It is only because you are a machine that you suffer; and the purpose — Barry Long

"Okay, so you dont have drugs, alcohol and sex but you love someone, as a feeling. Then it wont be long before youll be experiencing one or more of the painful feelings Ive mentioned above - and thinking its natural! Wait and see. Even in every day living youre continually interpreting experience via your emotions instead of being the experience direct. "This is good, thats bad," your feelings swing subtly to and fro all day long obscuring the reality, the sensational knowledge or gnosis that its not bad at all; its simply life as it is."

"All feelings are false and deceptive. [...] Enlightenment is to be emptied (not empty) of feelings and thus at one with the pure sensation of divine being. And that pretty well sums up the whole spiritual process. But the spiritual process is so little understood that people dont realise their feelings are personal and false and have been misleading them all their life. If thats not true, why is humanity still unenlightened and basically unhappy after all this time - when enlightenment is the completely natural, sensational state of being every moment?"

"By disidentifying with your feelings you break your attachment to them. When that is done sufficiently youre back at the beginning, in pure sensation or unconditioned knowledge. Youve been beating your head against the wall to get some feelings and all youve got to do is break the habit and get used to living anew without pain and conflict. But thats a mighty realisation, and a mighty simple one which few are going to accept - theyll be too busy defending their feelings! So, I guess Ill still be demonstrating this the day I die."

"Incidentally, it seems to me thats why Andrew Cohen tells his students to be fearless and deadly serious. It takes that kind of one-pointed commitment to detach from the delusion of feelings and finally discover the blessing of the valiant; once freed of personal feelings the troublesome mind stops forever."

"Enlightenment is enlightenment. And thats that. Its an unalterable, unwavering state of knowledge and being beyond doubt, a completion every moment by grace of the Most High, the unspeakable one, God. Thats the ultimate; the absolute being beyond any description. But the ultimate, the enlightenment of man, must translate into his living life. And to me and my teaching that means an enlightened man is liberated from unhappiness. Being and living free of unhappiness is the natural and simple state of all life on earth - except man. He has been misled away from it by spiritual lures and glamour and the result is the conflict and pain, the fluctuating unhappiness, of his short life."

"Love is not a feeling; its a sensation. Drinking water when youre thirsty is a sensation, not a feeling. Being in nature or swimming in the sea is a sensation, not a feeling. Lying down when youre tired is sensational, not a feeling, although you may say it feels good. Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations dont need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love rightly is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational."