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In the interests of constructive criticism, if it isn't obvious why I don't like it, would you like me to say why I don't like it?

Hi Josh

That additional page stapled to the front end of the archive site? .. I'm not a fan of it either! .. In fact I'd have to say that, where it concerned the archive (or in fact anything at all that I have had a hand in re 'matters EH'), I have always been against any sort of 'promoting' of the man - and particularly like this...

My position regarding others who want to 'sell' Eugene Halliday in this way is simply that they are, of course entirely, free to do whatever they please ... Provided they assume total responsibility for doing so - and do it on their own web-site!...

So why is it there? .... Well, because sometime during the earlier part of last year (2018) I decided that I was no longer prepared to be responsible for the financial upkeep of the archive. And the addition of this 'front-page' was - despite my protestations to the contrary - 'a part of the deal'... And in one sense at least the Archive does now 'belong' to someone else I suppose.

But the reasons for my quite recent decision to distance myself from the Archive (which is really why all this came about) are a little more complicated than just any straightforward financial consideration by me though (after all, you couldn't really call the archive a financial burden). And it was far more the case that I just didn't want to be bothered with it anymore because, as I see it, there's no one out there now who is even remotely interested in what I consider to be Eugene Halliday's basic concepts - in any practical sense, that is...

At best, all there is seems to be now are those who 'pick and mix' whatever it is that takes their fancy (select an interesting title from the available audio files as it were), without even the vaguest grasp of what Eugene Halliday's over-all system is about - a starting point that I would say is essential here.... However, even up to last year (some 30 or so years after his death) I would still have been prepared to settle for those who had only the vaguest idea about all this - and so were at least looking in the right direction... However, I have come to believe that this whole endeavor is 'dead in the water'... And that all there seems to be out there now are a typical bunch of post-modern garbage-pickers, complete with their garage/jumble-sale mentality - the new 'seekers of fashionable truth' as it were . And for them, Eugene Halliday could just as easily be Eckhart Tolle; or the writer of the newest best-selling 'Twelve-step Plan'; or the latest fashionable twerp from somewhere East of Suez intent on presenting themselves as the current, state-of-the-art variety of that 'in-the-know 'holy-man' who is intent on peddling some recently discovered 'ancient' set of 'sacred' keep-fit exercises or other to the usual bunch of gullible middle-aged worthies, in order to fund the acquisition of that new BMW he's set his eye on.

For me then, and quite definitely I'm afraid, 'the moment was not grasped' - and I can only see Halliday's material sinking further and further into oblivion, helped on its way by the blatant de-contextualizing of his concepts by a bunch of self-elected 'keepers of the flame' ... Which is a pity in my opinion, and something that I believe could have been avoided - or at least a more intelligent, and co-ordinated attempt could have been made to keep his Work current for a decade or so longer...

So if you can bear the above in mind Josh - and as you have taken the trouble to bring the matter up here - I've done my best to explain below in a little more detail, the 'why and wherefore' of all this to you.

As you know, initially, my motive for constructing this archive was simply to provide an opportunity for interested parties to freely download unadulterated Eugene Halliday 'source material' without any interference; or 'New Age advertising'; or 'advice' from others...

However (and in fact not long after I began here in 2004) the archive assumed another, somewhat different (although you could say it was a 'parallel') function for me. Which was that of providing a convenient source of reference material for anyone willing to discuss personal experience(s) arising from any concerted long-term attempt(s) on their part to incorporate particular concept(s) of Eugene Halliday's into their daily lives as a form of praxis... And, in fact, after a year or two (when I had completed the job of uploading the bulk of the archive material) my interest in discussing archived material from this perspective became the most important issue for me here. So much so, that I decided to write this blog, 'Inside the Eugene Halliday Archive'.

In it, I not only attempt to provide a public account of how I first came across the ideas of Eugene Halliday, but also how various aspects of his Work affected me. And at the same time I also attempted to outline some of the problems that I had encountered along the way, in the hope that this would perhaps encourage others to come forward and share their own experiences here with me...

