I recently had surgery, immediately before I thought to try and see where my consciousness goes. People have commented online about such. For me the general anaesthetic was a knock out. Like after coma, I woke up confused. That’s right I just had an operation, my confusion was short lived having remembered. 10 years earlier in hospital, when regaining consciousness from coma, to this day the confusion remains. I still can’t remember how to walk properly, learning again. Back then I had to be told why I was there, no recollection. Coma meant loss of consciousness for 3 months. Some memories did return. 4 years later I remembered crashing a motorcycle, that memory took a while. Was memory the issue, or my belief. For me, coma proved the non material existence of consciousness, it persisted. You might say those memories were stored in my brain, the same as for surgery. How are memories stored in matter? Consciousness has become a question for science. They refer to coma as brain death, but I came out.

To have become me again says quite a lot, my unique consciousness lives on. Theorists now speculate consciousness is the source of the material world. Our science is limited to human perception, and doesn’t account for everything. We don’t know what we don’t know. We are most interested in the material world, but know consciousness exists. We don’t give it any weight in our theories of everything.

I’m starting to think recovery from coma a matter of confidence. The brain is building new pathways, confidence reaffirms, it can’t be forced. My walking sometimes improves when I don’t mentally labour on every step but walk with confidence.