugene explains the five (5) levels of being, specifically:
- Mineral
- Plant
- Animal
- Empirical Man
- Logical Man
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 25th May 1980.
"I have been asked to talk about a very delicate subject, of a personal nature, and you know I dislike talking about personal things unless I can make a macrocosmic reference, so I shall universalise the problem. It is the problem raised, by falling in love for the first time."
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960.
'A' equals "The Absolute', meaning that which IS when all else is 'sol'd away'.
'A' is infinite.
'B' represents closure, the relative.
'B' is finite.
Whenever we talk about 'being' we are talking about closure; when we talk about 'non-being' we are talking about the Absolute. From 'A' to 'B' there is a fall. The 'Fall' is always from the Absolute to the Relative; from the infinite to the finite.
What emerges after 'A' and 'B'?
In the case of English, we get 'C' and in the case of Hebrew we get a 'hard G'.
This refers to the solidification or substantialisation of that which is bound.
Eugene describes the relation between these concepts.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
Existence is governed by cyclic law.
We are born, we live, we die.
The sun rises, the sun sets.
The seasons progress.
"If you try to hold an idea in your mind you will find that this idea will disappear very shortly. If you think it has gone forever you may become depressed. If you know cyclic law you can expect to see it again later."
"There is an old Chinese saying that says 'if it is winter think about summer, if it is spring think about autumn'. Now this is a kind of trick, a psychological device, to help you to conquer cyclic law."
However, attempting to do this for a period of time results in tiring. When tired, we lapse and forget.
Rather than becoming depressed about what we feel is an apparent lack of progress, we must remember that we are not training for time; we are using time to train for eternity.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 27th November 1977.
What is meant by Heavenly Jerusalem?
"...it is a peculiar city, it is a city that needs no light of sun or moon, for the light of it is constituted by the Glory of God and the Light of the Lamb, His Son, so that already we have a definition. What we are looking for, what we hope to develop into is a being that needs no external light. We don’t need an external sun, we don’t need an external spotlight, we don’t need an external moon, we don’t need external stars. Our goal is that our light shall be inside. Here is your Heavenly Jerusalem...".
How are we to build this Heavenly Jerusalem?
"What has happened to every great civilisation that has established its bricks one on top of the other so securely that it has not needed to attend to them?
It has fallen down.
It actually dies in the middle of its greatness because it begins to rest on its laurels. It stops the necessary striving to transcend its own previous creation and as soon as you stop the movement to transcendence of going beyond your own design, you are already dead. It is only a matter of three hundred years and you will really fall over. Rome was dead three hundred years earlier than it showed itself because it had begun to rest on a concept that was built originally by man."
Eugene discusses the process whereby we can develop all aspects of being and realise the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God, within.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, on 4th July 1963.
"Considering the mechanism of social hierarchy, the analogy has been made with the behaviour of lumps of coal in a bucket, where it could be observed that on shaking the bucket, large lumps of coal rose to the surface due to the smaller pieces falling down. This poses the question as to why some people are large lumps and others, small chips. This could lead to a fatalistic conclusion. What is the true position?"
Eugene discusses the dynamics of hierarchy.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
"Now church...means assembly. Now this assembly of individuals is for the many who feel not strong enough to stand alone. When they go into this church they participate, and therefore declare themselves a part in the ceremony. They are apart from the people who don’t go in, but they are a part of people who do go in."
"Outside us we have men making propaganda, acting continuously upon us, and declaring that we, and they mean our body, belong to an organisation — trade union, static church or whatever it is — and that they are requiring us to go into that thing and join…at the body level. And the state organises itself a church, and gets people to belong to it, because when it gets people to belong it can manipulate them. Remember the church is the left arm of the state...".
But, we are not merely a body; we have inside ourselves immanent spirit. By identifying with this immanent spirit, which is essentially creative, we can actively put ourselves in resistant situations to awaken our volitional urge and enable our further development.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960s.
Eugene discusses the biology of human reproduction and what it means for the transmission of information from generation to generation.
