29 June 2017

My Mom is in the hospital!

Finally, my mother is getting the full medical treatment that she deserves and which I have fought for since the Banner Boswell ER failed to admit and treat her condition on June 2.


When her caretaker arrived at 9:30 this morning, she found my mother lying on the floor next to the new hospital bed we had installed for her a day ago.  I do not know how it happened I was not there.  I did not even know that my mother had been transferred from her bed in the bedroom which had sidebars to prevent her from getting up at night and falling, to the new hospital bed.  Hospice had told me that they would make a nonemergency call to the paramedics to transfer from one bed to the other.  When this took place I do not know, but likely a caretaker transferred her and did not put up the side rails of the hospital bed.  I will find out but I do not know at this point.

The caretaker called her supervisor and supervisor called paramedics who took her to the Banner-Boswell ER.  I told them that she had had a hard time there a month ago and they refused to treat, but I figured that after all the trouble I made, they treat are much better this time---and they did!

The difference was night and day.  When I arrived at the ER there were 12 medical personnel in the little ER room with my mother and another for five outside including the paramedics and two security guards.  It was a scene out of the TV show ER, or the current Code Black.  There were people everywhere running around back and forth.  They would let me in and I had to sit in the waiting room while he worked on her.  Because she was so dehydrated was very difficult to find a vein and I could hear her moan when they tried. 

Eventually they let me in and there were still two nurses with her.  She had a leader bag of saline solution being administered IV.  They were very concerned because her blood pressure was reading 78/38.  They added two more bags of saline solution for a total of 3000 mL, and the blood pressure was returning to her normal, which was about 100/65.

They put in a central line in her neck.  I was with her for three or four hours while she got many tests including whole upper body CT scan, x-rays, multiple blood tests, and constant vital monitoring.

Finally, they were treating my mother as someone who deserved to be alive, not as someone to be sent home to go into hospice.  Apparently my efforts to make her situation known, including two hospital personnel, had its effect.

Later on, the ER doctor called me on my cell phone after I returned home, saying she was being admitted to intensive care, and wanted a history of what led up to this recent hospitalization.  He stated that there was some fluid in her lungs, and a high lactic acid buildup because of severe dehydration, and there may be a bacterial infection.  He stated that the CT revealed what could possibly be metastatic disorder in the liver and whether I wanted treated or not.  I told him she had a DNR, but that does not mean do not treat.  And he said of course, we will treat with medications all over disorders that we can.

Course of treatment now will be to see if she survives this.  Of extreme low blood pressure and failing kidneys, with atrial fibrillation, and a failing heart, and then she would be released to a rehab unit to see if she can bounce back to more normal functioning, and if not it could become her permanent home as a skilled nursing facility.


I know in previous postings I had become stoic accepting that she had been tossed away by the medical care system and thrown into hospice, where they refused to refuse to treat her severe dehydration, because they did not condone “aggressive” treatment, which means injections or an IV, but only treat symptoms medically.  I do not advise anyone to go on to hospice, because that means effectively that all “real” medical treatment ends, and they just wait for the patient to die peacefully in a coma, induced may be by dehydration, kidney failure, or heart failure.

So, my mother is getting the treatment she so much deserved a month ago, and I have to thank Banner-Boswell for so graciously accepting and aggressively treating my mother’s various diseases.  If she survives this period, and if we can push her a little harder to drink more water, she may survive a bit longer, and perhaps even get back to reading the newspaper and doing crossword puzzles.


About that fall she mysteriously sustained, she suffered no physical injuries, and feels no pain as a result.  The only pain she felt was from the neck restraint paramedics put on her before they picked her up.  She felt quite relieved after was removed.  There were no broken bones, no twisted joints that caused her pain.

27 June 2017

A LONG DIALOGUE WITH A STUDENT:


Dear Edji,

Yes I am understanding Nisargadatta Maharaj and you properly these days. The book, Ultimate Medicine, is curing me from my illness/illusions.

My observations:

This sense of presence and consciousness seems to be one and the same. But consciousness in its purity is not anyway associated with the body. This I am sense is the first spark of the manifestation of the consciousness in the physical body. Is it so? I come to this conclusion because after some time of abiding in this 'I AM' it just becomes a being; a dynamic force, energy only with space like character. There is no feeling of being-me but just Being-ness. So, in a way consciousness and this I am ness is one but not exactly the same. Is my observation correct sir?

You are so true about emotions. When I start feeling this presence, various emotions are coming. Yesterday gloomy mood in its totality came. It tore me apart and for some time I forgot everything. I forgot teachings, self, presence- everything. That ate me, my heart and this presence. first time i understand what a strong emotion do to us. It really eats us. This morning when I wake up that depression is still there in its full swing. In meditation I welcome it. I really said; you are welcome. Please come, I welcome you with my full heart. And I put that emotion in my heart. Accepting it for whatever it is. I felt it like another entity. A living entity. I literally felt ache and pain in my heart for some time. But slowly it started to dissolve and melt into light. That unknowingly strengthened my presence. My sense of presence glowed and light manifested in the inner void. Again there was peace and silence as if heavy clouds have moved away from the sky.

Sometimes in meditation and sometimes in normal condition I feel as if the inside and outside has disappeared. 2 days ago while walking in the road I felt that everything is one movement. This body, the road and cars moving are one phenomena. A deep sense of peace and heartfelt love is almost always there in those experiences. I do not feel this all the time but sometime I slip into this condition unknowingly. Somehow the division between inner and outer is little bit disrupted. I really do not know what this is. But I enjoy these moments of non-differentiation. Is this somehow relate with your teaching sir?

