Brain in a vat

I just started reading a book, "Consciousness explained", by Daniel C. Dennett; the author discusses hallucinations and possibility of a full symulation of someone's brain sensors. This is an old idea, typically called 'brain in a vat', and I was familiar with it. But reading its descipion in the book, it restored some old flashbacks in my memory.

Brain in a vat is a well-known thought experiment. A good example of how it could be implemented in the reality is The Matrix film.

I want to share my personal experience here, since I went through such an experiment in real life.

But at first, this is how Daniel describes the thought experiment:

They begin with a conveniently comatose brain, kept alive but lacking all input from the optic nerves, the auditory nerves, the somatosensory nerves, and all the other afferent, or input, paths to the brain. It is sometimes assumed that such a "deafferented" would naturally stay in a comatose state forever, needing no morphine to keep it dormant, but there is some empirical evidence to suggest that spontaneous waking might still occur in these dire circumstances. I think we can suppose that were you to awake in such a state, you would find yourself in horrible straits: blind, deaf, completely numb, with no sense of your body's orientation.

Sounds horrible. And this is exactly what I experienced some years ago...

I was around 9-12 years old at the time. We with my family lived on a military base near Ulan-Ude. One day, kids from our school were sent to a forest area to play a sort of a military game Zarnitsa. The "game" was very popular at (post-)USSR at those times. In short, this is a set of militarized activities for kids that are happening on an open area, typically somewhere in a forest: throwing dummy grenades, searching for dummy bombs, learning how to handle guns, jogging in gas masks, etc. The goal was to prepare kids to be soldiers (and one day, die for the country).

The game was typically lasting one whole day from the early morning until the evening.

It was either Spring or Autumn, I do not remember. But the weather was a bit cold.

So, in the middle of the day, at the resting time, I was sitting in a forest on a surface and chatting with other kids. And suddenly everything just disappeared. By saying 'everything' I mean literally everything. I did not understood what happened, but I suddenly appeared in a complete darkness. No other kids, no light, just complete darkness. I was completely blind. And I was deaf. Just a moment ago I heard other kids, I was talking to them. And now I was completely blind and deaf.

I got horrified. Instinctively, I tried to pop up, but I immideately realized I had no body. Literally, I had no sense of the body. It is not just like when you feel your arm, for example, but can't move it. No. I did not feel like I was paralized, it was worse - I did not feel my body, at all: no legs, no hands, no head, no torso, just nothing. My physical body just "disappeared", completely.

And at this moment I got really panic-stricken. My next instinctive intention was to scream loudly. But I could not. I had no mouth, apparently.

I was blind, deaf, numb, and I had absolutely no sense of my body. Absolute darkness and silense. No orientation. No time. No space. But I was in sonsciousness. Thoughts were running in my head. It was only pure "me" in "nowhere".

Never in my life, before or after, was I that dread as I was at those moments.

I don't know how long this my state lasted. But after a while I got been able to identify some color spots and dimmed light. Then I identified some silhouettes, then very slowly my sight started getting back - I was able to identify people, but the "picture" was heavily distorted; I think, it is called polyplopia - when you see 4 or even more pictures of a scene. I still couldn't move and hear.

Then, after a while, also very slowly, my body started getting back. It was heavy as the Earth. I barely could move. I barely could control my limbs and body. But now I felt I was material.

I could see (still, with heavy polyplopia), I could feel my body. I found my self lying on the earth and tried to sit up. I could see other kids around me, but still could not hear them.

Yet, after some time, hearing started getting back. At first it was like I was deep under water, but with time it was also recovering.

I don't know how much time it took overall, but in the late evening I was sort of OK.

Later, I learned from other kids that something (probably some dummy grenade thrown by someone or launched from some device) hit me directly in my head from the upper back, and it was the thing that organized the 'brain in a vat' experiemnt for me.

After the accident, for a long time, I had a huge painful hematoma on my head.