Back in 1963 when I worked for Sears the first time.

“From Stockholm to Wichita the towers of the medical center impress on the landscape the promise of a conspicuous final embrace. For rich and poor, life is turned into a pilgrimage through check-ups and clinics back to the ward where it started. Life is thus reduced to a ‘span,’ to a statistical phenomenon which, for better or for worse, must be institutionally planned and shaped. This life-span is brought into existence with the prenatal check-up, when the doctor decides if and how the fetus shall be born, and it will end with a mark on a chart ordering resuscitation suspended. Between delivery and termination this bundle of biomedical care fits best into a city that is built like a mechanical womb. At each stage of their lives people are age-specifically disabled. The old are the most obvious example: they are victims of treatments meted out for an incurable condition.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

“There are occasional simply stupid medical accidents, but the everyday medical horrors are obviously done with massive organization and deliberation. They calculate the billions in profits against the probable cost in legal settlements, and time the drug withdrawal accordingly, when the costs are expected to cancel profits. But when it’s done at the top, with capital, it isn’t conspiracy.”

Adano Ley (Swami Nitty-Gritty) explained …

“I stayed in delta for 15 minutes, and became a Swami.

“I stayed in delta for an hour, and became a Paramahansa.

“I stayed in delta for two hours, and became a Siddhi.

“I stayed in delta for 12 hours, and became an Ascended Master, and went away to a faraway sterile corner of the universe.

“But I turned around and saw the Earth as a tiny blue ball, and I realized, if all is one, I left myself behind.

“So I returned to Earth as a Descended Manifest Master, and here I am, sitting in this chair, a Liberated Being, talking to myself as unliberated beings [he pointed to all of us], and watching the whole thing as an Unidentified Principle.”

One time, riding with Adano, the Elemental Song saved us from a blizzard.

Another time it cracked open the clouds above me during a virtual cloudburst (my Volkswagen bug had totally bald tires with no traction).

Two other times the rain paused for the few brief minutes I needed to get in and out of cars and houses when I was close to pneumonia with flu.

Another time I used it to redirect a roof leak to save my Kinko boxes of Adano notes by sacrificing half of my kitchen (because this is not a something for nothing universe.).

Etc.

Vibrant Gal and I used the Elemental Song during all the evacuations happening here in Montecito, and we did way better than most of our neighbors.

Wouldn’t it be cool if Jeff Bridges learned the Elemental Song?

He and his family had to be rescued by helicopter during the first Montecito mudslide.

Now his house in Russian River-flooded Guerneville is “an island within an island.”