"Awake Under Anesthesia"

I loved this description of the unconscious mind.

"An American anesthesiologist named George Mashour tells her that “the unconscious mind is not this black sea of nothingness,” but an “active and dynamic” place; one might imagine the anesthetized mind as a concert hall in which the conductor is missing but the orchestra still performs. The systems of the brain continue to operate, but they don’t synch up. Perhaps because everyone’s mind devolves into cacophony differently, people have a bewildering array of experiences while anesthetized." 

From the article "Awake Under Anesthesia" by Joshua Rothman