Барри Лонг: Жизнь, любовь и духовный путь.

Australian spiritual teacher and writer
the Canadian ice hockey player

Barry Long (1 August 1926 – 6 December 2003) was an Australian spiritual teacher and writer.

Barry Long was born and raised in Australia and had little formal education. In his twenties he became editor of a Sydney Sunday newspaper, The Truth and later press secretary in the New South Wales Parliament. At this time he was married with two children.

In his early thirties he began to experience a disillusionment with his material life and in 1964 he abandoned everything, including his family, to go to India. There he experienced a spiritual crisis culminating in a self ascribed "mystic death," which he called his "realisation of immortality," followed four years later by a "transcendental realisation"; a contact with a depth of consciousness from which he stated his knowledge of universal reality ultimately derived. Leaving India he moved to London, living in Highgate and working as a sub editor in Fleet Street until he was able to support himself from teaching and publishing. In 1986 he returned to his native Australia, living on Tamborine Mountain, Queensland with his wife Kathy and young stepson, Simon, then in Burleigh Heads, Queensland when they divorced, and finally moving to Crabbes Creek, New South Wales where he lived until his death from prostate cancer in December 2003. and that unhappiness arises because man and woman have forgotten how to love each other. In 1984 he recorded a double audio cassette Making Love: Sexual Love the Divine Way, later published as a book and CD.

He started his public teaching in England and later went on to teach in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, the US and Canada. His last public seminar was the tenth annual 14 day Master Session held in Queensland, Australia in late October 2002. He continued to write new material after this and his observations on the approach of death were published on his website. The story of his realisations is told in a book published in July 2013, My Life of Love and Truth: A Spiritual Autobiography which describes his life up until the death of his second wife in 1982. His works are published by the Barry Long Foundation International, based in New South Wales, Australia and his last writings have yet to be published.

Barry Long acknowledged his respect for J. Krishnamurti and his teachings, nonetheless he considered himself to be an original teacher. He recommended abandoning religious tradition in favour of direct experience and asked his audience not to believe anything he said, but to listen for the "ring of truth" in it. He himself had an influence on a number of other teachers, writers and therapists.

Long married or lived monogamously with five women; Betty, his first wife; Julie, whom he married in England and lived with for 13 years until her death from cancer; Kathy with whom he moved to Australia with his stepson Simon; Jade who was his partner when he was travelling the world and then Sara, who was with him when he died. His marital and relationship history was described by Clive Tempest in the foreword to Making Love: Sexual Love The Divine Way as such: "All this time Barry Long's love of woman has remained constant. She is always by his side. Through deep and lasting partnerships he has made his realisations of love real in the midst of everyday living."