On a morning in Taos, Bartholomew began by gently setting aside a sheaf of submitted questions about early Christianity, the shroud, the apostles, and his own past — not out of disrespect, but because that research is another entity's job and the only question that frees is "who are you now?" From there he took up the one question he would answer: why are people born crippled, maimed, blind, retarded, starving, rich or poor? What followed moved outward in widening circles — from karma and difficult lives to the golden thread of beauty each hard-dealt hand contains, to works and energy and speech, and finally to tears and the wonder of the world. Again and again he returned the seeker from the vast places of the astral back to a single ground: stay in the moment, allow all energy to flow through you, and the world reveals itself as magnificent. It is a teaching that keeps refusing the mind's craving to build edifices and travel to them, insisting instead that everything longed for is already impinging right here.

Context: Recorded on October 19, 1980, in Taos, New Mexico, this was a single early session that opened from written questions submitted by people not necessarily present — among them a woman who asked about handicaps and retardation — and unfolded partly as exchanges with a few individuals in the room (whose identities have been omitted here). It carries the intimacy of a small, semi-private gathering, with Bartholomew referring to things asked "in private sessions," yet the teaching itself is fully public in reach, addressed as much to those who would later hear the tape. It covers karma and the meaning of difficult lives, salvation through works, energy fields, the discipline of watching one's speech, the higher levels of awareness some call Shambhala, the place of tears, and the wonder of the world seen from within.

"Who Are You Now?": Setting Aside the Questions of the Past: Bartholomew opened by declining, courteously but firmly, a whole series of questions sent to him — about early Christianity, the position of women in the early church, which apostles walk the earth today, the shroud of Christ, and the past lives and environments of the entity called Bartholomew himself. Such research, he said, could be answered far better by those assigned closer to it; it was simply not his job, and he would rather not even begin, because it would be never-ending — people had also asked him to recount the lives of the Buddha, Shankaracharya, Chaitanya, and Godan, and one has to take a stand somewhere. However intellectually stimulating, he said, the question of who Bartholomew was must in the end be dropped, because freedom is achieved only by realizing that those things are past and we are here and now. He did not mean to be rude; it was simply not his field, and he turned instead to the one question he would take up: the question of why human beings are born into such wildly unequal conditions.

Karma and the Difficult Life: To the question of why people are born crippled, maimed, blind, retarded, rich or poor, starving or healthy, Bartholomew answered that this whole framework belongs to the realm of karma — which binds you only so long as you still believe in it, still believe yourself a separated entity moving in a straight line through time, doing A to bring about B to bring about C, struggling toward the light and trying to become more and more pure. Within that belief, many people choose very difficult lives in order to pay back debts they feel they owe. But he warned sharply against emphasizing that negative story, the feeling of trudging through sticky glue, of "I have to rise above, I have to pay back" — because to tell a greatly handicapped person that their condition is punishment for past sins is to encase them in a capsule of fear, terrified that this very action or that thought will manifest yet another life of lack and ugliness. Your actions, he insisted, do not trap you and do not free you; the mind is all, and karma belongs to the realm of mind and body, which is not where truth or freedom lies. The way through is to step back and become the observer of what is happening with mind and body.

The Golden Thread of Light: The interesting thing about difficult lives, Bartholomew observed, is that they often work not the way the mind planned but in an unexpected way: when someone immersed in an extremely hard situation greets the day with a smile, a laugh, and a light heart, finding joy in whatever beauty is available, a dynamic gratitude and upliftment grows within them. He distinguished three kinds of maiming — the physical shown on the outside, the mental, and the emotional hidden within — and noted that most human beings carry some degree of pain. It is easy, he said, for the beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic to stride through life having everything work for them, and no one is surprised; what such ease provokes in others is often envy, rage, and even hatred. But to see someone with extreme difficulty overcome their obstacles is to look upon them with awe, respect, and admiration. His counsel to anyone caring for such a person was to help them find within their own life a wonderful golden strand and cling to it at whatever cost, adding to the beauty of that strand rather than constantly showing them the dark strand that no doubt also exists — not neglecting the difficulty, but never making it the center focus.

