In a recent work lunch, while interacting with a medical professional, they were talking about their experience with a procedure as they went under anesthesia. This reminded me of my own experience under general anesthesia as a 6-year-old. I was required to undergo a 3-hour surgery, so they knocked me out. I recall lying on the operating table with eight surgeons surrounding me. They pulled out an injection and slowly injected me with what I now understand is anesthesia, while a nurse held my head and gave me support.
Then, for the next five minutes, all eight surgeons stood around me, and patiently waited for me to “fall asleep”. I vividly remember the anxiety I had with so many people with masks and headlights on, staring dead at me. I felt my eyes slowly closing into the abyss. Exactly how they portray a person falling asleep in movies. And before I knew it, I woke up in the recovery room with my dad next to me. I made it out of the surgery successfully.
As someone with a poor memory, this experience sticks out in my mind, remembering every little detail. But, as a six-year-old, I was trying to recall what I could remember after the procedure and couldn't think of anything. Simply nothing. I could not bring any good, bad, or neutral experiences with me from the anesthesia.
So what happened to me? From my perspective, I simply ceased to exist. My awareness dissolved into nothingness putting me in a state of bliss (a state where I am relieved of the pain and sufferings of the world). An early anesthetic agent — Ether was discovered by Paracelsus, a Swiss physician. His interpretation of the use of this was -
“quiets all suffering without any harm and relieves all pain…”
What else relieves all pain and suffering? Death.
From my surgeon’s perspective, I might be alive, breathing and just unconscious. But, from my perspective, the argument is moot because there is no such thing. I’m not sure if being under an anesthetic can be interpreted as death because no one really knows what it’s like to be dead.
The concept of zero can better be understood with an experience like this. As a number, it is insignificant to most of us who are only familiar with arithmetic math. But for scientists, the idea of zero is much more complex to define and understand. What zero essentially represents is “nothing”, but how can we understand or picture “nothing”?
Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta’s discovery of zero is remarkable because of this. Not only were they the ones to understand its significance in the placeholder system, but were also able to represent nothingness in the language of the universe — Mathematics. The Buddhist idea of Shunyata well incorporates the concept of zero, a critical part of mathematics. It speaks about voidness, a place where one is at peace.
An anesthetic episode gave me just that. An experience of the eternal void. Death shouldn’t be wished upon someone, but bliss can.