"...all multiplication of biological elements is by division. The cell divides in order to multiply. Now this same thing that you can observe under the microscope in a monocelled animal occurs in the multiplication of human beings; only, the mode of doing it is rather less obvious. You get under the microscope a monocell and watch it long enough, you will actually see the thing goes through a process of division. It has inside it a little nuclear spot, the intelligence. This is observed to behave in a peculiar way and then to divide itself into two centres and then various processes take place between the two centres and it builds a wall up. And then it pinches where the wall is and gradually brings itself into a state where it can sever itself into two beings. And that’s the basic method of multiplication by division."
"The implications of this in religion and philosophy are tremendous, because it means that none of us actually start life with the blank tablet that some thinkers assume. The tabula rasa, the blank tablet of certain philosophical schools is just a pure abstraction ... it just never did exist."
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, on 16th February 1961.
"At no point in Christian history has this view, namely the view of the identity, absolutely, of God and the Devil, been seriously propounded or gained even limited acceptance, and this despite the earnest thinking of many great minds. This view has not been seriously propounded. The reason for it not being seriously propounded is simply because it is unfit for publication."
That's right; deemed not fit for consumption by the general public. But you, dear listener, are not merely a member of the public, and are therefore fit to tune in to this discussion.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960.
"How is it that we're all so clever, considering that we never do anything to deserve it? Or more specifically, if a genius is born, a sort of Mozart, and is playing brilliantly at four and composing music, how does all this information get into him or through him?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 27th January 1987.
Beginning with a refutation of dualism, Eugene puts forward a proof for the existence of God.
"How do we define God as infinitely, powerful, wise, active? We say God is power, form, function. Power, that which pushes itself about; form, that which shapes itself; function or activity, that which causes it to express itself in the actual world of phenomena, Power, Form, Function."
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960.
"Can we in-fact put information into a child, other than that which its physical level allows it to do?"
In short, yes, this can be done...but it is not advisable. If we put information into a child that does not correspond with its physical performance or experience, and that information is, therefore, not put into action, it will operate as a poison within the organism. In trying to educate a child beyond the level at which their body can respond, we are sewing the seeds of future trouble. In fact, the increase in schizophrenia and similar mental disorders that we see today are a consequence of attempting to accelerate mental content beyond the capacity of the body to actualise it.
Eugene discusses this process and how we can maintain our organism in correspondence with reality.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Manchester, UK.
Eugene concludes his discussion of the symbology of the Bhavachakra, or Buddhist Wheel of Life.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Manchester, UK.
Also known as The Bhavachakra, or Wheel of Becoming, the Wheel of Life is a mandala that represents the Buddhist view of the universe. For Buddhists, existence is a cycle of life, death, rebirth and suffering that they seek to escape altogether.
Eugene discusses the symbology of the Buddhist Wheel of Life. This talk is provided in two parts.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, circa 1960.
The words that we use to communicate ideas are imbued with deep significance. Many great thinkers have discerned that 'to think' is 'to formulate'. The words that we use must be in correspondence with our thought processes; if they are not, then we are not able to understand ourselves.
Precise language is essential for there to be understanding.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 30th June 1985.
Eugene discusses the meaning of 'apocalypse' and the general principles underlying writings about the 'end of the world'.
Throughout recorded human history, governments have formulated rules (laws) in order to keep the masses under control. However, those that make the rules do not intend to restrict themselves by those same rules. Ultimately, all official rules made by government are made to maintain government. People who hold opinions different to those held by governments have frequently been persecuted by the lawmakers, via inquisitions, being burnt at the stake, hanged etc.
There have always been intelligent people who have recognised that the laws made by the lawmakers were really "statements of the will of the lawmakers to control a situation, and handle people who were not bright enough to make laws for themselves". 'Prophets' who spoke out against the corruption of governments, because they wanted people to evolve towards a more conscious, free-willed, intelligent way of relating, were often put to death.
Subsequently there came the 'Apocalyptics' who said "if we tell the truth openly, we will be put to death". So, they concealed the true meaning of their visions / revelations by using symbology. Eugene unpacks this symbology and outlines its true meaning for the individual.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Manchester, UK, on 29th May 1977.
