Ken Wilbur’s Journey into Near Death, Info on CFIDS/Chronic Fatigue

Note: some of us were enjoying the Dark Goddess of Winter Solstice and tuning into the dark vortex at the Galactic Center, new moon, and new sun it was connected with via a Plutonian journey. Ken Wilbur was having a dark night of his soul journey. Below is a nice and humbling piece by him that also has good info on CFIDS, which i didn’t know he had, was told it was some chemical poisoning.

Willbur’s explanations for karmic illness reveal hiim to be conventionally Buddhist (earth is where sinners get sent until they work off the bad karma of having a human life), and thus misguided as to the deeper purpose of creation, but he is entitled to his beliefs 🙂 (not intending to kick that debate into gear, just pointing it out).

At some point I plan to put a website (www.Integral-tao.org already reserved) expressly for Integralists of the Wilbur vein, to share with them the extent to which their essentially solid intellectual ideas about the integration of science, culture, religion, esotericism, etc. have already been put into integrated practices by Taoist alchemists and qigong adepts.

I note that a lot of the Wilburites seem to be trying to reinvent the wheel by patching together a new set of practices that will energetically reflect their beliefs. I love Wilbur’s intellectual model for its inclusiveness and his courage to look for what is common to many different disciplines. His books are brilliant. But there is something missing when I ask my shen to scan his books – there is little chi flowing through to the jing level. This is the plague of modern intellectuals, even spritually oriented ones, perhaps especially Buddhist-other worldly inspired ones trying to find their ground here.

I find his eight fold theory (a resurrection of the bagua with modern categories) is missing the center that enlivens and animates the eight gates – namely, the 9th force, which in Taoist terminology would be the yuan jing-chi-shen in the center. Without a neutral force that mediates and transforms and harmonizes the other eight forces, you are left with an empty turtle shell on whose back is painted many interesting symbols.
With a slight wave of the alchemists’s golden rod stirring the cauldron, it can all come to life.
michael

MEDITATE & EAT YOUR VEGGIES
By Ken Wilber
December 26, 2006

http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/214

Dear Friends,

At 8:30 PM on Tuesday, December 5, 2006, while Becca and I were watching a
movie, I had a grand mal seizure that was quite severe. Although these are
common with CFIDS/REDD/ME, it has only happened once to me before, as far as
I can tell. A really major grand mal seizure can kill you. Although this one
didn’t do that, it came damn close, and was in any event severe enough to
precipitate ten more equally severe seizures — one after another after
another. By the time they got me to the ER and stabilized — about 12 hours
later — not only had I suffered around a dozen grand mal seizures in a row,
I had essentially flat-lined three times and had the electric paddles
applied to my chest three times — overall, a pretty gruesome ordeal.

Every one of the eight physicians (each specialists) who worked on me, told
me afterwards that they honestly did not think I would pull through. The
good news is that I got several nights of really terrific sleep — actually
I didn’t come to until three days later, in part because I was kept
unconscious inasmuch as most patients panic if they awaken on all the life
support systems I was hooked up to — no real polite way to say all this,
but there was a tube up my ass, one in my penis, major catheters in the
groin and carotid, and for three days was intubated (which means a breathing
tube inserted past your larynx and into your lungs). My tongue was nearly
bitten off in several places, and it was swollen to the extent it completely
filled my mouth — basically it was the size of a tangerine, making
intubation necessary for me to breath. I also had what’s known as aspiration
pneumonia (which means that during several of the seizures, I vomited into
my lungs, where the stomach acid eats away the lung tissue, leaving it open
to serious infection, which is what happened). Creatine levels, which they
wanted under 5000 before I could leave, were over 150,000. This could be an
indication of extremely serious and irreversible kidney damage, making
dialysis a life-long necessity. It was pretty easy to see why the doctors
didn’t think I would make it.

