Barry Long

In my early twenties I regularly went to Barry Long’s talks and seminars in Highgate, London. The first time I met him I told him I was feeling I wanted to commit suicide that evening and was it a good idea. He said if I really wanted to I could go ahead but it would make things more complicated for me after my death. I decided not to.

Another time he looked at me and a presence of love moved in my body along the front from the top of my head to my navel, like a hand made of love unzipping my body. I lost all body awareness and felt myself as an invisible sphere, blissful, free of physical tension, though I noticed some very subtle residual tension. He said to me ‘you have no eyes where you are do you?’ I said ‘no’ as I had no sense of being in a physical body or being a physical body, I felt like a ‘soul’ – round-shaped, but with no physical features. I said that I felt I was invisible but that the other people in the room were still perceiving me as having a physical shape. I said I wanted to stay as this ‘soul’ and not be physically self-conscious. He said ‘Simon there is only you and Me in the room’. After only a few minutes I was back to ‘normal’.

For a few days I was ecstatic with the revelation that ‘only fear dies’. When I came in contact with Adi Da I was in dilemma. I told Barry I was attracted to be with Adi Da because he had a community, and I was also attracted to be with him (Barry). Barry said to me that being in a community should not be the deciding factor – ‘you stand alone before God’. He advised me to choose between him and Adi Da as otherwise I would get confused. He said that he did not know Adi Da or His Teaching but that if I felt Adi Da was my master I should ‘go to His island on Fiji (he asked me where he lived) and surrender to him, even if he beats you to death with a stick just keep surrendering to Him.’ Barry has physically died now but to me he is still alive.

Adi Da is my Master not Barry, but I love Barry. My friend Alan told me at a seminar that he had just met Barry in the mens bathroom! He said Barry gave him the most sweet, loving, radiant smile and it broke his heart, the smile was so sweet and full of love. Later I gave Barry Adi Da’s Dawn Horse Testament. Someone who worked with Barry said the when he visited Barry in Australia Barry had absolutely no books in his house, except The Dawn Horse Testament.