I should perhaps also mention, that not only did this blog include descriptions etc of my own experiences with this material, but I also tried to make it as clear as possible that I was not really all that interested in engaging in lengthy exchanges over what many would perhaps see as obvious subjects for discussion here. For example, Indian Metaphysics; various fringe activities such as tarot readings, astrology, pseudo-spiritual physical exercises, exotic diets; or various alternative and fanciful 'healing' practices; etc. etc.

In fact I wasn't even that interested in discussing central concepts of Eugene Halliday's, such as: Sentient Power; Reflexive Self-Consciousness; the Active and Passive forms of language; 'engrams' etc. etc., unless these concepts had a direct bearing on those personal accounts that I was fishing for... That is, that they illuminated the actual affects of interacting with this material.

But I'm sorry to say that in the main, this didn't happen. And even though this almost total absence of any attempt by others to engage in discussions of this character would have been fine by me (although in this case I would of course have been disappointed), the continued misunderstanding of what it was that I was after from those who did in fact contact me I found to be both really strange, and also somewhat unexpected... Particularly as I thought I had been very clear about what it was that I did, and that I did not, want to discuss.

It took me some considerable time to realize that the majority of those who did contact me in an effort to conduct some form of exchange or other here, seemed to believe that they had not just simply been attracted to some of Eugene's 'nicer' ideas, and so had merely reacted positively to them as it were. But rather saw what they were doing here as somehow constituting a form of praxis on their part ... It was like dealing with people who maintained that they had a profound interest in mountain-climbing as a consequence of having seen a photo of Mount Everest, and had gone on to invest a great deal of time and money in making sure they had purchased the very best climbing equipment. But then, apart from doing half -a-dozen push-ups once a week, and practicing climbing on and off a kitchen chair, they had not really managed to get their behinds off that comfy couch of theirs - in fact doing so did not appear to have ever entered their heads! ... So - to put it bluntly - the situation last year for me, after some fourteen years of waiting around like this, was that I was pretty much forced to give up on the idea that there were people out there who had actually gone through this process of 'trying out' ('embodying' ) one or more of Eugene Halliday's concepts, at least any who were prepared to discuss their experiences here with me. Because - believe me - if you do actually try to Work with these concepts, quite profound and radical changes DO take place .. and on an almost daily basis.

I have come to believe though, that there simply are no others else out there who had Worked with Eugene Halliday's concepts in this way ... As I say, I know that a significant number out there studied his ideas (with one or two of them even having obviously done so in great detail - at least enough to convincingly regurgitate some of these ideas): and there are also those a who saw Eugene Halliday as clients of his in his 'psychotherapeutic' work with them. But these relationships have almost nothing whatsoever to do with any form of praxis as far as I'm concerned.

And BTW, neither does turning up one night a week along with a handful of others to engage in some fanciful form of 'esoteric exercise'.

To make matters worse, all this is further complicated by the fact that there are any number out there who went to hear him speak; or have had a letter from him; or who had asked him for a piece of advice; or asked him a question about some particular subject or other, who genuinely do not seem able to appreciate the radical difference between the idea of involving Halliday's concepts into some form of praxis on the one hand; and the cultivation of interest in some of the subjects he elaborated upon from his perspective, or the entering into of some form of fairly minor social relationship with him, on the other.

Eugene Halliday was on the record as maintaining that there was something incomplete and even dangerous about merely thinking about, or perhaps memorizing and then regurgitating (and usually incorrectly IMO) his ideas - or anyone else's for that matter. But I came to believe that those who replied to me at least, had no idea that this constituted the totality of their involvement here... And that the endless stimulation they seem to obtain from playing with these ideas was (at least as far as I was concerned) merely a form of mental masturbation; a self-reinforcing form of neurosis that had resulted in them becoming thoroughly entangled in one particular variety of pseudo-spiritual engramic knot or other.

But more seriously for me perhaps, was the fact that I no longer believe there will be any sort of 'Halliday renaissance'. And really, apart from those who might visit the archive out of curiosity, there is no longer even the vestige of a necessary corpus of beings who needed to come together to function as a center in order to keep Eugene Halliday's Work alive... Those who have managed to elbow themselves to the forefront here have very clearly made an absolute ineffectual mess of everything and are clearly far more interested in simply parading around as if they know what's going on.

BTW I did have a 'plan B' that would have involved a way of incorporating the Archive directly into your site.. Something I would still be quite happen to have happen BTW 🙂