Hephzibah Yohannan – författare

The young John Zaradin felt driven to make his life in music against all 'sensible' career advice offered by his peers and parents. An interest in philosophy led him to a circle of creative people dedicated to self-development. They demonstrated to him that a life in the arts was indeed possible, if he worked with some tried and tested guidelines. These included - in addition to all aspects of music, its performance and the business of survival - a rigorous self-examination and a continual re-focusing on his stated aim. His choice to both listen and act on what he was absorbing helped him to make his first steps on the way to living and shaping his life as a musician. Many years later, a conversation with a friend resulted in the writing of his Personal Journey, in which he reveals the story of how he transformed his own life and developed his career as musician, guitarist and composer.

Three particular themes are basic to this study. First, that the human race and its environment are involved in a slowly progressive process of revelation and understanding of its inherent features; and that we are all participating in this ongoing evolutionary cycle. Second, and closely related to the first tenet, man is not separable from his environment. We all share in this cyclic development. Third, that our egoic structures, with the data and experiences they involve, can play a key role in our personal understanding of this ongoing developmental process.

The role of the ego is paradoxical.  It can be a relatively stable reference used to enhance personal insight concerning its own dynamic structure and similar aspects of its environment. Or it can be maintained with a rigidity that hinders progressive learning. That is, the ego unit has the dual possibilities of affording a focus aiding progressive insight, or becoming a barrier that temporarily diminishes it.

The aim of this study is therefore to reduce possible restrictive rigidity as we investigate the role of the egoic unit in seeking greater understanding of its own dynamic structures and their similarly dynamic environment. To pursue this aim we refer to insights from medical practice, philosophy and science.

The underlying awareness of an evolving consciousness means that the insights and ideas presented are shared in the expectation that they too will be modified in due course. But if they help provoke interest and insight concerning the paradoxical nature of our personal processes, they will have served their purpose. 

Eugene Halliday, artist, writer and psychotherapist, was a significant interpreter of the Bible. This book began as a monthly series of essays for the Parish Magazine of St Michael and All Angels, Manchester, in the 1980s. The title ''Through the Bible'' can be understood in two ways. The book can be read through in the order it is printed, from beginning to end. Or, taking the word ''through'' as ''by means of'' - which is the sense in which Halliday uses it - important ideas given in the Bible can be followed through and interpreted in relation to problems with which we are presented, in our own lives. Thus the subjects Halliday covers, and the wisdom he imparts, range from the ancient stories of Adam and Eve, the Fall of Lucifer, Noah and his sons, to the significance of good and evil, psychological insights into human nature, the tensions between science and religion, nuclear war, ecology, computers, the mechanisation of human reactions and free will, and the nature of consciousness. Halliday''s purpose, in his presentation of the lessons he draws from these ancient texts, is to enable us - in a continually accelerating world - to adjust and improve our relationships with ourselves internally, with our fellow humans, with other sentient beings and with our environment, in order to understand and fulfil our relationship with the source and ground of our being.

How can we deal with the rapidly increasing pace and complexity of life, fear of terrorism and the threatening state of world affairs, climate breakdown, the confusions of personal relationships—without succumbing to stress, depression and illness? Halliday provides a way to assimilate the shocks of life experiences, so that we might live a more balanced life. The way to achieve this is through reconnecting with the centre of our own being, our consciousness. Halliday sets out not only the nature of this consciousness, but also its relation to the world of phenomena, to the nature of being, and in particular, to mankind. He begins by examining the meaning of terms such as sentience, consciousness and awareness. They are to some degree interchangeable and refer to, ‘That in and by which we know what we know, and that we know.’ If we ask ourselves what this statement means, we can only say that, ‘We know what we mean. Consciousness is its own evidence’, and thus we cannot indicate what we mean by one of these consciousness-related words, ‘without appealing to that in us, which corresponds with their significance, that is, to that in us which knows that it knows’. Halliday sees a complex structure such as the brain, as ‘a vehicle for the expression of the complex processes of an [already existing] sentience’. He posits that the ultimate source and origin of our being resides in an absolute field of sentience, and states that the true nature of the self is ‘consciousness itself’. But, as beings with physical bodies, we are tyrannised by the limitations of our sense organs; by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, by emotional charges in the records of our experiences, so that we often behave in a reactive manner—as if we were no more than animals with no free choice. But, if we remember the nature of our true self, and our source in consciousness, we can free ourselves from this enslavement and become human, that is, capable of free choice and action.

''We must wake up. To dream is to be involved in a vortex of form. To wake up is to see the dream for what it is and to see beyond it, to infinity.'' Meditations on the meaning of death, the nature of mind, feeling, spirit and Love, bring insight into the human condition with a positive message to fortify us in these troubling times. The book was written between the 1950s and the 1980s, formulated from Halliday''s experiences in the Second World War and under the subsequent continuing threat of nuclear war. In his Foreword Halliday writes ''What drives me incessantly to think, to read, to write? The will to love. Nietzsche says "the will to power". But I say that the will to power is perverted love, and that love wills to love, and that love is work for the development of the functional potentialities of being, infinitely.'' The first five chapters of Book 1 are an excellent ''primer'' of his teaching. Subsequent sections of the book are aphoristic, a series of meditations on many topics of profound esoteric interest. Book 2 was written in the mid-1970s and contains many graphic illustrations - Halliday was an artist, and used his pen to sketch as well as to write, his diagrams clearly illuminating his writings. Book 3 opens with "Ecclesia Para Hexon", a favourite concept of the author''s: the body of faithful souls who worship the God of gods. The second part returns to shorter aphoristic writings, the whole illustrated with diagrams. Book 4 continues in aphoristic form covering many and various topics. The four volumes are a manual of self-development for Everyman and Everywoman, a unique treasury of wisdom. Books 1-4 are also available in hardback, and Books 2-4 will be made available as e-books in the near future.