Dear Edji, I can live my remaining life this way as I have this peace and understanding that whatever comes will disappear. I was always a chronic sufferer as all of us human beings are :) But somehow with your grace and glance upon me, I am curing my illnesses of identifications with body/mind and the happenings of the world. But I want to complete my training under your guidance. Is it possible sir? Your words matters too much to me because they are for me. I can read many things in many ways but they don't work for me. Your words has become Bija-mantra for me.

Take care,
Purushottam
--------------------------------------------

Dear Purushottam:

The truth is almost everyone is caught up in their minds. They interpret sense data creating inner worlds and outer worlds. They create politics, create the deep state, create gravity, create the sun and the earth rotating about the sun. From the time we are six months old we are immersed in a sea of concepts, some conflicting, others consistent. The ideas that make up our world are similar to those of our neighbors, but very dissimilar to those of people in Iraq, Somalia, or Pakistan. It is differences in the concepts we hold is true or judge as true, versus the concepts and people that hold them that are conflicting or different, which creates unnecessary strife in our human reality.

Oh, only to become simple again. No concepts. Just sense data and resting there, without a division into inner and outer, without consideration of right or wrong, who is evil or is good, who is right or who is wrong. Just to rest as self, devoid of judging concepts, fake or real news, and just be yourself without concepts or position. No identity. No understanding. Nobody. No mind. No heart. No soul. No birth. No rebirth. Just resting in no-concept, peace pervades, the self is everywhere, unidentified, known and unknown both.

Letting go of concepts is a different experience for everyone. Some need to hear the words of Nisargadatta which presents a universal worldview with the intent of freeing you from identification with your body, with your mind, with your humanity, and to take you beyond even identification with God.

Others use mantra or japa, and repeat a phrase or name over and over again to get out of the mind.

Others deliberately lower their consciousness into their heart, near one’s internal sense of heart, and from one's new location within the heart, the mind becomes like a chattering radio two rooms away, easily ignored, yet still open to its’ content which may be relevant in the moment. With one's consciousness centered in the heart, you are open to everything, to emotions, to the world as it is, to war, to peace, to unrest, to fulfillment.

When you are open to yourself as you experience yourself in the deepest way, one is totally free from the external world, totally free from the divisions of mind, totally free from the wants of the body, in peace, complete, needing nothing.

Thus, his teachings are a universal tool, and only as a tool not as absolute truth, I recommend that everyone read the Nisargadatta Gita, and the three books of Nisargadatta talks as translated and explained by Robert Powell, namely the ultimate medicine, the experience of nothingness, and the nectar of immortality. These should be read daily, and daily ponder the meaning of teachings he is offering. It was ask yourself, “why does Nisargadatta say what he is saying? What is the point of his teaching? What is he trying to do with these words to my mind and heart? Can his words help free me from my own misconceptions?” You must understand, Nisargadatta’s words are used as a tool to free you, not as an alternative theory of reality that is truly real or more true than the viewpoint you have now.

In addition, you need to practice self inquiry which has so many different ways of pursuit: the first way is to look within and one's own thoughts, and after a long period of time being able to isolate the I thought, which is the linchpin of one's identity as a human in the world. Watch where that thought arises from, and where it disappears to. This is the fundamental teaching of self-inquiry suggested by Robert Adams and Ramana. There are many other ways also. However, practicing this method alone allows one to experience total emptiness, the deep void of consciousness, the place where all experiential appearances arise and into which they all disappear. The void.

Another way of practicing self-inquiry and which is completely different, is instead to "look" inside, and "feel" inside for the I am sensation, the experiential experience of being alive, which is often felt first as a spark of energy near the heart or in the chest somewhere. Focus on this I am sensation. But focus in a relaxed way, not tightly holding onto the sensation because of you focus tightly, it (the I am sensation) freezes and dies. Just hold on lightly, attend lightly to the sensation, the feeling that you exist. This method is most extraordinary in its results.

Holding onto the feeling of I am, one gradually becomes aware of the internal energy system within the body, the so-called subtle body, attending to which, gradually builds a sense of "presence." This sense of presence becomes like an internal body that pervades one's physical body and extends beyond it into the space around your body. When one can feel one's sense of presence it becomes more real than your experience of your body, because it is deeper than the body and the experience of the body. One identifies with one's sense of presence as the real you. But this is still an incomplete truth, a provisional truth on the way to deeper understanding, and deeper peace.

Looking closely at the sense of presence, you will see it has a quality of emptiness or void within, and it has no physical aspect or solidity. It is purely space and the life energy pervading that space. It’s form varies from moment to moment, and its essence is sentience, or awareness, and that awareness consists of light and emptiness, and experiences or appearances within that light and emptiness, which appeared to be objects or actions within an external ‘reality’.

From this practice of attending to the felt sense of I am, and the growing sense of presence, can come the awakening from within to the divine, which may take the form of the divine as infinite power and light and love and bliss, arising within you, in your body and in your sense of presence, coursing upwards in an explosion of light, love and bliss, where you become aware of the divine within you for the first time, and ever more share the divinity of God as your own characteristic. Unfortunately, if you still retain a strong identity with your humanity, your body, and your personal identity, that flooding by the divine may become an obsession with your own divinity, and you feel that you, personally, are God, as opposed that God is living through you, and you are a mere functionary allowing for his manifestation within and through you.



