My name is Jean-Jacques Surbeck ("J.J." for short). A retired lawyer originally from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, I have lived in the US since 1983. Since I never explained in writing how I ended up as "custodian" (for the time being) of the remarkable treasure that are the Bartholomew tapes, this seems like a good place to do so.

My former career as a specialist in International Humanitarian Law did not in any way prepare me for this particular job, but the fact is that I always had a strong interest in spirituality.

Some 10-12 years ago, I woke up one day wondering where I had placed some old cassette tapes that had to do with some channeling material I had acquired when living in Tucson, AZ many years before and remembered to be excellent. For some unknown reason, I felt it was all of a sudden important that I find the list of tapes that I knew I had somewhere in the piles of papers on my desk but couldn't locate.

By then thankfully Google had appeared as the go-to solution to all questions one might have, but when I asked about "Bartholomew tapes", the search came up empty except for one link that provided an email address to one Mary-Margaret Moore, the channel through which Bartholomew dispensed his wisdom.

I sent an email to Mary-Margaret asking where I could find a copy of that list and purchase some of the tapes. Much to my delight, she answered the next day ... to inform me that the tapes were not sold any more. As I didn't hide my disappointment, she added that they were "in storage". Now puzzled, I asked if anyone was doing anything with them, to which she responded that no, they were simply in the custody of her friend Phyllis in Taos (Mary-Margaret herself was in Albuquerque).

To make a long story short, I contacted Phyllis, who said that she didn't handle any type of tape duplication and shipping any more, but if I wanted to come over and pick them up, with Mary-Margaret's approval, I could have them.

As luck - or fate - would have it, my wife had planned a trip for the two of us to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos a few months later but had not informed me yet! As soon as she told me, I contacted Mary-Margaret again and asked her if we could meet with her to allow me to explain what I thought could be done with the tapes. She readily agreed.

My wife and I met Mary-Margaret for lunch in Albuquerque and I explained that since on average cassette tapes have a shelf life of about 50 years, depending on the conditions in which they are kept, after that they start to decay, and their content is then lost to posterity. I said that I was really concerned that since no one appeared to be doing anything to preserve them, the mountains of wisdom contained in these tapes could just disappear and nothing would be left of them, except for the few that served as source for the five books published to date. I said that a salvage operation was urgently needed, and I offered to convert all the tapes (on a voluntary basis) into electronic .mp3 files, which would not only guarantee that they would be safeguarded, but also that they could be easily duplicated.

Mary-Margaret gave us her blessing to meet with Phyllis to collect the tapes. We then went to Taos where we had a delightful meeting with Phyllis, who was pleased to hand the tapes over to us. Only then did I realize what that meant: over 1,200 cassette tapes! They were shipped to San Diego where we were living at the time, and as soon as I received them a couple of weeks later, I started the conversion process in earnest.

After about two years, all the tapes had been converted and are thus preserved (except for a handful still missing, listed here). But a simple conversion from tape to .mp3 file is only the first step. In total, approximately a quarter of all the tapes have been uploaded to the site so far. The complete listing can be found here.

Between our first meeting and her passing, Mary-Margaret regularly expressed both her approval and her gratitude that the material she devoted most of her life to would be preserved and, thanks to the communication tools available today, be made available to the whole world, a world that she loved so much to travel.