Asked to clarify the purpose of Vista Grande — the land and gathering place associated with the work — and of what some were beginning to call the "Bartholomew movement," Bartholomew used the occasion to state, as plainly and forcefully as he ever did, that he stood for no organization, no group, and no belief whatsoever — only for the solitary work of becoming the silent seer of one's own being.

Context: Recorded on August 10, 1980, in Taos, New Mexico, shortly after Mary-Margaret and Justin Moore had returned from an extended trip. A question had been prepared in advance about the function of Vista Grande and about whether a "Bartholomew movement" was taking shape. Bartholomew answered at length, then took questions on the nature of the infinite, on striving and desire, on the difference between being natural and being animalistic, and closed with counsel to a nurse who had come apart during a hard night on the hospital wards.

"We Stand for Nothing": Bartholomew began by refusing, in the strongest terms, to let a group, a movement, or an organization form around him. Finding out who you are, he said, is "a one-man job" — you cannot go in a group to the gates of heaven and ask to be let in twenty-five at a time; you go to your own awareness alone. Any organization, however subtly, binds you by the cords of what it believes, and the day inevitably comes when your own inner self, which sees no structure at all, collides with that belief structure and you must choose to conform or break free. Worse, he warned, every organization breeds fear: the moment you have given your all to one, a rival next door becomes a threat, the ego rises to defend, and fear is one of the greatest of all obstacles to clarity. "There is nothing to defend about what I say," he insisted, "because I have said nothing... Truth is not an assayable commodity. You either know it or you do not." Precisely because he stood for nothing, he said, he could embrace everyone: the Buddha, the Christ, Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna and St. Francis could all stand together on one altar, for to believe in none is to be able to exclude none. "All sounds are mantra. All beings are Buddha."

Become the Seer: Against all of this stood one simple positive instruction. "Do not try and change. Do not try to become different. Do not stand on your head. Do not spend thousands of dollars on therapy. See. Just that." Look within and you will find a churning jumble of thoughts and emotions; look outward and you will see separate things. But if you remain quietly the watcher of all of it, never moving from your stance as watcher, the seer of the all will appear. He drew no distinction between "heavy, beautiful thoughts of God" and thoughts of what to have for dinner — both are still thought, and it is not in thought that freedom is found. Be grateful, he said, that the work asks for no organization and only one thing, "because that one thing you have, which is you." You may belong to groups until you die, but you will not be free until you know that you are alone.

What Vista Grande Is, and Is Not: Bartholomew was equally careful to say what the place was not, so that no one hearing the tape would be misled into coming for the wrong reasons. It was not a social organization, not a round of group activities, dancing, parties, or guided tours of the art galleries. Such things were available to whoever wished them, but they were not what the place was for. What it offered was "a space to look at nothing" — the lonely walk within, toward one's own self. The work was hard, and the austerity of walking alone toward emptiness was hard. He welcomed the news that a Vedanta Society retreat and perhaps a Zen Roshi might soon settle in the same area, seeing in it not competition but a wonderful range of choice: "There can never be conflict. There can only be embracing again and yet again another." Anyone who felt a flicker of fear that a more powerful organization might move in next door had, he said, simply misunderstood what he was about — "because I am about nothing."

The Addiction of Peace: He then offered a practical tool. If, as you go about your work, you can simply look — look without thought — your vision widens endlessly and the transition between the inner and the outer becomes effortless. And the instant you truly see, without thinking, peace begins to descend. Here he confessed his "trick": he wanted people to become addicted to that peace, more than they were addicted to the movement of the ego, so that this new addiction might one day "push you off into the abyss," just as their other addictions had driven their lives. It required no special techniques, no bells, no manipulations — "you just look, and all is made clear."

The Infinite: In the questions that followed, a man observed that there must be an infinite number of levels of consciousness above and an infinite number below, so that it can make no real difference where one stands on the scale — wherever you are, you are always at infinity. Bartholomew agreed wholeheartedly, but with a crucial qualification: the greatest obstacle is that most people do not know they are part of the infinite, and so cannot conceive of the choices open to them, seeing only what their senses report. To grasp this with the intellect is not enough; it must be known "with all of your being." He could only speak, he added, to those who ache and yearn and find life meaningless, for they alone sense a dimension they have not yet become one with.

Striving and Desire: A related question concerned the endless human striving to reach "the next level" — clairvoyance, past lives, the other side. Bartholomew called such striving an empty quest, "like traveling in the ocean," going from here to there while the very thing sought is already what one is. The root of it is desire: "Desiring God is just as much a problem as desiring whatever else it is one might desire." He saw no difference between seeking a woman and seeking God — a remark, he noted, that made people angry — because in both cases the seeker is still present; the thing to attend to is simply who is seeking. Past, future, and even the afterlife, he said, are all thought; the masters and the gods, "maybe they're just thoughts." There is only one thing you can state with real justification: that you are. "That's all you know, and that's all you ever need."

Natural, Not Animalistic: Raised again from a previous meeting was the confusion between being "natural" and being "animalistic." Many, hearing Bartholomew praise what is most natural as closest to the vastness within, recoiled, equating naturalness with the animal — with growling, fighting, and the rending of flesh — and grew afraid of their own spontaneous being. But a tree is perfectly natural, he pointed out, and the land is perfectly natural, and neither is animalistic. True naturalness is spontaneity that flows from being the seer: a state in which one deeply knows that doing "yes" or "no," right or left, is guided by a movement that unites all things, not manufactured by the mind. Man's great speciality is that he thinks, and thinking is a fine tool so long as one understands what it can and cannot do; the error is to fall into it as the only avenue of expression. He asked not for "zombies that never think," marching through life like automatons, but for total participation — being present to the whole process, the thought and the thinker and the boundless being all at once — for only then does the true joy of thinking and feeling come alive. Peace, he stressed, is not a deadening; it does not cut off the joy of life but opens it into something spacious.

The Fragmented Nurse: The last question was personal. A woman who worked as a nurse described a night on the hospital floor when she had come completely undone — "absolutely apart." Bartholomew's answer was gentle and without any promise of a shortcut. There is no button he could push, he said; if there were, he or one of the countless teachers she had sat before would have pushed it lifetimes ago. What remains is to see — to begin practicing the watching now, this instant, in the calm of one's own garden and in peaceful moments, and never to relinquish it. Practiced faithfully in quiet times, it becomes so much a part of you that one day it will carry over to the wards without your conscious knowledge, and you will come home in the dark of the morning and realize you were not fragmented. This, he added, is why he so often urged the simple life: not out of any strange principle, but because a simple life affords more moments in which to practice. Within that watching, he promised, is a power that knows how to move to the yes or the no, and it can be counted on far more than the finite mind that tries to figure things out.

Closing: Bartholomew ended by recalling a saying Mr. Moore had quoted that morning, from Ramakrishna: "The winds of grace are always blowing; if you would just put up your sail." The power, however lonely the walk, is always there — because it is a part of you and can never be separated from you.