Lastly, after seeing through the illusion of I am, watching the arising of the divine from within and manifesting That in your everyday life, the explosion of bliss and energy gradually subsides into a constant and subtle presence, and you have for the first time, an ability to do a new kind of self-inquiry, which is just to rest as oneself, rest in an as one's own self, which means doing nothing except falling back into your sense of self, dwelling there in silence, with no mind, no emotions, no intent, no direction, no goal. Just rest in yourself, the joy and peace of being your own self. At this point you will begin to feel a peace you would never thought possible, so deep, so complete, so total, with nothing more for you to do, nowhere else to go, except be you as you.

25 June 2017

SATSANG SUNDAY JUNE 25--KINDS OF SELF-INQUIRY

SUNDAY'S SATSANG ON VARIOUS TYPES OF SELF-INQUIRY ADDRESSED TO VARIOUS STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT. NEW VIDEO DIRECT FROM ZOOM. I CANNOT ATTEST TO ITS QUALITY.

WILL NOT BE OPERATIVE UNTIL 2 PM CALIFORNIA TIME.

23 June 2017

Yesterday, June 22, I received a letter from Jessica key, patient experience coordinator at Banner health.  It was dated June 19.  Jessica wrote:

Dear Mr. Muzika,

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention regarding her mother’s visit to Banner by Medical Center.  Your feedback is very important to us and I appreciate you for taking the time to share your concerns with us.

Your concerns have been shared with the appropriate leaders for review and follow-up.  Our review is currently taking longer than we anticipated as it is important to us to be very thorough in this process.  When a review is completed, you will receive a formal response in writing with the results of our investigation.  I apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience and understanding.

If you have further concerns or questions please contact us at (623) 832-6657 or you may email Bannerhealthpatientrelations at@BannerHealth.com.

MY RESPONSE:

Dear Jessica,

I got your June 19 letter today.

I have no patience.  I see my mother deteriorating each and every day.  She is a completely different person since the ER experience of June 2.

I have reached out to social media and 28 area reporters about his case.  I have tried to get increased caretaker hours for my mother since she can no longer walk or sit up for more than 5 minutes at a time.  Her speaking now is entirely different, being with a weaker voice and much less comprehension.  She still retains her sense of humor and says she does not want to die, because “living is so much fun,” not said sarcastically.

For 27 years I was an animal welfare activist in the area of feral cats, and now I am fighting for her life.

A do not resuscitate note on her file SHOULD NOT MEAN ‘TOO OLD TO TREAT’.  That is hos Banner-Boswell has treated my mom, as too old to treat.  This is your DNR policy.  This is your Sarah Palin version of Death Panels in my POV.

She is too weak to be transported to a cardiologist to be transported by car, or by a transport service with the wheelchair we just got because she hasn’t needed one before.

Hers was a sudden deterioration, and your ER treated her like trash in my estimation, and entirely discounted my pointing to her swollen ankles, sudden loss of comprehension with confusion, sudden inability to walk. 

Apparently B-B policy is to treat a DNR notice as a do not treat notice.

I really see that B-B is not taking my complaint as an active plea for help, nor do I see anything about allowing for a re-exam and admit for treatment coming out of your investigation. She needs a non-emergency transport to the ER or a direct admit.  I will be receiving her ER records soon, and I understand her blood test results there were much worse than those obtained by her nurse practitioner a week before.

The blood test taken at the ER on June 2, indicated that the D Dimer test, with the normal high of 499, and a previous May 25 high of over 7,600, was now over 12,000.  This is the test for clotting.  Her BNP with the normal high of 500, and which had read 1,176, at the ER on June 2, was 1,818! 

How could she not have been admitted?  Was it your DNR policy?  I wouldn’t know because neither the doctor or the social worker gave me any credible medical information as to her condition or Dx or the reason for refusal for admission.

Yours Truly,

Edward Muzika, Ph.D.


banner-boswell followup with jessica

Yesterday, June 22, I received a letter from Jessica key, patient experience coordinator at Banner health.  It was dated June 19.  Jessica wrote:

Dear Mr. Muzika,

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention regarding her mother’s visit to Banner by Medical Center.  Your feedback is very important to us and I appreciate you for taking the time to share your concerns with us.

Your concerns have been shared with the appropriate leaders for review and follow-up.  Our review is currently taking longer than we anticipated as it is important to us to be very thorough in this process.  When a review is completed, you will receive a formal response in writing with the results of our investigation.  I apologize for the delay and thank you for your patience and understanding.

If you have further concerns or questions please contact us at (623) 832-6657 or you may email Bannerhealthpatientrelations at@BannerHealth.com.

MY RESPONSE:

Dear Jessica,

I got your June 19 letter today.

I have no patience.  I see my mother deteriorating each and every day.  She is a completely different person since the ER experience of June 2.

I have reached out to social media and 28 area reporters about his case.  I have tried to get increased caretaker hours for my mother since she can no longer walk or sit up for more than 5 minutes at a time.  Her speaking now is entirely different, being with a weaker voice and much less comprehension.  She still retains her sense of humor and says she does not want to die, because “living is so much fun,” not said sarcastically.

For 27 years I was an animal welfare activist in the area of feral cats, and now I am fighting for her life.

A do not resuscitate note on her file SHOULD NOT MEAN ‘TOO OLD TO TREAT’.  That is hos Banner-Boswell has treated my mom, as too old to treat.  This is your DNR policy.  This is your Sarah Palin version of Death Panels in my POV.