"...it is always possible to know more and we’ll see that if anyone thinks it’s not possible to know more when you know all there is to know, that person is an idolater. He has come to rest on a formulation of some kind and in so doing he has actually, by his identification with a finite formulation, stopped his own further evolution. The reason for that is that the ultimate reality is a power which is infinite and therefore capable of infinite modulations, of infinite creativity so that you are not seeking in the world to find the solution of a problem which is solvable because there is no finitude about that power."
Referencing Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Hegel and others, Eugene describes the dialectical process, whereby any ordinary man or woman can become a philosopher-king.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) in 1984.
We, a handful of people, are not going to affect world governments who are pursuing control of world raw materials through having a shoot out over the possession of those materials, we can’t stop them. If we go and sit in a square in any town in the rain in the middle of winter with notices saying down with nuclear bombs, they are not going to stop, so we have a problem.
Given this, what are we going to do about our own process?
In a wide ranging talk touching on Pythagoras, Leucippus, Democritus, Spinoza and Nietzsche, Eugene describes a framework to help us avoid identification with the finite.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net, which includes all diagrams referenced in the talk.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 26th February 1978.
There was a Hassid Rabbi; the most wise man that has ever appeared on this globe. He was so wise all his disciples hung on his lips. When he was dying and getting weaker and weaker his disciples asked, “Oh most worthy and wise rabbi that ever lived, will you please, please tell us, is there some super message that you have not revealed to us? Have you got something tremendously important that you have kept secret, as wise men do, until on your deathbed and not before, you will reveal it?"
And he looked very seriously at them and then said, “Yes, I have...there is one thing. If you must have a message most important in the whole of my teaching it is this. LIFE IS A BOWL OF CHERRIES.” Saying which he fell back on the pillow. His disciples flashed this throughout the globe, immediately to all the wise men in all the synagogues and schules in Bowdon, Hale, New York, Omsk, Minsk, Tomsk, throughout all the Jewish world. They flashed it by radio and by ‘phone and by telex and by satellite, and they began to meditate and they meditated very fast because he hadn’t long to live. They meditated very hard but they could not find out what it meant. So, they wired back, by the same procedures, radios telephones, telexes, satellites and they came back, “Quick, rush to the rabbi and tell him we have had this most wonderful message but we have not been able to solve its riddle. We cannot understand it. Please ask him what he has to say about it.” So they told him immediately. And, he looked at them and said, “So, you don’t understand, life is like a bowl of cherries. Well, I’m dying and I am so weak, I can hardly say now. So what am I going to say to you if you don’t understand it? Life is not like a bowl of cherries,” and then he died.
What did the most wise rabbi mean?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, in the early 1960s.
There is a very old Chinese statement that says - fire does not burn, water does not wet. The statement has to do with subjectivity and the fact that all we receive from outside is motion and that how we experience this motion depends on our own sensorium and its qualities. As individuals with senses we are interpretative mechanisms. No individual can possibly know anything beyond the limits of its own substance. Stated another way, all a being can know are the modifications of its own substance and any change occurring in a being other than a change initiated by the will of that being itself, is interpreted as coming from outside.
Every stimulus that comes to us, from whatever source, can tell us nothing about the source of that stimulus. All we can ever know is what we become aware of inside ourselves as a result of that stimulus. “All that comes to us is motion and how we receive that motion in our substance determines what we believe about the external world.” Therefore, no individual can know the essence of another. All it can know is the perimeter stimulation of it. “When we consider then, any being whatever, in so far as it is circumscribed and we study the form of it, and the substantial formal relations within it, we are thinking geometrically.”
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) in 1968.
Consider the word time; we see that it reads in the opposite direction, emit. This is a reference to the energy that is released every moment by any existential observer of time. In other words, you cannot observe time without releasing energy moment by moment. So time, as experienced by human beings depends on energy emission by those human beings.
All experienced events are protensive, meaning that they are stretched in time. They have duration; i.e. a protensive event is taking time for me to perform it. "Philosophically, all our experience is based on protensive events. We are seeing things extended in space and time. It takes time to see space, so that we cannot separate space and time and the energy that we expend in perceiving them. Space, time, power we must think of as a trinity. Do not think of power being expended except through time on a given space."