During the three days and nights that I was unconscious, there actually was
quite a bit of conscious activity going on in me — half of which was quite
familiar, and half of which was just plain weird. On the one hand, there was
ever-present Big Mind and an awareness of one’s True Nature. On the other
hand, I kept dreaming that I was in this really strange room of blue and
pink pastels done up in a rather wretched aesthetic. I kept thinking, “This
is a horrible dream — actually, with that color combination, it’s more like
a nightmare” — and then I would think that I have really got to wake up.
Then I would shake my head really hard, open my eyes, and find myself in
that same wretched room. I distinctly remember that happening at least three
times. This wasn’t happening to the frontal personality of Ken Wilber (who
often wasn’t present); it was simply happening as a modification of Big
Mind. That’s one of the wonderfully weird things about that part of the
experience; instead of Big Mind dreaming an entire Kosmos, it was simply
dreaming this wretched pastel room. Big Mind was awake as Big Mind, and I
was fully aware of, or rather as, that. That wasn’t what was bothering me.
What was bothering me is why nondual awareness couldn’t shake off this
horrid little pastel display (it reminded me of the last words of Oscar
Wilde. The last thing he is reputed to have said on his deathbed was,
“Either me or those drapes have got to go.”)

On the fourth (or technically, third and a half) day, when Ken Wilber awoke,
there was considerable confusion about this Ken Wilber character. Big Mind
was still Big Mind, no problem; the external nightmare of the pastel room
had been replaced with the “objective reality” (i.e., relative reality) of
the actual pastel room — no problem there either, ugly as the room was. But
I couldn’t remember anything about this KW fellow. As a matter of fact, all
short-term memory had been thoroughly scrambled. During the three-day period
that I was “unconscious,” I had at least one and possibly two experiences
that were roughly similar to the near-death experience of light and tunnel
(probably when they were using the electric paddles to stabilize my
heartbeat). But even then it didn’t involve any choice that a Ken Wilber was
making. KW just wasn’t there (the “choice” about whether to come back or not
had to do with the destiny of the Integral Vision in today’s world; and I
had fully consented to come back and serve that Vision, but there was no
“me,” just ever-present nondual awareness. But even then I remember thinking
this is the kind of dilemma or “choice” that regularly arises on a
day-to-day basis, and so there was nothing especially new here). But it was
after I had regained normal consciousness, sometime on the fourth day, that
there was confusion for the first time, because this KW personality was
starting to form, in addition to Big Mind and objective room.

The next several days were pretty intense, to put it mildly. First of all,
it was pretty clear that my tongue was in a pretty bad way. For quite some
time I thought it had literally been bitten off, and that I might never
speak again, or that if so, it would require extensive reconstructive
surgery. Even more concernful to me, however, was that several doctors had,
no doubt trying to prepare me, began indicating that they were following my
kidney function carefully, because the kidneys were about as sick as they
could possibly be and this might indicate I would need dialysis for the rest
of my life, a truly unpleasant prospect.

I’ll have those who were there speak more directly to this issue, since they
witnessed it, but, despite all of the true gruesomeness of the situation, I
remember my distinct and first concern was the personnel who came into the
room — making them feel at home, making them feel comfortable, making them
feel happy, making them aware of their own True Nature to whatever extent
possible. As I said, I’ll have a few others address that in a moment, but I
believe to a large extent this succeeded. Odd as it might sound, that
hospital room became a place of true joy and happiness for pretty much
everybody on the sixth floor of the Intensive Care Unit. (Of course, I had
been trained by the best in this — Treya.) But that room lit up with
laughter and light and so much care….

Still, this was without doubt the most horrific experience my life, and I
commented frequently to friends that I honestly didn’t see how people who
didn’t meditate could possibly endure something like this, let alone make it
an occasion for levity and luminosity. And not just meditation. The doctors
told me that the only reason I survived was that I was in such good physical
shape at the beginning of the ordeal. When people started asking how I
managed to get through something like this, I therefore started joking,
“Meditate and eat your veggies.”

In other words, get Integral.

Which is what a lot of the physicians and nurses started looking into during
our stay. By the time I came to, pretty much everybody had googled me and
were well into starting their education on Integral Medicine. I stayed in
Intensive Care two more days and then was transferred to another floor for
another two days, and much of that time was spent in wonderful discussions
with the entire staff on what Integral meant, and especially on the
necessity of Integral Medicine — which they all intuitively understood is
necessary, but I don’t think any of them really had a framework that
actually worked — up until now, anyway. We brought books up for everybody,
and I ended up signing probably 20 or more books all with variations on,
“Thank you very much for helping to save my life….”