She is too weak to be transported to a cardiologist to be transported by car, or by a transport service with the wheelchair we just got because she hasn’t needed one before.

Hers was a sudden deterioration, and your ER treated her like trash in my estimation, and entirely discounted my pointing to her swollen ankles, sudden loss of comprehension with confusion, sudden inability to walk. 

Apparently B-B policy is to treat a DNR notice as a do not treat notice.

I really see that B-B is not taking my complaint as an active plea for help, nor do I see anything about allowing for a re-exam and admit for treatment coming out of your investigation. She needs a non-emergency transport to the ER or a direct admit.  I will be receiving her ER records soon, and I understand her blood test results there were much worse than those obtained by her nurse practitioner a week before.

The blood test taken at the ER on June 2, indicated that the D Dimer test, with the normal high of 499, and a previous May 25 high of over 7,600, was now over 12,000.  This is the test for clotting.  Her BNP with the normal high of 500, and which had read 1,176, at the ER on June 2, was 1,818! 

How could she not have been admitted?  Was it your DNR policy?  I wouldn’t know because neither the doctor or the social worker gave me any credible medical information as to her condition or Dx or the reason for refusal for admission.

Yours Truly,

Edward Muzika, Ph.D.




If you want to see my activity on Facebook, look up my name there, and also my blog, http://itisnotreal.blogspot.com.  Between the two, I get between 600-900 viewers a day.

22 June 2017

PLEASE, YOU CAN HELP MY MOTHER (Helen Alder) AND ME BY CALLING THE BANNER-BOSWELL HOSPITAL PATIENT RELATIONS DIRECTOR, JSSICA, AND COMPLAIN ABOUT WHY MY MOTHER, HELEN ALDER WAS NOT ADMITTED AND TREATED ON JUNE 2, AND KNOWING WHAT SHE KNOWS NOW, WHY IS SHE NOT SENDING SOMEONE OUT TO EVALUATE HER AND DO A DIRECT ADMIT.

Jessica phone: 623 832 6657 at Banner Boswell.

Also, cut and paste the below complaint to email and send to a list of 28 news sources attached.

COMPLAINT:

THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS KILLING MY MOTHER!
Until about a month ago, my 99-year-old mother was walking, reading the newspaper, doing crossword puzzles in the newspaper, watching television, being conversational with a good sense of humor, and being entirely present with no confusion or dementia noted.

Then about May 25 or so, her ankles began swelling, she had much more difficulty walking, stopped reading the newspaper, stop doing crossword puzzles, and had periods of confusion and memory loss.

On June 2, based on results of a 4-day earlier set of blood tests and urinalysis obtained at home, her nurse practitioner, Susan Ward, urged me to call paramedics to take her to the emergency room at Banner Boswell Hospital, due to blood test results such as BMP, an indicator of congestive heart failure, which read 1,176, while highly normal was 500, and the D Dimer test, indicative of blood clots, with a high normal of 499, but hers was reading over 7,000.  Susan Ward arranged for calling the paramedics, as she thought my mother was critically ill.

Long story short, ER refused to admit her for congestive heart failure, or for potential life-threatening clotting, performing only a CT scan of her brain to see if clots were there causing a stroke.

I have just recently found out, that blood test taken at the ER in medical documents that I have requested to review, indicated that the D dimer test, with the normal high of 499, in a previous high of over 7,600, was now over 12,000.  This is the test for clotting.  Her BNP with the normal high of 500, and which had read 1,176, at the ER on June 2, was 1,818! 

The social worker at the Banner-Boswell ER told me my mother was being released and she would not be admitted, as my mother had no acute illness that could be treated at the ER.  I asked how they could possibly release her to home when she had only very part time caretakers at home, she could not walk now, and was quite confused and incoherent. I felt at least they could stabilize her condition rather than just push her out the door.

The social worker told me, that that does not matter, the doctor stated that she was going to be released now as there was no acute medical condition that could be treated at the ER, the doctor said she had to go home now.  She told me that my mother should never have been brought to that ER, because there is no acute condition that could be medically treated. Yet that same doctor, Matthew Jones, had said to release her to home with only part-time caretakers would be dangerous.  Later, the social worker said my mother would be released to home anyway.

Subsequently I found out that the reason my mother was not admitted, is that during a previous hospitalization after a fall which put her into a convalescent home for 17 days, is that she had signed a “do not resuscitate” document which precluded aggressive treatment in cases where there is heart failure or stroke, or coma.  However, the hidden or unspoken protocols of the banner-Boswell ER was that any elderly person with a DNR would not be admitted to the hospital for treatment of the underlying issues such as congestive heart failure, potential clotting, or whatever other condition had led to the patient seeking help at the ER.

That is, the ER had a protocols which made it impossible for an elderly person such as my mother in a very fragile state of health, to receive healthcare, because she was too fragile to be moved to a doctor’s office by car, sit in a waiting room waiting to be seen, and then be transported back.  That is why Susan Ward had her taken by ambulance to the banner by ER, because she thought she was too fragile to be moved by any other mode of transport.

Because of my mother’s fragility, she had failed to make an appointment with a cardiologist  when one was scheduled a year before.  My mother perceived doctors’ visits as being too stressful and is perhaps life-threatening because of the stress did imposed.