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
(Note: The audio contained in this episode commences after the heading 'Track 3'in the notes provided.)
Talk given in Liverpool, UK, in 1962.
What is the true significance and the historical process which the human race as we know today, is undergoing? Our contemporary mode of thought is scientific. As we enter the Aquarian phase of our evolution, this means that the scientific spirit will develop to the nth degree. Science will have so many devices that can prove certain things to exist that people will tend to accept the scientist as the supreme arbiter of human destiny.
However, "...if we examine the scientists today throughout the world we find that a spirit that was once said to be the scientific spirit has practically disappeared. The scientific spirit of the nineteenth century...was stated to be absolutely impartial. It was an objective pursuit of truth, knowing no boundaries whatever of religion, race, creeds, nations and so on, scientific information should be swapped, because truth is every man's. This was stated to be their position. We know this was a leg-pull on the part of men who wanted power because as soon as they got the power they began to shelter that knowledge, they did not indulge in free exchange of scientific knowledge when they had discovered the nuclear weapon. Suddenly science is hush hush. Instead of a man being free to publish his findings in international magazines, he was suddenly silenced. His government required him not to speak about essentials. The scientist who believed in the old-fashioned idea of science, as for universal distribution found himself very seriously hindered. Many scientists actually allowed themselves to be bought over by governments and worked for a government in the pursuit of power instead of for the human race."
This belief (worship) in the primacy of 'scientific truth' is external to the individual centre of man. As such, it is but another idol that the Absolute will smash.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, UK.
"It is quite obvious that of the millions of people that we know, they don't strive for perfection at all. Most of them don't strive at all in any way because striving implies the application of effort over a time in some sort of directional sense. Most people don't have a directional sense and don't strive."
Technically speaking, the word 'people' means 'knee-benders', or sexually determined. As such, people move along lines of least resistance, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This is the bottom level of a hierarchy. Above it we can see three (3) other levels, or modes of being, each bending the knee to a different idea or force. Above them is that which we can't see; the quintessence, or fifth essence.
What will you bend the knee to?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 22nd February 1987.
Arrogance is defined as "the taking to oneself, of anything whatever, without entitlement". If an individual believes they have something of themselves not derivative from the Absolute - that is arrogance.
Our lowest level of conferring a title/label of responsibility comes from people. The next level of conferring titles/labels of responsibility is an elected government; who, once they’ve been elected, think of themselves as an elect body, separate from the dullards who elected them. And they then elect those suitable for their purpose.
So, we have a relatively small group elect someone to be a responsible person and do as they're told by the electors – like an American president. He’s not there by his own power. He’s there by a group – an oligarchy. (‘Oligarchy’ is ‘ruler-ship by a tightly bound small group’.)
Thirdly, the Absolute elects the electors. The real battle is the battle between the Absolute, which is infinite, wise, powerful; and the relatively small group – the oligarchy – of the bigger group – the masses of people. But the one that’s going to win, because it started the whole process, is the Absolute.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 29th September 1968.
Hierology is the study of the sacred traditions of ancient peoples. It is concerned with the technique of the differentiations of power that turn might into right.
As the backdrop for this discussion, Eugene considers that "we are slowly moving towards a third world war. The reason we are studying hierology, is related to this fact. In the last war, the Nagasaki-Hiroshima bombs, demonstrated that there is very, very serious danger to civilian populations. What we know about men at war, historically, is that he has used all the power he has had at command. We have not found him inhibiting the use of the power he has had."
"We cannot expect that the men leading the world today, the men who have at their command, nuclear weapons, will quite suddenly develop self-control in the use of force."
Given such a scenario, what is the duty of individuals?
How should we apply our initiative?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given in Liverpool, circa 1960.
"If the Absolute can only perceive through a finite, does not this suppose that the universe and all beings in it are already finited in all their stages of evolution?"
Eugene explores questions concerning the Absolute; including man's role as a vehicle of perception, the Logos Principle, and the relationship between Immanent Spirit and Transcendent Spirit.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 23rd May 1976.
