In this session Bartholomew reframed change on the other side as extension rather than the passage of time, taught that space itself is alive and everywhere present, and returned money, karma, and human relationship all to a single practice - staying centered in the present moment.

Context: This session was held for a small group gathered for questions to Bartholomew channeled through Mary-Margaret Moore, with Dr. Aiken present. The evening opened with a deliberately cosmological inquiry into how there can be growth and change on the other side if there is no time there, and moved outward through the nature of space, aging and "mind over matter", the true role of money, the moment of death, national karma and cause and effect, and finally the meaning of gifted children and past lives. Throughout, Bartholomew kept folding the vast questions back into one intimate instruction: quiet yourself, watch what you say, and rest in the present moment.

Extension, Not Time: Asked to reconcile a timeless other side with the fact that even a being like the Christ continues to grow, Bartholomew distinguished expansion from the movement of time. Change on the other side is not travel from one moment to the next but a state of extending - an ever-widening awareness in which one's felt boundaries move further and further away. Living another fifty years guarantees no such expansion; a person may remain exactly where they are. The way to move toward maximum expansion is twofold: to meditate, and to meet every obstacle, confrontation, and circumstance of daily life without wishing to change it one iota, saying "so it is" and, if possible, with joy. As the wish to have things different falls silent, one's limits begin to drop - including, at the last, the subtle wish to be rid of limitation itself.

Space is Alive: Time's companion difficulty is space. What appears empty to human eyes, Bartholomew said, is in fact full; everything is in a kind of reverse for those on the other side. He urged the group to make inner and outer space a steady object of daily attention, because space will yield up its secret to whoever ponders it. Impinging directly upon this very space - not some distant planet - are all the interwoven webs of consciousness; one need not journey to Neptune to reach a master, nor anywhere at all to understand anything. This is why a dying master asks, "Where could I go?" Space is more vividly alive than the density of the body, and rather than describe it for them, Bartholomew asked each listener to spend a year looking, so the discovery will be truly their own.

Aging, Form, and Mind Over Matter: Aging, Bartholomew explained, is a game the mind has constructed; on other levels of awareness form changes differently - some forms simply grow larger and larger - but wherever there is definite form there is always some operative rule about it, so one may as well accept the earth's. Asked whether an individual can escape such a collective construct, he answered yes and no. Rare entities, moved by the Bodhisattva ideal, have mastered mind over matter and chosen to remain in bodily form to serve the balance of the earth, and the old stories of the yogi who transmutes poison or the man who walks on water are true. Yet such feats cost great energy, and far more commonly one who sees through the game simply thanks it and moves on. No limitation must be kept; but as limits break down, how one chooses to extend becomes a matter of one's own inner dharma.

Money and the Centered Life: To the question of how much concern money deserves, Bartholomew replied that the money in one's life stands in direct ratio to one's beliefs about its necessity. If one believes goods can come only through money, then money must be accumulated; a different belief opens other channels entirely. The remedy for any money difficulty is to go deeply within and examine what one actually believes - not the fantasy or the wish, but the conditioned convictions absorbed from family and a work-ethic culture. He insisted he did not care whether anyone works or not; what matters is where one's awareness rests. If a person will stay centered and surrender the direction of their life, the divine power can be trusted to carry them to their maximum destiny, whether that means labor or rest. Free will is honored absolutely: decide that money comes only through work, and so it will. There is, finally, no money problem at all - only centeredness or its lack, and in the present moment, he said, no problem can be found.

The Moment of Death: A life of genuine yearning - of prayer, aching, and love given out - prepares a particular opening at death. As the essence begins to move and expand out of the body, everything accelerates and one truly sees; in that charged moment it is possible to say simply "take me," a surrender born of understanding the illusory nature of one's own mind-projection. This does not make one instantly free of all illusion, but it opens realms of awareness otherwise closed. Certain levels cannot be reached while judgment, hatred, or resentment remain, and the realm of the Buddha requires Buddha consciousness; yet one need not become a Buddha to be freed from returning to the earth plane, which Bartholomew called a difficult medium - difficult not because of the earth itself but because of the mind-stuff awash around it.

National Karma and the End of Cause and Effect: Asked whether a nation's atrocities incur karma, Bartholomew affirmed that racial, planetary, and national karmas are real: by choosing to incarnate within a stream of collective thought one takes on a share of its responsibility, and any nation that commits atrocities must be ready to have the same returned. The individual's contribution, positive or negative, is their own; the highest service to nation and world alike is to stay centered and radiate dynamic energy, which itself enters the balance. Pressed further, he granted that on the ultimate level cause and effect are not real at all - what looks like A causing B is an unrelated series of movements the mind has stitched together - and that all one's incarnations are, on one level, being lived now. But he refused to answer a limited question with only an eternal answer, offering both because the earthly game must be worked with even as it is seen through.

Gifted Children and the Present Moment: On the four-year-old who plays as though trained for years, Bartholomew set aside the assumption that reincarnation is the only path into a high state of awareness. All are not created equal in this sense; some enter with a closer "pipeline to the source," able to draw down the clearer, more rarefied strata of mind-stuff, which is why the same innovation often appears in several places at once. A past incarnation is one possible explanation but not necessarily the right one, and in any case it is not found down some road or in some far country - it is read right here, in what stands before one now. He closed by urging the group away from the glamour of past lives and toward the single present moment: hone awareness so tightly that only this moment remains, meditate faithfully, and whatever one genuinely needs to know will arrive of itself.