Thus, the Arizona healthcare system along with the protocols of Banner-Boswell, have ensured that my mother will soon die of congestive heart failure and possible blood clotting, because now she is far too weak to attend any medical appointment except by ambulance, and apparently no ER in the Banner system, which is most of them in the area, will admit her for treatment of the underlying conditions, because she does not have a cardiologist to order a direct admission to the hospital.  All of her care would have to pass through an ER, and all have the same protocol of not admitting those who have signed a do not resuscitate document.

So at this point, my mother is dying and there is nothing I can do about it.  However, I am going to cause pain to the Banner-Boswell ER that has ordered her death, and is refused to provide treatment because they did not want someone to die in their hospital.  It would ruin their statistics.

Not only that, at no time did anyone at the hospital or at that hospital ER tell us what the true state of my mother’s health was.  They did not tell me a diagnosis.  They did not tell me that she had congestive heart failure.  They did not tell me she had potential clotting.  They did not tell me that she was as sick as she was.  They only stated they are not going to treat her because she does not have an acute condition other than the bladder infection, that could be treated at the ER.  They said she must go home, that she should never have been brought into that ER.

There was no frank discussion of the state of her health, or her terminal trajectory, especially if not provided by any stabilization within the hospital.  To them, she was just dead meat.  And I am very angry.

My mother is now lying in her bed at home waiting to die, on hospice.  Michael and I go over to her house frequently to see how she is doing and make sure she is receiving care, and once in a while we stay with her overnight to make sure she is okay during the night.  However, I am 75 years old, with the collapse left lung, and on the CPAP machine, and an oxygen machine at night, awaiting surgery for a left hip replacement operation that I delayed due to my mother’s health problem.  So my mobility, and my strength are much diminished compared to five years ago.

Please, call Jessica, at Banner-Boswell hospital, who is in charge of patient relations and a complain about my mother’s treatment and state your opinion about how rotten my mother is being treated, and that you consider this a prime example of medical malpractice and elder abuse.  Her phone number is:

(623) 832-6657

and also leave a message for Warren, chief social worker there at

(623) 832-5518

PLEASE EMAIL THE PASTED COMPLAINT TO (CUT AND PASTE):

elvia.diaz@arizonarepublic.com; robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com; ken.alltucker@arizonarepublic.com; jessica.boehm@gannett.com;  mcassidy@republicmedia.com; paul.coro@arizonarepublic.com; tom.blodgett@arizonarepublic.com; mcassidy@republicmedia.com; rebecca.dyer@arizonarepublic.com; daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com; brenna.goth@arizonarepublic.com; david.gordon@arizonarepublic.com; brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com; brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com; mike.meister@arizonarepublic.com; dan.nowicki@arizonarepublic.com; rob.odell@arizonarepublic.com; catherine.reagor@arizonarepublic.com; anne.ryman@arizonarepublic.com; josh.susong@arizonarepublic.com; yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com; kaila.white@arizonarepublic.com; kaila.white@arizonarepublic.com; dustin.gardiner@arizonarepublic.com; catherine.reagor@arizonarepublic.com;


THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS KILLING MY MOTHER!

Until about a month ago, my 99-year-old mother was walking, reading the newspaper, doing crossword puzzles in the newspaper, watching television, being conversational with a good sense of humor, and being entirely present with no confusion or dementia noted.

Then about May 25 or so, her ankles began swelling, she had much more difficulty walking, stopped reading the newspaper, stop doing crossword puzzles, and had periods of confusion and memory loss.

On June 2, based on results of a 4-day earlier set of blood tests and urinalysis obtained at home, her nurse practitioner, Susan Ward, urged me to call paramedics to take her to the emergency room at Banner Boswell Hospital, due to blood test results such as BMP, an indicator of congestive heart failure, which read 1,176, while highly normal was 500, and the D Dimer test, indicative of blood clots, with a high normal of 499, but hers was reading over 7,000.  Susan Ward arranged for calling the paramedics, as she thought my mother was critically ill.

Long story short, ER refused to admit her for congestive heart failure, or for potential life-threatening clotting, performing only a CT scan of her brain to see if clots were there causing a stroke.

I have just recently found out, that blood test taken at the ER in medical documents that I have requested to review, indicated that the D dimer test, with the normal high of 499, in a previous high of over 7,600, was now over 12,000.  This is the test for clotting.  Her BNP with the normal high of 500, and which had read 1,176, at the ER on June 2, was 1,818! 

The social worker at the Banner-Boswell ER told me my mother was being released and she would not be admitted, as my mother had no acute illness that could be treated at the ER.  I asked how they could possibly release her to home when she had only very part time caretakers at home, she could not walk now, and was quite confused and incoherent. I felt at least they could stabilize her condition rather than just push her out the door.

The social worker told me, that that does not matter, the doctor stated that she was going to be released now as there was no acute medical condition that could be treated at the ER, the doctor said she had to go home now.  She told me that my mother should never have been brought to that ER, because there is no acute condition that could be medically treated. Yet that same doctor, Matthew Jones, had said to release her to home with only part-time caretakers would be dangerous.  Later, the social worker said my mother would be released to home anyway.

Subsequently I found out that the reason my mother was not admitted, is that during a previous hospitalization after a fall which put her into a convalescent home for 17 days, is that she had signed a “do not resuscitate” document which precluded aggressive treatment in cases where there is heart failure or stroke, or coma.  However, the hidden or unspoken protocols of the banner-Boswell ER was that any elderly person with a DNR would not be admitted to the hospital for treatment of the underlying issues such as congestive heart failure, potential clotting, or whatever other condition had led to the patient seeking help at the ER.