What does it mean to describe an object as being ‘out there’? If I say that something is 'out there', it is only so in relation to my body. Instead, consider the object as an appearance within consciousness. To do this we need to get rid of the out there-ness, so that we merely deal with appearances.
Eugene describes the steps involved in this process of phenomenological reduction...and its consequences.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
A talk about two ways of living - the Way of the Moon and the Way of the Sun.
The Way of the Moon: A synonym of ancestor worship; parent worship. Children have to be grateful to parents because the parents have provided a body. And the parents have to be grateful to the children for projecting the intention of the parent from generation to generation.
The Way of the Sun: The affirmation of freedom. It does not mean obedience to parents. It does not mean obedience to collectives, to societies as such. It means individual free will.
We can either live from the dictates of a collective, or we can live from the intention of our own free inner will.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 25th January 1981.
Eugene discusses the present significance of the four fixed signs of the zodiac; Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius.
These signs correspond with the four gospels of the New Testament and with four beasts before the throne of God in the Old Testament. They also correspond with four headings in the Egyptian burial ritual (i.e. three animals and one man) - and they actually correspond with parts of a human being and with four processes:
- You have to bind yourself … that’s Taurus.
- You have to relatively loosen yourself or you will become rigid … and the loosening is Leo.
- You are to dedicate yourself — which is Scorpio — to this process of self-examination of the internal chaos.
- And bring into it an order by looking inside and discovering Aquarius … that is the sign of memory.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 2nd October 1983.
Human beings have been collecting information for thousands of years about correct behaviour to each other, but they have not yet begun to apply that in any considerable degree.
Every year, millions of people are killed by accidents, by wars, by diseases, by starvation and so on. Why have we not yet learned the lesson, when we know the lesson already?
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 25th September 1977.
Eugene responds to three (3) questions; namely:
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Can desire be stilled?
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How does one intelligently use the egotism with which we are burdened?
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What is the origin of all true religion?
A key takeaway from the talk is "...if we listen to ourselves internally in the innermost, we will always find we have an intention to evolve towards freedom, towards greater self-awareness and towards greater creativity."
Eugene describes the manner in which desire, enlightened egotism and world religions assist us in this task.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk recorded in Liverpool, UK.
Eugene discusses 'Reflexive Self-Consciousness', which is understood to be at the core of all of his teachings.
Consciousness itself is philosophically undefinable. Consciousness is that in which things exist and are defined. The things are defined, but consciousness is not defined; nor is it definable. Consciousness is an immediate awareness by a conscious being, by a subject. The object of a subject is something that the subject has made actually by its own power.
Reflexive Self-Consciousness can only be known by the person who has it.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given on 29th June 1975.
Eugene begins by saying that to examine the idea of death he has to examine the opposite, because they are “mutually defining.” However, the opposite of death is not ‘life’ but ‘love’. The word ‘live’ refers to the individual (the ‘i’ signifies ‘individuation’). The word ‘love’ requires another being, two or more are needed. Death means ‘disintegration’, and in this sense, death of the physical body occurs when it disintegrates.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 25th May 1986.
We begin by examining the meaning of 'stone'. Eugene suggests approaching it from the idea of: S means ‘Spirit’, T means ‘fixation’ or ‘crucifixion’, N means both ‘negation’ and ‘intelligence’. The fundamental idea in ‘ST one’ is that all matter is really spirit, self-fixated and when this stone is discovered it will confer immortality on the owner. The word ‘philosopher’ is defined as: lover of ‘soph’, of wisdom. ‘Soph’ reversed is ‘phos’ which means ‘light’. So ‘soph’ actually means the word ‘light’ turned around and back to its source; i.e. reflexive awareness.
We each know lots of things, but can we say that we know that we know them? To be reflexively aware we have to be able to say that we can will, what we feel, what we know. To be reflexive is to be able to say: “I don’t only know it, I know that I know it; I don’t only will it, I will that I will it. That is the highest function of any conscious being; to be reflexive.”
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 24th July 1975.