When I said “our” stay, it really was plural. As has happened in the past,
Colin, Rollie, and Becca stayed with me 24 hours a day (or took shifts doing
so). They made an absolutely hellish circumstance so much easier to
tolerate. I still had tubes coming out of virtually every opening in my body
(at least I didn’t have to get up and go to the bathroom); was strapped down
so as to not accidentally pull needles or catheters out; had major needles
still in my neck and groin and catheters in penis and anus; and, at this
point, had not been able to even sit up for four days. I still could feel no
tongue at all (just a round ball, about the size of a tangerine, that filled
my mouth); kidney functions were improving, but were still alarmingly high.
Having these dear friends there around the clock was truly a godsend. During
all that time, even with all the horrifying news, I don’t think anyone ever
saw me upset or angry or even irritated — but acts of kindness would just
start me sobbing, and there was so much love and kindness shown by all of
them it was so extraordinarily touching.

So, how am I doing now? Essentially, really well. Once I regained
consciousness (i.e., gross-body consciousness), things seemed to improve
quickly and dramatically. I am now over the aspiration pneumonia, and, most
important of all, it looks like my kidneys have not suffered any serious
permanent damage. This is really good news. I used to joke that the only
major reason for having kids was for organ donors; since I don’t have any
kids, I really would have gotten stuck on four hours of dialysis several
times a week, not to mention all the peripheral damage. The one lingering
problem is that I have one hell of a lisp. I’m told that it will continue to
significantly improve; the tongue is so highly vascular that it has a high
degree of healing capacity. But for the next month or two, if you talk to
me, you’ll see what I mean by “one hell of a lisp.” I was thinking about
having a t-shirt made that said: “I Had Twelve Grand Mal Seizures and All I
Have to Show for It is This Stupid Lisp.”

(The first day that I had regained consciousness, and before I knew that I
would regain any speech capacity at all, I knew that the staff at Integral
Naked and I — I would of course be primarily concerned for my health as a
friend, but that they also couldn’t help but be worried sick that this might
mean the end of Integral Naked, because I could no longer talk, and because
Integral Naked is our primary source of income, the end of I — I as well.
So I spent the better part of that day trying to think of some way to handle
that situation and thus mitigate their worry as much as possible, and
finally hit upon what seems to be a really terrific idea. I leaned over and
whispered to Colin, “I figured out how to save Integral Naked — let the
staff know.” He lit up when I wrote the idea down, and agreed it would work.
Basically, the idea — a version of which we still intend on doing while my
mouth continues to heal — is that I will ask each of our Integral Naked
guests to pick one of their best friends and interview them for IN, and then
we would carry that — in a sense, a guest host and a guest guest. This
could bring us over a year’s worth of absolutely fascinating dialogues by
and with some of the coolest people around. All of us still just love this
idea — which happened under the oddest of circumstances, because I was
still strapped down in bed on my back; I didn’t have to get up to urinate or
defecate because the catheters coming out of my body automatically handled
that; I didn’t have a tongue, but more what looks like a golf ball; and
worst of all, I’m in this horrid little pastel room. Anyway, despite
whatever fortitude with which I may have handled the thought of not being
able to speak again, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to slowly have
speech returning. This stupid little lisp is the sweetest sound I’ve ever
heard.)

The other thing you might notice when you first talk with me is that lots of
short-term memories are still reassembling themselves. Sometimes even really
obvious things — from a person’s name to even who they might be — need to
be mentioned, but once they are, everything falls back into place. So don’t
worry if we are talking and I ask you to remind me of several really obvious
things; also, if there seems to be something important about a topic that
I’m not reflecting, don’t be shy in mentioning it.

What Caused the Seizures?

