Bartholomew turned the question of his own strange method into a doorway, then led the circle out past the skin of the body and the skin of the mind until the whole of space could be felt as one's own vaster self.

Context: Recorded on the 6th of April 1979 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this session opened with a request — put forward with a book in mind — that Bartholomew explain why the teaching should come through this particular vehicle rather than any other. From that account of his method the evening moved through a series of questions on enlightenment and the Bodhisattva, on the dissolving of inner and outer, on the practice of meditating on space, and on the raising of children, each answer circling back to the single abiding truth that all is one and there is no separation.

Why the Teaching Comes This Way: Bartholomew explained that he raised the question of his own method deliberately, so that readers might understand why the teaching is brought forth as it is. The maximum form of communion, he said, would be for each person to go deep within, silence the mind, and know instantly and eternally who they are — but few at this stage can receive a direct teaching, and so people must be taught. He described how two of his disciples had chosen to incarnate, one of them the woman through whom he speaks, and how he had long ago given his word that he would see them true to the end and not abandon them to the illusion. Continuing to guide them once they were in body posed a puzzle, since a human who carries a teaching finds it very difficult to step aside and let the teaching itself speak, the ego quietly taking on the role of doer. The chosen method sidestepped that danger precisely because neither the woman's ego nor her husband's is directly involved; she is aware it is not she who does it, and he added that her health, happiness and peace had only increased since the work began. He framed the arrangement, too, as a form of selfless service, which purifies the mind by turning it away from its own fantasies and toward relationship with others.

The Rarity of a True Teacher: He observed that the great avatars and truly enlightened teachers are very few and far between, and that many well-meaning guides, however wise or kindly, have not themselves broken through to the end of the illusion and so cannot carry another there. The test he offered was simple: does the teacher still perceive difference — between himself and you, between you and another — or does he know, with unbroken clarity, that there has never been any separation at all, and how often does he throw the seeker back upon that one great truth. He attributed the scarcity of such beings to the difficulty of returning to dense bodily form once one has merged with the Source, and urged those who lack a living master to make maximum use of whatever means of truth are at hand.

The Bodhisattva and the Field of Consciousness: Asked how one who has seen through the illusion can retain enough individuality to help those still bound by it, Bartholomew described what the enlightened being perceives: the whole vast field of consciousness, with every body, mind and particle of the universe contained within it like flickering lights held in a great blue sea. Such a one knows that he is not any separate part but that entire upholding field. Beyond even this, he said, lies a further realm he called deep awareness, and to move into it is to draw further still from the earth plane, its densities and difficulties greatly magnified. The Bodhisattva is the one who, knowing he could expand onward, chooses instead to remain within the field of consciousness for the good of all the seemingly separate entities, until they too awaken to their place in that vast wholeness — a choice, he noted, that in most cases could not be made from within a physical form.

Neither Inner Nor Outer: When a questioner spoke of reading a chapter of the Tao Te Ching — the thirty spokes meeting at the hub, that which cannot be seen being the useful — and of no longer being sure whether the view he looked upon was out there or projected from within, Bartholomew told him he was exactly on the right track and that this was precisely where he wished all listeners to arrive. There is, he insisted, no inner and outer; one imagines the skin divides them, but there is another unseen skin, the mind itself, which is the ego's chief device for keeping people separate. Each person lives inside their own mental world, their perceptions their own and unshareable, so that even two people discussing the simplest matter will find they have understood it differently. For this reason he asked, again and again, that awareness be kept upon what one might be if one is neither the mind nor the body.

Meditating on Space, the Vaster Body: Granting for the moment that there is such a thing as a body, Bartholomew invited the circle to stretch the idea until they conceived of a far larger body — first two, then the entire universe as their own form. As one sits to meditate, he said, one can see oneself in imagination as the whole vastness, filling all space to the limit of imagining; and since this reflects the truth of one's nature, the seeing is not arrogant but liberating. From that perception the small desires fall away, for what could one who is the entire universe possibly lack, want or need. He offered a companion practice for pairing this with the "I am": to see any person or object as a flat cardboard cutout set within a field of moving light, a stage many travellers pass through in which the surface persona seems almost weightless while the timeless permeates it. He described three stages — the tree seen, the tree not seen as camouflage, and the tree seen again with reality and camouflage blended in harmony — and reminded them that space is always present, inner when the eyes are closed and outer when they are open, and so is always available to work with.

Gimmicks, Ripeness and the Ego's Fear: All these methods, Bartholomew stressed, are at the end only gimmicks, and no one should treat any single image as sacred or insist upon it; whatever is maximum for a given person is what should be used, whether the spatial practice, which suits the visual, or the "I am", which holds the mental person at the now. He warned against the ego's delaying trick of finding every offered practice wrong and forever needing to invent another, and likened choosing a practice to selecting from among vitamins according to one's own constitution. Taking up a questioner's confession that the statement "there is no time" had once sent chills of fear down his spine, he said that fear itself is a good clue, for the ego defends nothing so fiercely as time and space, and he asked seekers to put such reactions under the microscope of their own awareness. The only thing that separates the knower from the non-knower, he said, is the desire to know; ripeness cannot be forced, and each soul falls from the tree when its time has come, yet he urged those who feel the pull to make maximum use of the incoming power now, since no one can know how long a life cycle will last.

The Newborn Soul: To a question touching the birthing of a child, Bartholomew answered that the highest service a parent can give is not vitamins and food but the guidance of the way, offered as early as the child can understand it, parent and child standing as co-workers rather than as authority and subject. He corrected the common belief that newborns have no awareness: the child is a full soul that has come from another, vaster state and finds itself encapsulated in a small form, often in fear and resentment, having to learn its limitation as one might who had suddenly lost the use of every limb. Some infants cry and wake ceaselessly, he said, not from need but because their essence keeps returning to the vastness and coming back — and among these are the very souls who have come impatient to get on with the work they were born to do. He asked that parents speak to such a child directly, assuring it of their care and understanding, for the words are impressed upon the being and ease its anxiety; and he honoured the whole act of parenthood, in which the mother gives the child first nourishment and takes only what is left, as a high and symbolic service — the offering of a vehicle to a soul seeking to move closer to freedom.