That is, the ER had a protocols which made it impossible for an elderly person such as my mother in a very fragile state of health, to receive healthcare, because she was too fragile to be moved to a doctor’s office by car, sit in a waiting room waiting to be seen, and then be transported back.  That is why Susan Ward had her taken by ambulance to the banner by ER, because she thought she was too fragile to be moved by any other mode of transport.

Because of my mother’s fragility, she had failed to make an appointment with a cardiologist  when one was scheduled a year before.  My mother perceived doctors’ visits as being too stressful and is perhaps life-threatening because of the stress did imposed.

Thus, the Arizona healthcare system along with the protocols of Banner-Boswell, have ensured that my mother will soon die of congestive heart failure and possible blood clotting, because now she is far too weak to attend any medical appointment except by ambulance, and apparently no ER in the Banner system, which is most of them in the area, will admit her for treatment of the underlying conditions, because she does not have a cardiologist to order a direct admission to the hospital.  All of her care would have to pass through an ER, and all have the same protocol of not admitting those who have signed a do not resuscitate document.

So at this point, my mother is dying and there is nothing I can do about it.  However, I am going to cause pain to the Banner-Boswell ER that has ordered her death, and is refused to provide treatment because they did not want someone to die in their hospital.  It would ruin their statistics.

Not only that, at no time did anyone at the hospital or at that hospital ER tell us what the true state of my mother’s health was.  They did not tell me a diagnosis.  They did not tell me that she had congestive heart failure.  They did not tell me she had potential clotting.  They did not tell me that she was as sick as she was.  They only stated they are not going to treat her because she does not have an acute condition other than the bladder infection, that could be treated at the ER.  They said she must go home, that she should never have been brought into that ER.

There was no frank discussion of the state of her health, or her terminal trajectory, especially if not provided by any stabilization within the hospital.  To them, she was just dead meat.  And I am very angry.

I am even more angry now today, seeing that the new Senate Republican health bill is even more evil than the Congressional Republican health bill, and would result in the decimation of Medicaid, of which my mother is a beneficiary.  I see that the Republican move is pure evil, cutting 900 billion out of Medicaid and giving it back to wealthy taxpayers in the form of a tax-cut.  I see the same indifference is what my mother received at the ER, a total indifference to her life and health.

My mother is now lying in her bed at home waiting to die, on hospice.  Michael and I go over to her house frequently to see how she is doing and make sure she is receiving care, and once in a while we stay with her overnight to make sure she is okay during the night.  However, I am 75 years old, with the collapse left lung, and on the CPAP machine, and an oxygen machine at night, awaiting surgery for a left hip replacement operation that I delayed due to my mother’s health problem.  So my mobility, and my strength are much diminished compared to five years ago.

This must not stand! 

Please, call Jessica, at Banner-Boswell hospital, who is in charge of patient relations and a complain about my mother’s treatment and state your opinion about how rotten my mother is being treated, and that you consider this a prime example of medical malpractice and elder abuse.  Her phone number is:

(623) 832-6657
and also leave a message for Warren, chief social worker there at

(623) 832-5518

Asked them for email addresses to the CEO and to the ombudsman through which you can mount a complaint.

Thank you very much!












17 June 2017

My mother is not doing well.  She is mostly stable in a semi-conscious wakefulness.  She is able to sit in her easy chair, but is very weak, and is asleep most of the time. 

It has been two weeks since the problem of being kicked out of the ER and not admitted for observation and treatment of her sudden decline and bout of confusion.  Physical therapy still has not been authorized although visits to a cardiologist and nephrologist have been.  Yet, she is too weak to go to an office visit by automobile.  The waiting room wait and transport would be very hard on her a fragile as she is.  I would fear further decompensation as she suffered from the ER visit.

Her illness is strange.  Sudden total weakness, sudden inability to walk, or stay fully consciousness, yet the hospital could not be bother even to admit her for observation.  They are so afraid I am going to sue, that they are trying to speed up the PT.  But she thinks she is too weak for physical therapy.

She keeps repeating weakly, “I am not here,” which would be fine for a student of Robert, but not so good as a prognostic sign.


I request all of you who think you have healing powers, or believe in the effectiveness of prayer, to wish my mom, Helen Alder, well.  Thank you!
Below are three emails from Matti. He sent his first answer seeking email during June 2010, a period of seven years and 412 emails. I have posted several of his emails and my responses over the years, because his experiences were similar to my own. The problem was that though Matti was VERY dedicated, he was never able to stabilize for long until h had an awakening experience maybe a year ago, and just disappeared abruptly for a while.

Now he is back having traversed the foothills of enlightenment, to approaching the culmination of his journey.

Below are three emails that speak for themselves and range over both realization of the Manifest Self to transcending consciousness itself, entering the total freedom of going beyond life and death. I am quite proud of Matti.

THE EMAILS:

Dear Ed,

I feel the presence of God or Divine inside me and around me. It is not just me that is here at the moment, but there is also "someone" else. That someone is not equal to me but is much, much more. It's not God as such, but the beingness of something extraordinary and grand. A glorious presence is here with me and we relate to each other in an intimate way. Truly wonderful.

