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.

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