Initially, there was quite some confusion among authorities on exactly what
caused this series of seizures. Several orthodox doctors believe it was
caused by Neurontin, one of the prescription medications that I am on for
CFIDS/REDD/ME. That never made sense to me, for several reasons: (1) I’ve
been on this amount of Neurontin unchanged for several years; (2) the
primary reasons Neurontin is prescribed is precisely because it’s an
anticonvulsant and reliably prevents seizures. Neurontin really isn’t even a
drug; it’s a simple sugar, much like table sugar; and experts such as
Teitelbaum recommend doses up to 6 grams. Although you can’t rule out
paradoxical affects of any med, this explanation never made much sense. I
don’t do street drugs, so it wasn’t that (indeed, that was one of the first
things the ER tested for). At one point it seemed somehow connected to a
CPAP machine, but that didn’t hold much water, either.

When the intensive care doctors asked me what I thought it was, the first
thing I always said was that we can’t rule out the most obvious: it comes
with the territory of CFIDS/REDD/ME. In fact, the reason that this illness
is often referred to as M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) is that, as one of
it’s leading authorities, Byron Hyde M.D., put it, “By definition, all M.E.
patients will have some level of seizure activity as part of their illness.”
And as for types of seizure activity, a standard comprehensive guide to M.E.
lists them as: “simple partial seizures, petite mal seizures, and grand mal
seizures.”

I had not had, to my knowledge, any major seizure activity up until this
point, and so I had simply assumed I had lucked out on that symptom.
However, it now appears almost certain that the incident around a year and a
half ago where I broke my shoulder actually involved a grand mal seizure.
We’d always assumed that I had gotten up in the middle of the night, pitch
black, on a slippery wooden floor, and taken a dive. That probably happened,
but it never made sense at the time that I couldn’t remember the actual
accident itself — incidences that painful are rarely forgotten (whereas
with grand mal seizures there is usually total amnesia). Besides, my tongue
was banged up quite badly and I had popped a crown, all symptomatic of
possible seizure. Put that incident together with this recent one and there
is little doubt in my mind about the cause. The good news in all of this is
that, as deeply unpleasant as these last two weeks have been, at least I now
know about it and am on dilantin, the top-of-the-line med for seizures. If
this incident had happened any place other that a few blocks away from the
finest ER in Colorado, I’d be dead. All in all, I consider myself one lucky
boy.
…………

CFIDS/REDD/ME

The medical team I had really was the finest ER team in Colorado, and they
really did save my life. But, as orthodox physicians, they knew pretty much
nothing about CFIDS/REDD/ME. I had to point out to each of them that the CDC
(Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta) had finally conceded that not only
is this a brutally real illness, it’s approaching epidemic proportions. The
CDC now estimates that at least one million Americans have this illness,
although expert opinion puts it at at least double that. More people have it
than have HIV, and quality of life studies indicate that the quality of life
for those with active CFIDS is comparable to those undergoing chemotherapy.
The parameters of this illness are actually fairly well understood. The
exact trigger mechanism is not yet known, but it’s mechanism of action is —
it involves the damaging of the human body’s production of the enzyme RNase.
This defective enzyme then begins to dissolve the body’s own RNA, and does
so in literally every cell in the body, which is why so many different organ
systems can end up involved. There is now even a test for this defective
enzyme that is 95% accurate. All the other symptoms of this illness are
caused by this central mechanism, which is why the only really accurate name
for this illness is REDD (RNase Enzyme Deficiency Disease). “Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome (CFS)” is almost a complete misnomer, first, because it’s not
really fatigue but paralysis that one experiences when there is a flare-up;
and second, because that “fatigue” is the least of your worries in any event
(it’s definitely a problem, but quite far down on a list that includes
everything from seizures to organ failure). For years now there has been a
concerted effort to get the name changed, but so far the only alternative to
CFS that one sees in this country is CFIDS (Chronic Fatigue Immune
Dysfunction Syndrome) — which is at least a slight improvement since the
immune system is one of those systems hit hardest. In Britain it is referred
to as M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) — reflecting the neurological damage
that is in fact quite similar to M.S. (Multiple Sclerosis). As “A
Hummingbird’s Guide to M.E.” puts it: “In reality having M.E. is like having
parts of Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS, Alzheimers, Arthritis and Epilepsy all
mixed together at once, with some extra horrific symptoms thrown in that are
entirely its own. M.E. is a neurological illness of extraordinarily
incapacitating dimensions that affects virtually every bodily system — not
a problem of ‘chronic fatigue.'”

