A meeting of the masters, this 1997 conversation between spiritual teachers Andrew Cohen and Barry Long (1926–2003) centers around an exploration of Long's teachings on sexual tantra. In a shared passion for the truth, these two spiritual pioneers delve into the heart of Long's tantric theories and practice, and his personal experience as the “tantric master of the West.” Long's famously bold claims to higher knowledge, his numerous "wives," and the centrality of tantric practice to his spiritual teaching suggest a larger-than-life figure, not the deeply spiritual, ethical, and down-to-earth man he reveals himself to be. Listen and learn in this dialogue between two fearless and fiery spiritual explorers.
BIO
Barry Long (1926-2003) was one of the first contemporary spiritual teachers to reject spiritual traditions and religious beliefs and put attention only on the direct and immediate experience of truth, reality, or God, now.
Born and raised in Australia without much formal education, his credentials as a spiritual teacher were his life experience and his own direct inner knowledge of life. He insisted that his teachings have no value unless they are lived, and he lived what he taught. He brought to the Western world a practical spiritual teaching for men and women to live in their daily lives.
In his twenties, Long was an editor of a Sydney Sunday paper and a press secretary in the Parliament of New South Wales, and was married with two children. But in his early thirties, he began to experience a hunger for the truth and an inner call to question everything. He discovered within himself a great love of God—the inexpressible—and found that he could not sustain the life he was living.
In 1964 he abandoned everything and went to India. There he underwent a spiritual crisis culminating in a mystic death, which he called his "realisation of immortality," followed four years later by what he called his "transcendental realisation." This was his contact with a depth of consciousness from which his knowledge of universal reality ultimately derived.
Long was a well-known teacher throughout Europe, North America, the UK, and Australia, and people from many countries traveled to be with him. He developed practical means of liberating individuals from their doubts and fears and showed them how to face the truth in their everyday lives—how to negate the forces of the unhappy self. He maintained that unhappiness arises because man and woman have forgotten how to love each other. In 1984 he produced his well-known Making Love: Sexual Love the Divine Way.
His books include The Origins of Man and the Universe and A Prayer For Life. Sixteen of his books have been published and translations appear in eleven languages. He continued teaching and writing until his death in December 2003, at the age of seventy-seven.
