I recently had neck surgery due to to some serious spinal cord issues from an accident 30 years ago. My sister asked if I was afraid, I told her I had been walking this path for 30 years and I was resigned to the surgery. I needed the surgery so I could walk in old age, so it was simple math.
The surgery went very long, actually twice as long as was planned because the surgery had some complications. Nothing serious, bone spurs that had grown to close to the spine needed delicate handling and the surgeon had to work much more slowly than anticipated.
A crazy thing happened as the post-op staff tried to wake me up afterwards. They tried to wake me twice and both times I would wake up, burst into tears from the pain and I splashed backward into to this fluid like abyss with geometric patterns where there was no pain. The third time they woke me I came back feet first and I sort of slowly surfaced into my hospital bed and stayed in this reality. Three times was the charm, after all three is a magic number. Of course I tried to convey this experience to the nursing staff, but they just looked at me like I was crazy. Obviously they are numb to the random utterances post-op patients as they return to consciousness. I am sure they have heard it all.
This was not a Theta wave jump into a meditative state. This was much deeper waters I submerged into. I am pretty certain this was a Delta wave experience most likely induced by the general anesthesia. It was a peaceful place devoid of bright light. Everything had a greenish-blue hue sort of like scuba diving so deep that I couldn’t see the surface nor the bottom. It was like being suspended in embryonic fluid. Which makes me think this was a Delta wave experience because this was deeper than traveling through the Bardos in the Vatas. This was the silence of the abyss.
Fortunately, upon that the second plunge back into the abyss I had the wherewithal to actually take advantage of this “mother of all altered states” that I had found myself in. I also knew that waking up was vitally important and I knew I only had mere moments investigate this strange altered state, but do what? So I told myself to simply be in this moment and remember. Sometimes just remembering is good enough. A few moments later I awoke to three nurses fussing over all the post-op minutia and the moment was gone but not forgotten.