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Barry Long

83 quotes

“The man-machine will crucify any conscious man who tries to help him; and convert his wisdom into an empty, mechanical dogma that suits his own understanding.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“YOU ARE WHAT you believe you are. You live, enjoy life and suffer according to that belief. What you believe, you live; or you do not believe it.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be conscious is to be consciousness: Consciousness, the knower in you, cannot be known, although it can be experienced. You can experience consciousness now by experiencing the fact that you exist.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You think: you become that thought. And consciousness, or the state of pure awareness, is lost. The highest knowledge man can possess is that which is true in his own experience. If his experience is limited, so is his knowledge and he behaves accordingly.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact is always simple. The difficulty is in seeing it through the mind which always takes the imaginative way - until it is stilled. The mind knows it is the master in imagination and the slave of the fact. It will fight you all the way to self-knowledge. And why not? It is the only enemy.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“WE HAVE SEEN that hunger and breathing are desires of the body. There are other desires that are not of the body, but again man seldom pauses to observe these desires in himself. For us who are observers of ourselves there can never be a hidden desire or hidden motivation. If we are always observing ourselves nothing hidden can come in without being spotted, and nothing hidden can get done, because we (the master) are always there.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before you can escape from your burrow you must know you are trapped. Then there's a chance.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If God exists, God can be experienced; but only by you.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reasonable acceptance, our way of living, is imperfect. But God, if God exists, must be perfect and beyond reason.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reason is a mighty faculty but it is still below the state of awareness, of pure experiencing, which is the state you are in when you know 'I exist' or 'I am'.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact is that unless you experience something for yourself it does not exist for you. If God exists you must have the experience of God in the moment; otherwise you are absent and God cannot exist for you.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To go beyond reason we have to climb up the ladder of reason and go to the top of it. This will not upset reason as it is interested only in assembling the facts, whatever they might be. Reason is an ever-loyal tool; imagination an ever-failing fool.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At the top of the ladder is awareness, or pure experience - the edge of yourself, and possibly the beginning of God.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many mystics have said, and it is true, that anything you see is not God. Anything you think is not God, neither are visions, lights, moving objects or anything else. Any sensation or feeling is not God. They are all the products of the creation or your imagination.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Creator has to be experienced beyond the five senses and the only instrument that can experience in this way, for you, is yourself - in the state of thoughtless awareness in which you declare 'I am' and hold it.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the beginning the entire creation seems to hinder, obstruct and try to keep you away from experiencing the Creator. It is the way of things that only the unrelenting, indomitable individual can escape and experience God. The curious masses always fail. Later on, all things help, not hinder, the valiant ones.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the way to God you have to pass through beauty, pure beauty. If you do not pass through beauty it is not God that you find. Beauty stands at the gate of the kingdom of heaven. It is of the Creator, but not the Creator; and it is all-mighty.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is the only uncreated thing you can experience apart from God. Beauty is and always is. You are absent. Why are you absent? Again your robot mind is the problem. It will not stay still and you cannot make it stay still. It is your master and it separates you from beauty and God. So to experience beauty, love, truth and peace, or God, your mind has to be stilled.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reason does not need thinking. If you observe yourself making a plan you will notice that having fixed the object, the facts just keep coming, linking up into a chain of proposed action. Awareness is experiencing from moment to moment. Reason acts quickly in awareness, a thousand times faster than thought, and you do not even notice it is operating.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can only get next to God through the effort of preparation. To experience the uncreated, the state of awareness will have to be held for several minutes. You are then between time and the timeless - waiting for the unknown, which will come but cannot be willed.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is a power, a mighty principle that exists in its own right independent of any individual. Man changes, but the principle of love does not and cannot. Love does not leave men and women. Men and women leave love.