What is it like to be in a coma?

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PROLOGUE (Friedrich Nietzsche):

Now, the dream is a seeking and presenting of reasons for these excitations of feeling, of the supposed reasons, that is to say. Thus, for example, whoever has his feet bound with two threads will probably dream that a pair of serpents are coiled about his feet. This is at first a hypothesis, then a belief with an accompanying imaginative picture and the argument: "these snakes must be the causa of those sensations which I, the sleeper, now have."

So reasons the mind of the sleeper. The conditions precedent, as thus conjectured, become, owing to the excitation of the fancy, present realities. Everyone knows from experience how a dreamer will transform one piercing sound, for example, that of a bell, into another of quite a different nature, say, the report of cannon.

In his dream he becomes aware first of the effects, which he explains by a subsequent hypothesis and becomes persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the sound. But how comes it that the mind of the dreamer goes so far astray when the same mind, awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so conservative in its dealings with hypotheses? --Human, All Too Human

THE CLARITY PROJECT
https://youtu.be/xrT9XRyDDaE

VIDEO EXCERPTS: I was in a coma. Great conversation starter, I know. It was something called a medically induced coma, so I didn't just pass out. They actually gave me drugs and continuously gave me drugs for a good two weeks or so, to put me in this 'sleep state' where I could heal and hopefully live.

So many dreams, so many stories... so here ya go. [...] Everything that happens in the real world you hear, you're still kind of aware of or know what's happening. But it goes through this weird 'filter' thing in your brain.

And by 'filter' I mean it's going through the drugs. And then it turns into something else once it actually hits your consciousness.

So for example, I had a lot of people who'd come to visit and sit by my bed and talk to me. I heard my step-mom and, my own nanny talking, and all that stuff. And I heard what they were saying. But then in my head, we were like in girls in a camp, one of those log cabin camps.

And they were gossiping about one of the other girls. Though in actuality they were just talking about one of the nurses and something she had said. But in my head that got converted into girls gossiping at summer camp, and I was like in on it, too. I was talking back to them, but I wasn't really talking.

And sometimes this messes me up so much, when I'm looking back on the whole experience. I remember so clearly saying something back to them and it being like... 'Oh yeah, that Peggy...'

I didn't say anything, so it was like all a weird conversation in my head with everyone, and I wasn't even talking.

Another thing that would happen resulted from the uncomfortable positions that they would put me in. My brain would make up a story for why I was in those positions.

At one point, they had to literally tilt the bed [...] upside down. So there I was, upside down and swelling like a balloon at that point. But in my head, I was residing in this weird hammock thing. And I remember that I got, like, my foot caught in the hammock...

What it's like to be in a coma ... https://youtu.be/xrT9XRyDDaE

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xrT9XRyDDaE