Dear Ed,

I feel my body relaxing and almost falling asleep. Consciousness dims down and I melt into nothingness that somehow exists. There is the bright Consciousness and then beyond that there is special nothingness where I am beyond the bright light of existence. It feels like that is my true home and all Consciousness is really just fickle and mercurial, like something secondary. My eyes open and I emerge from that nothingness into my body and mind. I feel refreshed.

Dear Ed

Everything is hollow. Literally empty. Just 2-dimesional surfaces glued together. Inside, outside, coarse, subtle and existence and being and everything else is like holograms. Nothingness has transformed into empty void space that fills everything. Like computer graphics. Freedom! Just freedom.

ED's RESPONSE:

From the Yoga Vasistha as translated by swami Venkatesananda, volume 1, chapter 3, page 9.

Rama asked: Lord, what are the characteristics of a Jivanmukta who is liberated while living?

Vasistha replied:

He who, while living and apparently normal life, experiences the whole world as an emptiness, is a Jivanmukta. He is awake but enjoys the calmness of a deep sleep; he is unaffected in the lease by pleasure and pain. He is awake and deep sleep; but he is never awake to this world. His wisdom is unclouded by latent tendencies. He appears to be subject to the likes, dislikes and fear; but in fact he is as free as space. He is free from egotism and religion; his intelligence is unattached whether an action or inaction. None is afraid of him; he is afraid of none. He becomes a Videhamukta when the body is dropped.

16 June 2017

Spirituality Versus Morality?

I am going to enter an area of discussion that is very dangerous here.  It is a discussion about the difference between enlightenment which includes experiences of self-realization, and morality, which includes codes regarding eating, behaviors, and sexuality.  There is nothing more controversial in our times that this topic other than politics with Trump as focus.

For discussion’s sake, I will define “Enlightenment” as interrelated experiences combined with an intuitive understanding of what those experiences mean.  By intuitive understanding, I certainly do not mean conceptual understanding, but a conceptual understanding can flow out of an intuitive understanding.  But you must understand that the intuitive understanding exists prior to being able to formulated into a conceptual understanding.  The problem is, people reading spirituality or literature about morality often have not had the intuitive understanding experience prior to articulating either moral understanding or an understanding about self-realization of the manifest self, and then the realization that consciousness itself eventually collapses into nothingness in the end.

First and foremost I draw my understanding from two traditions: Robert Adams arepresenting a modern interpretation of Ramana Maharishi, and Jean Dunne, representing Nisargadatta, as well as Nisargadatta himself directly from the three books of translations by Robert Powell including The Ultimate Medicine, the experience of nothingness, and The Nectar of Immortality, and also the body of literature left by Nisargadatta’s teacher, Siddharameshwar.  These provide the bedrock of my intuitive understanding, conceptual understanding, and are the explainers of my experiences generated through self-inquiry, self-abidance,  meditation, and also following a Bhaktic/Tantric path for a period of six years.

You must understand that enlightenment in this grand tradition requires a dis-identification with the body, succeeded by a re-identification with the totality of consciousness as the Manifest Self.  Later, there is a transcendence of experiential consciousness itself.  One can “grasp,” or apprehend the totality of consciousness and experience it as an “other,” with “you” standing apart from consciousness, and you yourself, being unable to grasp that self which is apprehending the totality of consciousness.  That is, you can only be that witness apprehending the totality of consciousness, and that totality does not include the witness, but it does include the body.

The experiences leading to this point are many.  The most common is an intense explosion of light and intensification of consciousness within one sense of presence which permeates the body.  The light and power arises out of one’s gut, flows upwards into and through one’s heart center, and continues upward into the head and brain and upwards beyond that into the space above.  This light is intense, the light of 100 suns, but which is not hot or burning, and which is intensely white.  Within it is an amazing and immense power, immense energy, and the experience of the presence of an other within, of such power, such energy, such purity, and such overwhelming love, that one cannot imagine it to be an experience of your own self within, because it appears to be so much more than you ever were.  It is an experience of the divine, of God, appearing and flowing within your sense of presence.  The sense of presence itself can be called Subtle Body, a body of energy, feelings, emotions, love, and Shakti, otherwise known as the life force.  This final experience is called God realization, or realization of the Manifest Self, or the experiential self.

The intuitive understanding that comes with this is the experience of consciousness or pure spirit as being one’s own self, rather than the body, and that the body is merely the vehicle for spirit.  One’s attention now is focused on consciousness, on spirit, and only secondarily on one’s own body and physical needs, such as food, wealth, sex, or even comfort.  One is fascinated with one’s own self as Romana Maharishi describes the experience where he died to his body identification and was reborn with an entirely reflexive consciousness pointed at that godlike divinity within one’s own sense of presence, the life force or Shakti.

All kinds of philosophies are built around this experience, from kundalini yoga, to Tantric yogas, the Bhaktic yogas, to the healing theories of Reikei and Quantum Touch.

The next enlightenment stage is where you transcend the consciousness itself and find yourself to be the witness of consciousness, and that consciousness is alien to you, and you are totally unknowing as to your origin or reason to be.  In this stage you want nothing, you know nothing, you experience nothing, and this can be both “experienced” and “apprehended” intuitively in different ways.  The experience can be entered from ordinary awake consciousness by having one’s attention fall downward into the heart taking the energy out of the brain and focusing it inwards to the center of your heart which is at the center of your sense of presence, and then peacefully descending into nothingness, ever gradually more peaceful and more complete and resting.