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is all around you like the air and is the very breath of your being. But you cannot know it, feel its unfeeling touch, until you pause in your busy-ness, are still and poised and empty of your wanting and desiring. When at rest the air is easily offended and will flee even from the fanning of a leaf, as love flees from the first thought. But when the air or love moves of its own accord it is a hurricane that drives all before it.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The understanding of love comes with the knowledge that you are nothing. The greatest purity is nothing or nothingness - no thinking, no desiring, no imagining. You are then one with the moment and the great movement of life so nothing can happen that is not right. Every moment is perfect and everything that happens is eternally just.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth every man and woman seeks is in themselves.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All love - love of children, love of parents, love of God or life - comes out of making physical love. Without the making of love there is no body to love anything.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human love is not love. Love is natural to every body but it becomes human love as the person learns from society to confuse love with sex.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sex is excitement, seeks satisfaction and soon loses interest - selfishness. Making love is passionate, fulfilling and does not look for an end - selflessness.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing is true unless it is true in your own experience. This is your protection against being duped or misled.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Feelings, even the best of them, turn to negativity - disappointment, anger, discontent, resentment, jealousy, guilt, etc. A good feeling starts off being elevating, exciting, like taking a drug substance, alcohol or having sex. But what goes up must come down and feelings are no exception. So in a couple of hours or days the down side starts and you perhaps wonder why you feel moody, depressed, suicidal or just plain unhappy. You're paying the piper for yesterday's music. And between the upside and the downside is the no-man's and no-woman's land of boredom, indifference, inertia, weariness and pointlessness.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Enlightenment is enlightenment. And that's that. It's an unalterable, unwavering state of knowledge and being beyond doubt, a completion every moment by grace of the Most High, the unspeakable one, God. That's the ultimate; the absolute being beyond any description. But the ultimate, the enlightenment of man, must translate into his living life. And to me and my teaching that means an enlightened man is liberated from unhappiness. Being and living free of unhappiness is the natural and simple state of all life on earth - except man. He has been misled away from it by spiritual lures and glamour and the result is the conflict and pain, the fluctuating unhappiness, of his short life.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In other words, to be enlightened of the acquired burden every spiritual belief and notion has to be abandoned, every reference to what any spiritual teacher or master has ever said must be set aside. What does that leave? Your own experience. Not your historical or memorable experience, for that's the problem. Your own experience is your self-knowledge of life. Let's establish once and for all what this means now. Forget everything I've said in this article except this question: Do I want to suffer or not suffer NOW? That's the only truth for you. There's no tradition, no past, no discussion in it. It's all you need. Keep it with you and at the next temptation to suffer it will prevent you suffering. But only if you've learned in your own experience what causes you to suffer. If you haven't learned that, you're still attached to suffering and will unwittingly embrace it. In that case you have to read on, take more time and ask yourself more questions.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Have you learned yet that you only suffer when you think about events or feel about them, that you don't suffer from events themselves? Have you learned yet that every thought about yourself is a thought of the past, that worry is thinking and that all thinking eventually leads to worry, fear and insecurity? If so, each time you go to think, or catch the thinker thinking even about "good" things like last night's movie, don't; stop. Not because Barry Long says so but because you've realised the truth of thinking in your own experience. It's what you've learned from life, not from someone else's experience. Therefore it is the truth for you now and every moment. Otherwise you must go on thinking and go on suffering. One day, when you've had enough of the pain, you'll come to your senses. Have you learned yet that every feeling is a feeling of the past and that every "good" feeling soon changes and eventually becomes the feeling of doubt, confusion, boredom or sorrow? If so, stop believing your feelings; don't act on them; wait.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you know what humanity is, what the word "human" means? The word human where I come from - which is the enlightened state - means suffering. So when you say you're a human being, you're saying you're a suffering being. And I say you have to get rid of your suffering and then be being. Enlightenment is the state of being which I am, this moment and every moment. So Im not suffering. But humanity loves to suffer. People love to suffer because they love to get excited with their feelings. All you've got to do is get rid of your feelings, which are always negative. Why not get rid of the whole lot of it, now? That means you don't know feelings and then you don't know negativity, and then you'd be in love, and then you would love everybody by not loving anybody in particular as a feeling. That's the state of enlightenment.”
Barry Long (1926–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source