The Eugene Halliday Podcast

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:  1. Mineral  2. Plant  3. Animal  4. Empirical Man  5. 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.