> But from the inside observed by oneself, it feels quite similar, besides the fact that sleep is initiated by oneself, and the wakeful state transition for sleep is more gradual than for anesthesia.
Have you been anesthetized before? Different forms are very different, but none of them feel like sleep, at all. General anesthesia feels like a time simply skipped forward. Like a chunk of your memory tape was cut out completely. Twilight sedation feels like you temporarily inhabited someone else's body but the experience was so strange that you blocked out almost all of the memory.
I've been under general anesthesia, but it does not feel too different. I'm dead when sleeping, and basically never dream. I should have said "dreamless sleep" in the earlier comment to be more precise because dreaming is obviously different, but it happens so rarely I forget it exists.
This is fascinating to me. Your experience is so different from mine.
When I wake from sleeping, I have a distinct sense of time passing and can usually tell you what time it is when I first wake up. But under anesthesia, absolutely no sense of any time passing at all.
I’m open to correction but my understanding is everyone dreams when they have REM sleep and everyone has some REM sleep every night unless there are rare medical conditions which would be unhealthy if there is a long period of no REM sleep.
People who believe they never dream (including myself before I learned this) simply don’t remember it. If you were woken artificially during REM you might remember fragments.
The last time I dreamt was in April. I'd make a note about it in my day log txt file when it happens. It's not the same as a normal night's sleep, and I would remember it. But I assume not having REM sleep for the past 4 months would mean reduced cognitive functioning, which is obviously not the case, so maybe I simply cannot remember my dreams most of the time.
Perhaps memory and consciousness are closely related or even the same process, as there is no way to tell them apart from the inside.
Have you been anesthetized before? Different forms are very different, but none of them feel like sleep, at all. General anesthesia feels like a time simply skipped forward. Like a chunk of your memory tape was cut out completely. Twilight sedation feels like you temporarily inhabited someone else's body but the experience was so strange that you blocked out almost all of the memory.
Sleeping and dreaming is totally different.