For those of you who would like more information on this syndrome, the
aforementioned Hummingbird’s Guide
<http://www.ahummingbirdsguide.com/themesymptomlist.htm> is one of dozens of
sources of information that have finally become available that are quite
accurate and useful. The resources they recommend are also ones that I
highly recommend. Also check out <http://www.immunesupport.com/> and my own
discussion of this illness and how it has affected me can be found here
<http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/hi_folks.pdf> (as well as “A Sudden
Illness” <http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/A_Sudden_Illness.pdf> by
Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit).

Karma and Illness

I’ve dealt extensively elsewhere with the concept of karma and illness — in
Grace and Grit, for example, and more recently in Excerpt A
<http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/ExcerptA_KOSMOS_2003.pdf> of volume 2
of the Kosmos Trilogy. But it remains one of the most confused areas of
understanding imaginable. I’m not going to get into it at any length here,
but just let me make a few very brief points. Many people hear of situations
like this, or perhaps suffer similar ones themselves, and imagine it must
somehow be retribution for some horrendous crime in one’s past. But keep in
mind that karma doesn’t mean that what happened earlier in this life is
finally catching up with you; the orthodox doctrine of karma actually means
something that happened to you in a previous life. According to the doctrine
of karma, in this life you are reading a book that you wrote in a previous
life. Many people draw the erroneous conclusion that because, e.g., they
used to yell at their spouses, they now have throat cancer — but that’s
just not the way it works.

As a matter of fact, from at least one angle, the “bad things” that are
happening to you now actually indicate a good fruition — it means your
system is finally strong enough to digest the past karmic causes that led to
your present rebirth. So if you were reborn — that is, if you are alive in
a body right now — then you have already horrifically sinned, and unless
you work it off in this lifetime, guess what? You’re coming back. Illness
itself does not cause more karma; your attitude towards illness, however,
does. Therefore, if you are undergoing some extremely difficult
circumstances right now, and you can meet those difficulties with
equanimity, wisdom, and virtue, then you are doubly lucky — the causes that
led to your being reborn now are starting to surface and burn off, and
you’re not generating any new karma while you burn them (as long as you meet
them with equanimity and awareness).

I only mention this because all too often, people undergoing difficult
circumstances of one variety or another add a type of New Age guilt or blame
to an already difficult enough circumstance, and truly, that’s not only
inappropriate, it’s inaccurate. If you would like to pursue some of these
concepts in this more integral fashion, please check out Excerpt A
<http://www.kenwilber.com/Writings/PDF/ExcerptA_KOSMOS_2003.pdf>. In the
meantime, if you’re undergoing some sort of truly difficult or even horrific
circumstances, please don’t kick yourself when you’re down. That, indeed,
would create bad karma. The good news is that you are finally ready and able
to burn off the karma that led to this rebirth, and this is good news indeed
— if you meet it with love and openness and a smile.

My own writing is continuing to go extraordinarily well. My first truly
“popular” book, The Integral Vision, will be out this summer from Shambhala.
Further, I’m about 90% done with what I think is one of the most important
works I’ve written, Transformations of Consciousness (which is the original
book of that title with some 400 new pages of material — exploring healthy
and dysfunctional forms of both states of consciousness and structures of
consciousness — and in what I believe is a landmark fashion). The Many
Faces of Terrorism, as some of you know, has grown into a trilogy (three
books at about 450 pages each), which we simply call the “terrorism trilogy”
and which I’d say is about 70% done. We are, however, going to excerpt three
of its main chapters that present a full-fledged theory of Integral Politics
— and these will be included in the first two issues of The Integralist,
Integral Institute’s membership magazine
<http://integralinstitute.org/public/static/joinmem.aspx> (the first two
chapters are also available on kenwilber.com right now, here
<http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/202> and here
<http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/205>, with the third yet to be posted),
whose first issue is due out sometime this spring/summer. All in all, some
really good stuff, I think, coming down the pipe.

Sending all my love and care and life and light,
Ken

————

.

__,_._,___