The other way, is to enter the state of nothingness directly from deep sleep, and at that point being able to apprehend the various states of consciousness as they arise and pass, from the waking consciousness, to the dream state, to the deep sleep awareness.  And with this, comes the recognition you are beyond all levels and states of consciousness.  Coming at this state from the deep sleep state, one misses that sense of deep peace that arises when we entered the “witness” from the waking state in samadhi.

Follow me so far?  Enlightenment is about self-realization, exploring all aspects of your being this, from raw sensory data, to one’s internal energies, subtle body energies, Shakti, bliss, identification, letting go of identifications, this identify with the body, re-identifying with consciousness, then dis-identifying with consciousness and becoming nothingness.

This is what I call the spirituality/enlightenment trajectory.

This trajectory means you discover experiences and things in yourself you never dreamed of before you began practicing spirituality, things like becoming one with God, with the divine, and divine union, as part of the awakening of your intuition to the totality of your manifest consciousness.

On the other hand, much of spirituality, including all the common major religions, are focused on controlling behaviors, and labeling some behaviors as uplifting or positive, and others as negative or hurtful to one’s “spiritual” future.  Here we talk about karma, or divine cause and effect for every one of one’s actions, so control is of one’s actions so as to build positive karma.

We find Judaism, Christianity, communism, and Hinduism, filled to the brim with judgments about almost every one of everyday actions from what is proper food, what is proper sex, with his proper livelihood, what are proper relational values.

All morality is relational, how we relate to others like ourselves and unlike ourselves, or with ourselves to the environment, with ourselves to food, or with ourselves strangers as opposed to family and friends.

You see, all of these regard your body and others as real, and is the fundamental relational matrices that guide all human and animal interrelations.

However, once you disidentify with the body, and reidentify with the totality of consciousness, you are no longer in a relational mindframe, and in large sense, morality no longer applies to you, because you do not see yourself in relation to other bodies, other minds, other souls, but they are all within you.  You have gone beyond relations into the totality of consciousness where all things are contained as elements within consciousness, your consciousness, and thus all are within you.

What begins to happen at this point, is all that your human desires disappear because you are no longer so attached to the body.  Your desire for food diminishes.  Even the simplest food or the most complex food have no differences to you.  Some taste better than others, some are saltier or sweeter.  But you become indifferent to food, because you have transcended the physical.  He/she also become relatively indifferent to sex because it is something that stimulates the body and not so much love.  In fact, even the thought of sex may disgust you for a while as something gross and impure.  But basically you have gone beyond rules about behaviors, rules about eating, rules about sexual morality, rules about social niceties, rules about respecting authority, rules about avoiding the painful or the pleasurable, and instead you live now in a new spontaneity without ever considering your courses of actions or your behaviors, because you are no longer the one in control. The totality is acting through you.

I know critics of such an attitude and they are legion will throw examples that you saying now you become utterly callous and potentially criminal mentality because you no longer follow common morality, proper and civil interactions with people.  In fact, most that have reached this level try avoid crowds, and to avoid people, because they know that they will not be understood because of where they come from and where they are.  Such people tend to either isolate themselves or live in ashrams or communities of like-minded people.

Here is where I make the statement is going to cause the most concern.  Being vegetarian or being vegan is of very little benefit to one’s spiritual progress along the enlightenment/self-realization trajectory, because that trajectory is involved in understanding and experiencing oneself on all levels, and which results in an initial dis-identification with the body and lack of concern about the body.  The same holds for sex.  It does not matter if you have sex once a year or three times a day when it comes to passage along the in spiritual/self-realization trajectory, although having sex three times a day would be an external marker for someone who was still very attached to the body.  But just ending sex as a forcible restraint in no way actually frees you from the body, because the desire is still there and will not die.  The desire must be fulfilled and completed and only then can it be dropped, and that is by having rich and wholesome and satisfying experiences of sex, a beautiful meals, etc. in all aspects of life.  One must have utterly experienced being loved by someone in a romantic sense.  One must eat all kinds of foods, and if one feels guilt at eating meat recognize that fact that you caring a heavy weight of guilt when you are eating meat, eggs, milk, or cheese.  You may choose then to end that guilt by ending that eating pattern, but this in no way is an aid to ending your identification with your body.  As a matter of fact it is concentrating on the bodiy’s habits, such as dealing with desire for meat, or desire for sex, repressing one’s desire for meat, or repressing one’s desire for sex.  Repression, forceful withholding, only buries the desire which will, come out later in the same or slightly modified form.

I fully embrace vegetarianism and veganism as a way of life.  I fully embrace the concept of being very sparing of sex, and only if one is in love, because sex embroils you in relationships and in life, and one bent on self-realization has to leave that all behind.  One has to outgrow these habits, not forcefully reject them.  As a matter of education and insight, as well as responding in a compassionate and heartfelt way to others and to animals.  Even as one transcends relationships, transcends the body, and even consciousness, one also transcends all moral codes, which are generally repressive external controls, or a borrowed from others as a religious code, or a concept like karma.


It is not that the enlightened one becomes an animal with uncontrolled lusts, desires, manipulation, and power.  Just the opposite, that person is freed from the relational life of tit-for-tat, of an eye for an eye, of karma.  He or she has entirely gone beyond relational meaning and become one with the totality of consciousness.  Later he or she even frees him or herself from consciousness itself, and is thus the most harmless and useless of all beings for he or she has little to do with life or the earth, seeing it as the play of consciousness having nothing to do with him or her, it is something external and not real, and which he or she may or may not participate in depending on the spontaneity of the moment.