The First Seminar
Until Easter 1988 Barry Long had only taught small groups in either weekly meetings or weekend ‘intensives’. His first open seminar was held in Sydney that Easter and it was followed by three seminars at Regents College, London in August and September. Several hundred people attended these events, held from a Friday afternoon until the Sunday evening. The announcement ahead of the seminar contained these statements:
The Seminar marks a new stage … All who come will have immediate access to an increased and increasing consciousness, an energetic stream of original teaching or truth. A spiritual teaching is simply that: a stream of consciousness evolving in power and purity through the struggles, sacrifices and devotion to the truth of those moved by it, and preserved by the clarity and presence of the living master whose responsibility it is to keep the stream pure. Those who are with him at any time can dip into it or dive into it. It is there to be used, as all who use it contribute to it. All this by the grace of God.
No preparation is necessary for the Seminar beyond a deep longing to find what is true, and a willingness to do something about it. The function of the teacher is to demonstrate the truth and help to make your own power more real - so that you can employ it in your daily life and in the crises that lie ahead, including your physical death.
The purpose of the Seminar is to introduce you to self-transcendence - a practical, problem-free, spiritually liberated way of life. This at present is the realm of the earth’s few living masters. But it is time for that to be changed. It is not the availability of the realm or state that is limited; it is the current consciousness of man and woman. The Seminar is a step towards transforming that consciousness. At the Seminar, no matter how small or fleeting your glimpse may be of this highest attainable spiritual state, the energy of it will endure in you and work in you towards its final unlimited realisation in time.
The Master, the truth I am in every body, must be realised while you are living, here and now. Over the three days of the Seminar you will learn by practising how to be here now and from that will flow in time the mastering and mastery of yourself. Until you have mastered yourself - what else could the Master be master of? - the Master is perpetuated as being apart from you. However, when he appears apart from you in his own living body here and now, it is an essential part of the divine process. For I always come in person when you are ready to receive me.
The Earth Master will always reduce himself for you, destroy dependence on him as quickly as possible, and transfer your identification from him to yourself. But in your zeal, before the Master can arrive in person, you are likely to talk of dead masters or coming masters … There are no dead Masters - only I here and now. Come when you can.
The Lord