Eugene delivers a talk about the wisdom in the body, and not of it. Wisdom is defined as “total knowledge in its simultaneity.” Anything less may be knowledge, but it is not wisdom. We have extensive knowledge of the body from the world of empirical science, but the accumulation of this knowledge does not give us ‘body wisdom’.
Taking a body to pieces may give us information about it and make us feel clever that we can do this, but the exact opposite is to observe and understand that what the scientist has “discovered” was already in it. “If you examine the brain of a frog, what astonishes you is not your own cleverness, but the cleverness of the intelligence that made the brain of the frog.”
This second way is far more ancient than the scientific way and reveals the innermost soul of the being examined. Whatever organism we examine, we can say that the forces that produced that organism must have been involved into it. Every part of the structure of a living being is a wonder of intelligent organisation, and behind both structure and function is energy. Energy means “in work affirming,” en-erg-y(a). Somehow, this energy can cause a chameleon to change colour and a plaice to disguise itself from predators. Somehow, it can cause intuition in humans, and all the complex, mental processes that we are capable of. All are functions of energy, manifesting in the organism.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 29th September 1985.
Eugene responds to an audience member who states “Life is hard and ends in death.”
‘Hard” = HRD =Hierarchical, Discriminative, Division. “The ‘universe is hard’ means that...there are differences of power and discriminative ability.” People are different in all manner of ways. They do not think, feel or will in the same way. “No two individuals are identical in any respect, that is the meaning of hard.”
Everybody believes that death is certain, but what is it? It is the leaving of the life-principle which animates the physical body. He gives the example of a dying sparrow; the eye is bright and then suddenly “ceases to shine.” A moment before there was a consciousness looking out of the eye, and now it has gone, departed. That consciousness does not move to a different spatial location, so we cannot say where did it go?It has simply ‘detuned’ its “hierarchical, discriminative power”, it has stopped its focus on that body.
Instead of saying a person has died, we should say that they have withdrawn their interest from that body.
(Note: The last 20 minutes of audio is not as clear, due to flaws in the original recording. It may be beneficial to listen to the podcast after downloading a transcript from www.eugene-halliday.net/download_transcripts)
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 23rd February 1975.
We begin by considering the three-part man. Truth goes into the head, Beauty in the chest, and Goodness in the belly. Truth is perfection, as in a perfect circle, or a perfect straight line. A circle includes and excludes. It includes a finite amount of space and excludes an infinite amount. It is a synonym for rota, form, shape, sphere, eidos (idea), and for True. When we think we encapsulate forms, shapes of experiences, in ideas. If all of our ideas correspond with the external forms we see in the world then they are true ideas. This is how a sane person can operate in the world.
The entire universe is arranged by rotation: electrons orbit their nucleus, planets orbit the sun, which orbits a central point in the galaxy. Simultaneously, every body is spinning on its own axis. “This turning around a centre is everywhere the same, so the one, universal law is rotation.” Whenever a circle is drawn, the ratio of the radius to the circumference is the same. “So one law rules all form.” This is the basis of classical philosophy.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) in 1974.
Eugene compares Eastern and Western approaches to 'enlightenment'. The terms ‘East’ and ‘West’ do not refer to geography but to the human body. The East is the consciousness in the centre of our body, the West is the body itself, the physical world. The sun, the light of consciousness, rises in the East and shines to the West, the physical body.
Since the Renaissance, we in the West have taken the empirical approach to understanding ourselves. In the East, the mystical, introvert discovery of the centre of consciousness has been the tradition. Consciousness depends on a containing periphery, an integument, a skin, which allows discrimination between outside and inside. The periphery is the demarcation line between consciousness inside and outside. It is the resistances of the boundaries within the body that gives rise to consciousness. Without this body of resistances we would not be conscious. The universal energy that flows through all bodies becomes conscious as it flows through resistances.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.
Talk given at Parklands (Manchester, UK) on 28th February 1982.
Eugene introduces the analogy of the projectionist in the cinema. When we hear the word ‘God’ we should forget all we have been taught and just think “Generative, Intelligent Power.” The Universe we know is entirely energy, power at work, and this power is sentient.
A transcript is available at www.eugene-halliday.net.