June 4, 2025 - Reading time: 5 minutes

Introduction to the YouTube story: N.Pirogov: A Striking Revelation

Our journey begins as a tiny droplet of liquid - a single cell - and ends in an aging body drawing its final breath. Along the way, we undergo a series of astonishing transformations, each stage a chapter in the story of our understanding of the world. We start with a blank mind, untouched and unknowing, gradually becoming entangled in the material world. But then, unexpectedly, a spark of awareness may flicker through the mind - a sudden realization that existence is not merely a chain of mechanical events that brought us here. There is something more: a mystical force that seems to guide our earthly path.

This story is about Nikolay Pirogov (1810-1881), one of the most renowned surgeons of the Russian Empire, who founded several new branches of medicine. He was the first in Europe - and the first under field conditions - to use ether anesthesia during operations. He developed the use of plaster casts for immobilizing broken bones, a method still in use today, and he created a groundbreaking three-dimensional anatomical atlas, far ahead of its time.

Today, Pirogov's name is honored in various ways: a glacier in Antarctica, a hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria, and an asteroid bear his name. The Russian National Research Medical University and the Odessa State Medical University are named after him. Stamps featuring his portrait were issued in the Soviet Union, and the highest humanitarian award of the Soviet era, the Pirogov Gold Medal, was named in his honor.

But let's return to our story.

In the mid-19th century, the field of medicine was dominated by strict materialism, which captivated the minds of many scientists. Pirogov, too, was a staunch materialist for most of his life. Having performed over 10,000 surgeries and witnessed firsthand the profound dependence of life on the physical body, he found it difficult to believe in God or any spiritual principle. He was an atheist. As he once observed, "A doctor is daily convinced, visually, that all mental abilities are not only connected with the body but fully dependent on it." Like many of his peers, Pirogov followed Darwin's teachings. Any deviation from materialist thinking was unwelcome in the scientific community of his time.

Yet, something changed in his life. In the final years, Pirogov began keeping a private diary - a personal account that no one was allowed to read. He described it as being 'exclusively for himself.'

It was only after his death that the diary was made public. Its contents shocked his colleagues, who had known him exclusively as a materialist.

It turns out that in his later years, Pirogov underwent a profound spiritual awakening. In his diary, he integrated science with spiritual understanding.

He wrote of a mysterious environment - "the boundless" - from which life, time, space, and matter emerge. He concluded that the "I" is not a byproduct of chemical reactions, but an embodiment of a "Universal Mind," a force acting freely according to the same laws that govern human thought, though not bound by individual consciousness. He reflected on the immortality of the soul, the existence of a higher world, and the cosmos as a living, interconnected organism. He posited the existence of a "Supreme Reason," a higher intelligence guiding the universe, and believed that humans could connect with this intelligence through intuition. Pirogov concluded in his diary that the human organism was merely a device made of atoms, necessary for this "world thought" to take form in matter.

For a 19th-century scientist-physician, such views were not just unusual - they were radical.

To conclude this remarkable life story, we may note a curious event surrounding Pirogov's death. He passed away from cancer in the village of Vishnya (now - Ukraine). According to his son's recollection, a lunar eclipse began just before his father's final agony and ended immediately after his death. It was a striking coincidence.

But perhaps not merely coincidence. The deaths of spiritually awakened individuals are often accompanied by synchronicities - at least in the eyes of those who bear witness. The past is always cloaked in mystery, and it will remain so, as it is reconstructed and reshaped by the reflections of future generations.

Written by S. V. Chekanov

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A video story on the YouTube Channel "Designed World".

Style: Scientific Neo-Romanticism.

This is the full transcript of the YouTube video https://youtu.be/NEaMid_znLE?si=ATvVjA0rbTC2TUz6 created by the Designed World channel using the book "The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond", by Dr. Sergei V. Chekanov, 466 pages, ISBN: 9798990642836; Hardcover 9798990642843, eBook ISBN 9798990642829; Book webpage: https://ermislearn.org/designed-world/