Barry draws a sharp distinction between sex and love: true love, especially between devoted partners, travels down into the subconscious and disturbs the past, bringing up old doubt, heartbreak, conditioning, and stored emotional patterns so they can be seen rather than lived as present reality. He says the right response is stillness—recognising what rises as past unreality—so love can do its work and lead to increasing detachment from feelings and eventual freedom. Sex, by contrast, may satisfy present desire but it disturbs the emotions in a way that produces cycles of excitement and depression. Sex is a drug — and leads to restlessness rather than settled love. Barry describes the beauty of man and woman disappearing into each other through love, not the mind’s sexual excitement.

Barry then speaks of the watcher or the witness in everyone — utterly uninvolved, always present— whose deepest point is the Lord, and reads letters describing realizations of pristine stillness, ordinariness, and the sense of being nothing behind all appearances. He stresses that this is not mere talk or philosophy but a descent into being, and warns that the mind—tied to senses and practical life—is an utter obstacle in matters of God and truth; the practice is to leave the mind in neutral and rest in stillness, like dreamless sleep, letting doubts lose their force.

Then, in extended dialogue with attendees, he addresses the fear of stillness, self-consciousness, celibacy and not giving thoughts or images continuity, the gradual stopping of thinking as fear subsides, and practical struggles (including smoking, drinking, and sexual momentum,) repeatedly bringing people back to simplicity, honesty, and being.

~
Source:

This is recording 16 of 20 from the Master Sessions of 1996, recorded on 8 November 1996 at Cabarita on Australia’s Tweed Coast. This talk—along with many other previously unpublished recordings—has only recently been meticulously digitised and is now available to hear in high quality. Through The Barry Long Podcast, we’re glad to share the complete recording here, free of charge.

The complete Master Sessions series will be available in The Barry Long Archive in mid 2026, and we will add a link here when it becomes available.

~
About The Barry Long Archive:

The Barry Long Archive is a repository of over 20 years of Barry Long’s teachings. The archive currently features more than 350 videos, the full podcast, and over 1500 audio recordings on the way – these will be added over time as the archive continues to grow. The archive offers two subscription options: monthly and yearly, with the longer plan offering concessionary rates. The subscription includes unlimited streaming of all available content for the duration of your access.

Link: https://www.barrylong.org/archive
Subscription: https://www.barrylong.org/subscriptions

~
From the archive:

📃 Lust and Love – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/313/lust-and-love – "What is lust? How do I tell the difference between lust and love?... Lust is in the head. The head never made love, only talked about it or thought about it. Lust is generated in the head."

📃 Is it Love or Sex? – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/304/is-it-love-or-sex

📃 Aphorisms on Love – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/281/aphorisms-love – "Go and love a woman. Why do you want to go and look at pictures of her? Go and love her."

📃 Making love – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/254/making-love

🏷 Man and woman in love – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/topics/480/man-and-woman-in-love

Support the show

All content © The Barry Long Trust