The return to the inner life

The talk begins with the external world: electromagnetic communication, population increase, travel, noise, media and the inability to bear silence. Barry presents modern life as a madhouse of appearances in which people are trapped by information and by a mind that lives wholly outside itself. Science and cleverness do not rescue this condition; they intensify it, because they remain focused on the external, ignoring the inner life.

From there he turns insistently inward. The inner life is what truly matters, because all disturbance is ultimately suffered within. He distinguishes my 'self'—the emotional accumulation of hurts, pains, fears and reflections—from 'me', the deepest, most subtle place in the body, which is silent, still, direct and free of information. This inner place is the beginning of intelligence, the door to God, and the source of contentment shared by trees, flowers, animals and human beings alike.

The practical heart of the session is his repeated instruction to stop thinking, sink attention into the sensational body, and remain consciously with the black, quiet nothingness of 'me', even with the eyes open. From that place, questions evaporate, love becomes communication, death can be faced intelligently, and the listener begins to live less by projection and more by stillness in the present moment.