Eugene Halliday

Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation; the theory of the discovery and communication of the concepts and teachings of the scriptures of the world; the science of attaining clarity, by comprehending, explaining and establishing the sense of both traditional and biblical authors. It looks to the individual's own apprehension rather than the conveyance of the meaning ascertained to others, thereby enabling individuals to interpret for themselves in the light of their own experience.[9]

Hierology is from the Greek hieros, priest, and logy, meaning "a speaking, discourse, treatise, doctrine, theory, science,". It is defined as sacred literature, learning or a body of knowledge regarding sacred things, the literary or traditional embodiment of the religious beliefs of a people. For example, the sacred texts of different religions.[11][12]

Halliday's ecumenism was of the most universal variety. While at the core of his teaching was the concept of the primacy of Jesus Christ, it came from an inner understanding of the nature of Love, and transcended the bounds of any religious orthodoxy. He had an integrated view of the development of world religions. "India's religion (Hinduism) is non-historical, concerns itself with the Eternal Recurrence, the Great Cycle, Days and Nights of Brahma that endlessly follow each other: Yoga is aimed to break the cycle by releasing the individual from Manvantara into eternal Nirvana." In Judaism, a select group of people were separated from the mass of animal-men and subjected to pressures which led to the attainment of group consciousness; their commandments were negative "Thou shalt not". Jesus Christ "presents the first true individuated person able to stand against the elect group". The commandments of Christianity were positive, "Thou shalt love". Having taught his disciples, he left them "so that they too may find themselves and become authors of their own being". "In Islam is no barrier of race or colour or class. The goal was not the individual as such, but the individual-able-to-relate-to-all-beings without self-loss or regression". "The one Eternal Religion which Hindu thought intuited appears in its historical aspect in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as Law (Father), Love (Son) and Illuminative Knowledge (Holy Ghost). The Fourth Revelation (Maitreya) will but put these three together as of equal validity in the cosmic plan."[13]

Reflexive self-consciousness is perhaps the most important and core concept in Eugene Halliday's work. In his book, "Reflexive Self-Consciousness", published in the 1950s, he sets out a way by which we can develop the ability to respond adequately to the demands life makes of us, the ability to assimilate the shocks and blows of experience, so we can live a whole and balanced life. The way to this balance is through an understanding of the centre of our own being, our consciousness, and through this, finding our place in relation to the universe.

Halliday's philosophy is non-dualist, as in the Hindu concept of advaita, expounded by Adi Shankara and other advaitin philosophers. Advaita is sometimes described as a monistic philosophy, but Halliday is careful to distinguish it both from monism and pluralism, as a description of the nature of the universe, and our relationship to 'God' or 'absolute sentient power' (see above) (A.S.P.). "Infinity is not comprehensible in a monistic concept, for monism implies circumscription, which is encapsulation or finitisation [making finite]. Non-dualism and Non-pluralism refer to the Infinity of the Absolute Sentient Power (A.S.P.), the infinite modalising activities of which generate all noumena and phenomena. Monism is an attempt to grasp in a knowable concept that which is of itself unknowable, for to know is to finite form within the A.S.P."[14]

According to Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta, Brahman (God, or the Supreme Cosmic Spirit) is the only reality; Maya is the illusionary power of Brahman "which causes the Brahman to be seen as the illusory world"; the Atman (soul or self) is not different from Brahman (see Wikipedia article Advaita Vedanta).

Halliday's concept of 'A.S.P.' is related to the Hindu concept of Brahman, and to the Greek philosopher Anaximander's apeiron, the 'limitless or boundless' source of the world. "The Absolute is an infinite sentient power, an eternal continuum of motion. Because it is sentient it feels its own motion. Its motion is the content of its sentiency. It is from this fact that is derived the principle that says that a being knows only the modifications of its own substance; or consciousness is aware only of its own modalities".[15] Individual beings are rotatory motions, or modalities, within the A.S.P., and are not-different from It. And not only individual beings but all phenomena: "Ultimately we have to say that all things we know, all the ideas we think, and all the feeling states we experience, the totality of phenomena of all worlds, are merely modalities of the motion initiated and sustained by the Infinite Sentient Power we call God".[16]

Although he does not seem to have employed the term, Halliday's religious philosophy can be described as one of Panentheism (pan-en-theism, all-within-god), the view that the universe is within God and that God also transcends the universe. The term was coined by German idealist philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832). Halliday did not hold with the view of pantheism, which sees the universe as identical with God.[17] He was well-versed both in comparative religion and the science of his day, and wrote extensively on the relation between the different religions, and between science and religion. He often quoted Einstein's famous equation and explained "We all know today, as a matter of fact, not fantasy, that matter can be broken down and demonstrated to be energy".[18] One of the authors he recommended was Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher of science, who had noted that the dominant model for the natural world had moved from mechanism to organism during the 19th century. In panentheism is found a concept of God in which natural laws and processes are respected.[19]