An Index forming a study guide to "The Collected Works of Eugene Halliday". Eugene Halliday (1911-1987) was an artist, writer and psychotherapist. Drawing on many traditions of human knowledge - the texts of world religions, mystical schools such as Qabalah, poetry, philosophy and theology (Blake, Milton, Nietzsche, Boehme) , psychology (Jung) and modern science (Einstein) - he related and interpreted all of these, making them comprehensible and accessible. This work was the foundation of his creation of a psychotherapeutic method from which many were to benefit in the years following the second world war, and which is still of relevance and benefit to us today. His books form a comprehensive guide to self-development, both psychological and spiritual; and an interpretation of the wisdom traditions, East and West, for modern students of consciousness studies, philosophy, psychology, science, religion and hermeneutics.

This book is a compilation of nine short books written between 2007 and 2021, in the ninth and tenth decades of the author''s life. It contains his spiritual philosophy expressed in simple language accessible to all. The book tells of what the author has come to believe after a lifetime of seeking for the meaning of life, and how one should live that life at its optimum level. He explains that this cannot be proved: it is ultimately not susceptible to the usual scientific methods, for it lies in a different realm of reality which has to be experienced inwardly. However, its main tenets lie behind world religions and go back to mankind`s earliest thinkings and feelings. Believe it or not as you will, suggests the author. All he can say is that it has sustained him throughout his life and has made that life harmonious and joyous. The teachings of which he speaks are often referred to as the Ancient Wisdom. He first came across them at the age of twenty-five when he met a man who was well versed in that ancient wisdom which is to be found woven throughout major religions, philosophies and mystical teachings. This man was Eugene Halliday, who, the author says, was said to be one of the great spirits of the modern age. The phrase he used to describe the ultimate result of these teachings was ''Reflexive Self-Consciousness''. This, the author explains, was the same message taught by those of old, although expressed by his mentor Halliday in more modern terms. A wise but modest man, the author says that he is no academic or scholar or learned man - adding, with gentle humour, that it is written that an academic is an ass with a load of books on his back. He writes for the average person - of any age - who has no time left to think on these things but who may like to know more. He writes for this person - for he is such a one himself, he says. It is this which makes his story and his accumulated wisdom both inspiring and accessible.

This book is a compilation of eight short books written between 2009 and 2017, in the ninth and tenth decades of the author’s life. It contains his spiritual philosophy expressed in simple language accessible to all. The book tells of what the author has come to believe after a lifetime of seeking for the meaning of life, and how one should live that life at its optimum level.  He explains that this cannot be proved: it is ultimately not susceptible to the usual scientific methods, for it lies in a different realm of reality which has to be experienced inwardly. However, its main tenets lie behind world religions and go back to mankind`s earliest thinkings and feelings. Believe it or not, as you will, suggests the author. All he can say is that it has sustained him throughout his life and has made that life harmonious and joyous. The teachings of which he speaks are often referred to as the Ancient Wisdom. He first came across them at the age of twenty-five when he met a man who was well versed in that ancient wisdom which is to be found woven throughout major religions, philosophies and mystical teachings. This man was Eugene Halliday, who, the author says, was said to be one of the great spirits of the modern age. The phrase he used to describe the ultimate result of these teachings was ‘Reflexive Self-Consciousness’. This, the author explains, was the same message taught by those of old, although expressed by his mentor Halliday in more modern terms. A wise but modest man, the author says that he is no academic or scholar or learned man — adding, with gentle humour, that it is written that an academic is an ass with a load of books on his back. He writes for the average person ‘in the street’ who has no time left to think on these things but who may like to know more. He writes for this person — for he is such a one himself, he says. It is this which makes his story and his accumulated wisdom both inspiring and accessible.

We all suffer, to some extent, from fear and anxiety. Here Eugene Halliday offers a way to overcome this negative state of mind, which, whether consciously or unconsciously, hinders our interaction with the world and our fellow human beings. He shows the underlying logic of our problem and gives practical exercises - a step by step process - which is clearly explained to the reader. This is most welcome in today''s fraught emotional, social and political climate. Eugene Halliday''s "Collected Works", a series of fifteen books, contain a complex of ideas set in relation to each other in such a way that a consistent and logical flow leads the reader from the beginning right through to the end of the series. This complex, based on one main leading idea to which all other ideas relate harmoniously, forms a consistent whole, as one body made of many parts. Halliday''s books are unusual in that they deal not only with more than one idea per book, or per chapter, but even with one or more ideas per sentence. In "The Conquest of Anxiety" he sets out in the first place to define the terms which he uses in the book, thus preventing the usual confusion of undefined terms found so often in general discourse. This is most helpful for those seeking to attain a consistent state of mind, able to reflect the things of this world and of the next in their true form, where all are related to each other. For the reader who loves truth and consistency this book is a very helpful companion on the way to a truly happy life.