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Dr. Aiken:

I'm here because I read once that an expert is somebody who's at least 500 miles away from home - so that might make me an expert, but I don't count on it. The only expertise I have is in my own experience, and nobody can match me on that. My life's interest has been to know a little bit about a great many things, and consequently I know a little bit about many things but don't know very much about any one thing. But that's been my thing.

My thing in medicine has been general practice. I know a little bit about a lot of ailments, but I've never become a specialist. In the spiritual field, I've studied the teachings of all the great religions, and I know a little bit about many of them, but I'm not an expert in any of those fields. But that has been my thing.

My word to you is: follow your own inner drive. Nobody knows your blueprint except you. Don't put your blueprint on anybody else, and don't let anybody else put theirs on you. Don't let the preacher put his on you if it doesn't feel like what you want. I quite agree with that.

So, back about 20 years ago, I took a couple of seminars with Morey Bernstein. One of the first things I got into was hypnosis and age regression of people. Usually, in our country particularly, many people are frightened. They've heard strange things about hypnosis - that people would get control over them, that they were in a subject position. So I didn't call it hypnosis. I just said, "Let's slow down your life," and I got along very well.

I met Mary-Margaret about 1963, I think. I'd gone to Los Angeles and talked to a group at a psychologist's office. These people had been to Stanford Research Institute - it was experimental work with LSD and so forth. A number of them had been through this program, and they were meeting every week at the psychologist's office to share their experiences. I was invited to go and talk to them because we had been exploring hypnosis as a tool. That's where I first met Mary-Margaret. We'd been friends over the years.

So one time she was doing a past-life regression and went back to a lifetime in Palestine. Then a few months later, she was having some personal problems and came down to Socorro. She said, "Maybe if we use hypnosis, we can go back to something that's causing these problems." She came down the 3rd of December, 1977.

So I said, "Okay, would you go to some event in this lifetime or some other that will help us understand the situation?"

She said, "I'm in a cave. I'm an old monk."

"Is anybody else there?"

"Yes, there are five young monks working."

"How old are you?"

"Old. I had a wife and children, but war came along many years ago and I came out here."

And about this point there was an interruption. What was obviously a different entity, a different personality, a different feeling, that said: "We have been working with this woman for a long time. I would rather have this opportunity to speak to her more directly through you with regard to her problem. Be very quiet and just go with this. Say to yourself - not out loud, but to yourself - 'Remember why we came here. Remember why we came here.'"

Things began to change, probably because the situation would change. He was not responding, he was not returning with anger. It was quiet. And then it said: "There will be substance of communication. If you will do it, it will make changes in him too."

Later on, when Mary-Margaret came back to normal consciousness, I told her what had happened. She was very much disturbed. She said, "I don't want to be a psychic! I don't want any part of that!"

And I said, "Well, this seems to be different. I've had a lot of experience with psychics in the last 25 or 30 years since I started trying to find out whether the death of the body was the end of life. I found out it wasn't. I've had experience with many psychics. I've explored many communications like this. And to me, this felt like something authentic. This one speaks as one with authority."

So I tried to reassure her, but she didn't want anybody to find out about it. She didn't tell Justin about it.

Then, I think in March of '78, Justin - he was a counselor at the state penitentiary - got botulism poisoning. About 35 people were affected, which is very serious. Often fatal. Elements of food were poisoned. Two or three of them died. I think Justin came close.

In the meantime, he knew that Mary-Margaret and I had something going. We'd go to their place and disappear in the bedroom with a tape recorder and have a session with Bartholomew. Justin didn't know. Finally, she told him about Bartholomew.

When he was recovering from his botulism incident, he and Mary-Margaret came to Socorro, and he had his first conversation with Bartholomew. Mary-Margaret was pretty tense about it, but she did it.

And Bartholomew said: "Mr. Moore, you made a commitment before you came into this lifetime to go for the top spiritual. You have been failing your commitment. And so has the woman. There's important work for you, and I think it's about time that you got with it."

And Justin said, "Yes, master. Yes, master. Yes, master."

The turnaround that night was remarkable. Things began to be different with him after that.

When the entity first interrupted Mary-Margaret's past life as a monk in Greece, I had asked the name. He said, "Bartholomew."

So a couple of sessions later, I said to this entity, "You were not that Bartholomew?"

He said, "No. But I was close enough to that one. The vibrations were such that I could come in. So I used that as an opportunity to do this work."

So I said, "Well, can I have a name?"

He said, "Names are not important. If I were to give you some important name, you would always be trying to find out who that was. You would be even more turned off if I said I was some type of control. So call me Bartholomew. Call me Joe if you want to. Names don't matter."

So we call him Bartholomew. He never clarified that past earth lifetime further. But at one time he said, "There are some other lives - if I told you, you wouldn't believe it."

And so since that time, I've suspected I know who they were. Maybe I should tell, maybe I shouldn't - I don't know. But I think one of them was Ramana Maharshi, because Mary-Margaret didn't know anything about Ramana Maharshi. All that detail has been confirmed.

It was people in Socorro who first reported seeing something. About five different people in Socorro who had come to meetings had told me - each one independently of the others - "You know, I saw something." One of them said, "I saw a bearded head."

So I got that picture of Ramana Maharshi and passed it around. I said, "Did it look like this?"

She said, "Yes, that's exactly what it was."

