This is one of the most philosophically challenging tapes in the entire collection. When John Aiken asks whether the separation was a "mistake" and whether life has any ultimate meaning, Bartholomew cannot fully answer - and another master (whom Bartholomew calls "my master, my teacher, my guide") steps in. The answer is startling: "I am sorry that I cannot put any validity into the idea that life has some type of deep meaning in the way that it is lived on the earth plane." Life is compared to a dream; the ego is revealed as an "I-thought" with encrustations spinning a wheel; and the session culminates in the declaration that everyone has direct access to infinite wisdom but refuses to believe it. This tape pairs naturally with tape 32X2 (recorded the same day). Together they form one of the most complete statements on the nature of the ego, the meaning of life, and the path of return. The title "The Great Separation" names the central mystery that even the masters find difficult to explain.

The Question of Meaning: John Aiken asked the question that Bartholomew acknowledged "will be the main response to this teaching": If the great separation was a mistake, does life have any ultimate meaning? Why did God allow such suffering? Bartholomew responded that condemnation was never intended - what he felt was "a deep feeling of sorrow" because earth life lacks "the total joy, the total bliss, the total creativity of the dynamic" that exists in union with the Source. He could not affirm that life had ultimate meaning: "The only validity that it holds is the opportunity to wake up."

The Master Steps In: At this crucial point, another energy entered - one whom Bartholomew identified as his own master, who appeared "only a few times in the early days." This master addressed the impossibility of explaining the original separation: "In order to do this, we would have to remove you from your time-space continuum." He stated plainly: "It is possible to make mistakes... At the beginning there was what you would call a mistake. Not in the sense that you would understand it. But definitely there was a breaking apart and a regretting of breaking apart. The regretting is what we chose to call the pain and the sorrow and the suffering of your earth plane."

Life as a Dream: The master offered an analogy: life is like a dream. Dreams seem real, contain feelings of terror and joy, but have no reality - the creations "do not exist now, they will not exist tonight." Just as recurring dreams seem more valid than single dreams, repeated incarnations create the illusion of continuity and reality. "It is almost totally impossible for us to explain to you in what way there is no meaning to your life and in what way the mistake came about." A cruel God who condemned children to suffering would not be worthy of worship - rather, the first movement out of the Source "was an illusory movement... there is no separateness."

The Actor and the Stage: An actor who realizes he's on a stage sees his fellow players absorbed in their roles as reality. He tries to tell them: "We are on a stage. This is a play. The play will end and we will walk out into the sunlight." But they don't believe him. "Out that door and into the light stands the reality." The terror of the ego is that it believes that when the play ends it itself will end - "and you see the terror in this. This is utter terror. And it is a false position." The actor who walks off the stage is not diminished - what remains as "debris on the stage" is only the role he played, not his true self.

Why Suicide Doesn't Help: When asked why people shouldn't just commit suicide to escape, the master was clear: "The killing of one body does not end the illusion. Your body does not have the illusion - it is your mind that has the illusion. You may kill a hundred consecutive incarnative bodies and you will never free yourself of the illusion. Slay the mind and its illusion and you will be free." The body would actually "vibrate with much greater health" if it served the God-force rather than the ego.

The Ego as the I-Thought and the Wheel: The master presented a vivid image: the ego begins as a single "I-thought" - think of the letter I as a pole. Around this pole gather encrustations of memory and reaction, building and building. The movement between these thoughts creates a feeling of aliveness, of being real. This is the wheel the Buddhists speak of. It spins, gathering momentum, but "the wheel only can move in a circle. The wheel cannot expand into the vastness." The Tibetan pictures show this: a wheel surrounded by boundless vastness, yet by its own volition isolated from that vastness. "It goes on in its endless little way until one day... it decides: this is boring. And then begins the breakup."

The Vastness Responds Instantly: The moment any particle of the ego says "I want some of this vastness" and allows one drop to enter, the dissolving begins. "Once called in, it begins. The more it's called upon, the more will enter, the sooner the job will be done." But humans go in cycles - seeking desperately in hard times, then falling back when life becomes easy. If there were constant, consistent calling upon the vastness, "the process would not take very long at all." The masters rush to assist at the slightest increment of change: "No movement on your part is wasted."

You Already Have Direct Access: Next came a remarkable admission about the channeling process itself. The questioner asked how such wisdom comes through. The master responded: "Any instant that you wish to drop every gimmick in the book and have direct relationship to the wisdom that is manifest, it will be yours." The channeling arrangement exists only because "you do not believe yet on this earth plane that humans have access to this." Mary-Margaret herself "refuses to believe that she has this wisdom. Everyone in this room refuses to believe that they have this wisdom. So we must perform according to your ritual." The divine yearns to manifest "in that absolute intimacy of your own being... You do not need anything. You do not need anyone. You have it all. You are it all. And you have never been anything less."

Bartholomew's Mission - Protecting the Work: The session concluded with important guidance about the nature of Bartholomew's work and protecting Mary-Margaret's privacy. Bartholomew stated clearly that his mission was not to give individual "life readings" or help people "clarify their ego situations" - there were other fine workers for that. "My job is to try to present in as understandable a format as possible the work of New Age... my job is with all instead of with individual persons." He expressed concern about tapes being sent to "powerful people" who could "blow the whole thing into a great spectacle" before Mary-Margaret was ready. He advised keeping distribution limited to close circles for now: "Our job now is to collect and amass as much of the tapes and the data as we can in the ensuing months and in the next two years... at that time we may choose to cease transmission." This provides a fascinating glimpse into the early, protected phase of the Bartholomew teachings, when the scope of the work was still being carefully managed.