Salvation Through Works and the Dissolving of Two: When a participant asked whether there is salvation through works — whether one sees through the illusion by doing good deeds — Bartholomew called it a paradox. If good works are done in order to free oneself, with the whole impetus resting on the self, then one is no closer to freedom than a person going daily to the bank to amass millions and foreclose on little old ladies. What matters is immersion: when you are truly immersed in something, there are not two — not you and the garden, not you and the patient, not you and the work, but only one. But that oneness takes a degree of detachment from your own desire to be free; you must step back from wanting freedom via good works and simply say, this is before me, and I will immerse myself totally in it. The reason good works end up helping, he explained in the terms he could only see things by — energy — is that total, self-forgetting immersion draws in a wondrously dynamic energy, building a stronger and stronger, more balanced and clearer force field around you.

The Force Field You Carry Into Sleep: Bartholomew pressed the energy teaching into daily life with striking bluntness: you cannot live a life of selfishness all day and then sit down at night in the full lotus position and pretend the energy field you created is not around you. Whatever you have done all day goes with you; you cannot leave it at the door of the meditation hall. The energy you take to bed determines the areas you reach in the dream state, which determine the energy you awaken with, which shapes the whole of your day — a single unbroken whole. Go to bed drunk or on drugs, he said, and you go to a difficult area of understanding and awaken with the vestiges still clinging, your meditation sluggish. This, he added, is why some people should not meditate in the morning at all — their sleep does not carry them to positive enough layers to make it worthwhile — and why he sometimes quietly asks such a person to meditate at another time of day. Your night and your day are not separate; you take who you are into your dream state, and so the whole reason to live the life divine, staying in as many moments as you can, is that it carries you at night to areas more positive for your understanding.

Watching Your Speech Between Past and Future: To learn whether you actually live in the moment, Bartholomew offered a difficult discipline: watch your own speech, which is simply the mind brought into form. Listen and you will hear whether you are a past person, forever recounting what happened yesterday or what someone said five minutes ago, or a future person, whirling in anxious "what about tomorrow, do you think this will work out?" — and either ritual reveals a great deal about you. He asked seekers to keep their speech, as far as possible, only in the moment, and warned that they would soon discover there is almost nothing to say about this moment, which is precisely why people flee into past and future. He turned the same watchful eye on why people use words at all — to hurt, to control, to manipulate, to get attention or admiration, to hide behind — noting that people use beautiful words or gutter words or jokes for egotistical reasons, and that the simple statement is the last thing they reach for because they do not want to appear simple. He was not asking anyone to change any of this, only to watch it consciously, to be the watcher rather than go on automatic — even noting how some wield silence as a hammer, picking it up to strike the one who longs for communication.

Shambhala Within and Without: A participant asked whether there is a kind of divine headquarters where higher agents of light congregate, reachable by a human being. Yes, Bartholomew answered — such places exist, called Shambhala or older archaic names — and one can reach that higher layer of awareness through meditation or the dream state; many saints and deep meditators are taught there. He told of a woman astonished to discover that she and a friend had gone in meditation to the very same place, with the same reflecting pool, sky, and pillars, and reminded them that in the Father's house are many mansions. But he warned of the danger in speaking so concretely: people build edifices to it and spend their whole lives trying to reach it. Astral projection is real, he said, yet it can carry you only to the level that matches your own state of mind, for a veil drops beyond that point — for your own safety, since putting a kindergartner into a graduate course would only return them anxious and afraid of altered states. Rather than travel outward, he urged, stay grounded in the moment and let that energy flow to you; be a receptor, open to every field of energy, closing off to none. Most people are closed because they do not want to be hurt — but when you shut out the pain you also shut out the healing that comes with it, for on one side of the coin is the pain and on the other its cure, and they arrive together.

Tears, Laughter, and the Wonder of the World: Finally Bartholomew answered why one such as himself would weep for the drama mankind is about to undergo, when all is illusion and all works together for good. Because, he said, when you sense the fright, the sorrow, the confusion coming, compassion cries; it is the natural response, even as a knowingness that all will be well is present at the very same moment. He recalled the Zen story of the roshi's death, where the most enlightened student weeps and, asked why when he knows the body is nothing, answers simply: I will miss him. Cry your tears, Bartholomew said — but if the same grief still triggers you a year on, you are no longer staying in the moment, where feeling arises and, in time, passes. He would not contrive not to cry or not to laugh; he could only respond as the natural movement of the moment — tears, laughter, silence, speech, and no speech all part of one wholeness. And this brought him to a closing insistence that the world is a wonderful place: seen from the outer eye it looks confusing, painful, separated and ugly, but seen from the inner source it is bold unity, wondrously amazing and mysterious. The great teachers, he said, never tell you to change the world but only to change the way you see it; so do not turn your back on it, but stay so grounded in the moment that you see clearly the God who is here, in this world — and then all will be well.