And then I was with a group in Detroit. Last spring I was out there and someone in the group said, "You know, there was one in our group who saw that same thing when Mary-Margaret was up here giving a workshop in Detroit."

So I asked Bartholomew about it. "How about this Ramana Maharshi thing?"

He said, "Well, let us just say that Bartholomew has never been absent from any of our sessions. Ramana has never been absent."

* * *

Now let me tell you something about myself, because some of you might wonder how I got into this strange thing.

My son was a pilot during Korea. He was the radar operator on a plane - a night trainer out of a base in California. This plane crashed in March 1951. We never heard from him again. We never saw him again.

Then in 1952, I cracked up my airplane. I was the only one hurt, fortunately. At that time, a patient of mine brought me two books. She said, "I don't know why I'm bringing you these books because I don't like them myself."

One was Sherwood's Life After Death. I had heard Sherwood lecture when I was in college. I didn't believe this stuff about psychic phenomena and spirit communication, but there must be something to it.

The other book was LeConte's The World We Are In. I don't remember much about that book, but it put the idea at least in my mind. So this led me to start exploring. I spent time with psychic researchers.

In 1957, my other son drowned in a sailboat accident on a lake with two others. An 18-foot sailboat in a strong wind - cast-iron ballast at the bottom of the boat. A big wave hit, the mast broke, the boat turned over. They were in the water all night. My son went down. They found him two days later.

So this put the pressure on to find out what life's all about. I'd been kind of trying to figure it out anyway. We did go to a Baptist church - got sprinkled rather than dunked, you know, so we weren't really going for it.

Then in 1959, the works of Edgar Cayce opened up a whole era of understanding I'd never run across before. All this research going on! I was amazed at the amount of research done by qualified scientific men. Life is Forever - that was enough for me.

I said, well, just to survive the death of the body - that answers one question. But what's it all about? What's the whole picture? Why are we here? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

So I began asking those questions. And when you begin to ask questions, you begin to get answers. The books and the mystics are going to come to you one way or another. They began to provide answers to those questions. And finally Bartholomew comes along and confirms all these things.

That's a long story, but maybe that's a brief sketch. When our sons died, we thought that was the worst thing that could ever happen to anybody. Now I can say it's the best thing that ever happened.

Through a couple of psychics - and some of them were very poor... To me, psychic communication is a little bit like radio. I built a little one-tube set when I was a kid back in 1924 in Iowa. One night on that set I had built with my own hand, I heard a voice say, "This is Radio KFI Los Angeles."

I was thrilled! What did I hear most of the time? Static. Some of you may remember - a lot of static and nothing much else. But I knew I'd heard Los Angeles.

There's a lot of static with some psychics. You get more clear stuff coming through with others - like Arthur Ford. He was a real good one. Arthur said maybe 80% of what came through was probably correct.

With Bartholomew, I'd say 95% at least. But I still don't accept everything unless it makes sense. Here is an authority on spiritual life. But when he talks about how to run a business, I've never really known him to be an expert on that. I can never see anybody the way I used to see them after watching Bartholomew's love for everybody who has come. I'm seeing them through his eyes now. It's been a tremendous thing for me.

And so I don't think we should be like some of the fundamentalists who take every word of scripture as literal truth. I don't believe that, never did. But there are those who do, and I don't think you should make that mistake with Bartholomew either.

He is a great communicator. He's doing a tremendous job. But look at what he says. If it makes sense to you, then do something with it. Don't just listen to this stuff. If it doesn't make changes in your life, you're wasting your time - and mine.

His attitude is: if it sounds true to you, then use it. But if this approach doesn't appeal to you, find something else. If it does appeal to you, then go to work on yourself.

This way does not appeal to everybody. Remember, as Bartholomew said: "This is A way, never THE way."

This is just A way. If you're looking for THE way... well, why have you been sitting here? Have you done enough inner work that you don't have to come back and hear this stuff again?

Somebody asked me a question about certain channeled materials. I've read some of that material and found it doesn't resonate with me. But somebody said that according to one source, a disciple had to come back because he had made some minor mistake - he had to come back and go through more lives.

So we asked Bartholomew this question. He said, "I cannot agree with that. It would be very unjust to penalize somebody like that for some minor mistake."

But don't take anything to be totally 100% true. Don't believe everything written in scripture. Don't believe what's been taught in tradition. Don't believe what I say unless you check it out for yourself and it makes sense to you.

In many mundane things, Bartholomew depends on Mary-Margaret's understanding. One time they needed to borrow some money and the banker wouldn't lend it. Bartholomew commented, "I thought any banker would be willing to lend money for a purpose like this." He said, "I'm learning many things about earth conditions."

So in things like this, he depends on earthly knowledge. But when it comes to deep spiritual truth, I would say rely on what Bartholomew says - if it resonates with you.

Bartholomew said one time: "Remember, this woman makes mistakes. There are mistakes in communicating. Bartholomew makes mistakes. There are mistakes in all of us."

So I keep this in mind. This is what the Buddha said: Check it out. Maybe some of the things I don't accept, some people would accept. Maybe I don't know enough. Maybe someday I'll understand.

But you don't have to accept it based on faith alone. Paul said, "I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him." He said "I KNOW" - not "I believe because somebody told me."

If I know it from my own experience, I'm an expert on that.

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