What brain surgery taught me about the fragile gift of consciousness

My experience with several surgeries and going under full anesthesia every time hasn't been anything that dramatic. Sure, I could write a lot about the feelings I had and the thoughts about whether I'd actually wake up afterward and see my loved ones, but honestly, I find that unnecessary.

In my view, consciousness is completely an emergent phenomenon. What always amazes me is how there’s absolutely no sense of time having passed once I wake up. For me, general anesthesia is probably the closest thing to experiencing death, except with the difference that you get the chance to resume your existence again.

I don't like this article because, like so many others, it tries to tell us how life should be lived, instead of facing the blunt truth: any assumed meaning of our existence only matters while we're alive. All those hypothetical stories we build in our heads about what might happen after we die are just wasted time, sad attempts to justify our existence. The world can and will go on without us, and that includes the people closest to us at our final hour.

Let me finish with this: I've never felt as much peace as I do right before going under anesthesia. It’s probably just the drugs, but honestly it felt like coming home, even though no such home exists, and no one is there to return to it.

edit: paragraphs

"There is a kind of consciousness that lives not in thought but in presence."

Yes, and I believe the strong association we often make between the most advanced cognitive functions and consciousness are misleading us into believing that consciousness is somehow the result of those functions, while I suspect we (conscious selves) are just witnessing those functions like we are witnessing anything, "from the outside". It's of course the most amazing part of the show, but should not be confused for it. Consciousness is not made of thinking but of observing, we just spend a lot of time observing how we think.

I'd shared this article last week with the meditation group I'm part of, describing the author's state of mind on the eve of surgery as a state of samadhi. It's a great description of the state I end up in during almost every meditation session (practicing in the 'open awareness' style) and sometimes also in the middle of the day, unprompted.

I'd shared it with the group because it was interesting that the author had spontaneously landed in the state due to catastrophic circumstances, but now reading it a second time I recall this had also happened to me years ago, on the sudden death of a close family member. I consider myself lucky to be able to access it outside circumstances of personal tragedy or medical emergency. It's a great reason to learn to meditate; unfortunately you can't give people a quick preview of it or a lot more people would take meditation more seriously.

Powerful story. But let's be real: after the "survivor's euphoria" fades, how do you actually keep that level of consciousness? I feel like the daily grind would inevitably pull me back to my old self. Has anyone here had a life-changing moment and actually managed to stay changed?

https://imgur.com/a/vsRq0a9 I had some occipital lobe taken out in 2010 when I was 20 years old, to try to treat epilepsy!

I learned a new term: Survivor's Euphoria. Only having had relatively minor procedures, I have only had relatively minor instances. But I have had a feeling of "I came back" which I have solely after waking up from anasthaesia. As if the interrupted mental processes carry some flow state forward, which I re-attach to.

There's a longer baseline term which might go with this: Survivor's Depression. I have found after successful surgery, diagnostics, any kind of procedure after the initial elation, I have a very strong down-mood. It's not unlike coming back from holiday and feeling exhausted.

What a beautiful, thought provoking article! When I saw the title , I thought it was a book summary of “My stroke of insight” [0]. This book is by a neuro-anatomist who had a rare stroke resulting in the left hemisphere of her brain being incapacitated. That led her to experiences similar to that of the article’s author. Do check out the book and pair it with the article

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142292.My_Stroke_of_Insi...

This is a great article. I've been in for surgery a few times, and I always cry before it because I never know what could happen. I could wind up dead, paralyzed, in chronic pain, a vegetable. Then I think to myself how unspecial I am. Millions of people die every day and yet we deny death, and lose sight of the stuff that actually matters that much. The billionaire and the homeless person still just fertilize worms after they die. That reality keeps me humble and in daily gratitude to the miracle of life, though my confidence does waver during the periods of ill health I've had.

You gotta appreciate how this lovely story, (which to me has too many Is to have "enlightenment" close to it), is sitting on /business/, even though Bigthink has Neuropsych, Thinking, The Present, The Future, Life, Health and Special Issues. I guess it wasn't a conscious decision to have it there, or so I hope. ;)

I had a craniotomy in 1996. Similar thing. The back of my head looked a bit like his, except the scar looked more like a Blue Oyster Cult symbol (backwards question mark). I know they left a piece of the skull out, so I do have a hole in the head.

Took me a couple months to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, but I ended up making a full recovery.

I remember being wheeled into the OR. It was odd, because there was a damn good chance I wouldn’t wake up. Or I’d spend my life in a wheelchair. The cerebellum is a bad place to have problems. I was actually pretty chill. Maybe they gave me Valium.

The recovery sucked. I spent a week in ICU (basically no sleep).

this moral of this zen story

https://www.graceguts.com/quotations/zen-story-tigers-and-a-...

What a great piece. I’m so glad not only that his daughter will get to know her dad, but that her dad is going to appreciate every moment he has with her.

when we go to sleep and wake up next day there is a moment when we loose consiousness and then get it back.

Consciousness is all there is

Glad for him and without a doubt the support network and relationships he had in place significantly contributed to his positive outcome. I recently went through a similar trial and tribulation but as an inmate and by receiving sub-standard care. That's how I was able to turn inward and finally crack into real enlightenment and it's the solid kind because comparatively speaking, I had fuck-all to live for. No family. No future. No nothing but more suffering. And yet I found the release into accepting the beauty of futility. I commit to the program, I give. Let Go and Hang On. IYKYK.

The piece was deeply thought-provoking, but I struggled to get through it sensing how much AI was used to write it.

I’ve been drafting a manuscript for a novel lately, trying to see how well llms can help.

I recognize this prose immediately as OpenAI gpt 5.

It loves to describe things “hum” that don’t usually hum, like the author wrote in the beginning. Plenty more descriptions match the cadence and rhythm and word choices I’ve seen writing my manuscript.

I feel like there’s a meta discussion the author was prompting here about consciousness.

Reading the writing of a real human feels more intimate. Reading the auto-tune version of writing makes me feel noticeably less connected to the reader. I know the author still input something to get this output. But there’s something blocking a deeper connection when I just “know” I’m not reading the author’s words.

Edit: llamas > llms

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Good read! Enjoyed that. I meditate but have never reached that state fwiw.