It is fascinating (to me) to ponder the nature of self. I recently came across this article in Scientific American that explores the ease with which we can be separated from reality.
But even this axiomatic foundation of your existence can be called into question under certain circumstances. Your sense of inhabiting your body, it turns out, is just as tenuous an internal construct as any of your other perceptions—and just as vulnerable to illusion and distortion. Even your sense of “owning” your own arm is not fundamentally different—in evolutionary and neurological terms—from owning your car (if you are Californian) or your shotgun (if you are Sarah Palin).
Outlandish as such a notion may seem, what you think of as your self is not the monolithic entity that you—and it—believe it to be. In fact, it is possible to pharmacologically manipulate body ownership with a drug called ketamine, which reliably generates out-of-body experiences in normal people. Patients on ketamine report the sensation of hovering above their body and watching it. If someone gives them a sharp poke, they might say, “My body down below is feeling the pain, but I don’t feel it myself.” Because in such patients the “I” is dissociated from the body it inhabits, they do not experience any agony or emotional distress (for this reason, ketamine is sometimes used as an anesthetic).
At the risk of being judged and found guilty of thinking too independently, I would be very interested in trying some experiments with this product. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be legal. The Office of National Drug Control Policy does acknowledge that some people don’t care about little details like legality. They have published a helpful list of street terminology associated with ketamine.
In any case, the key point is that it is important for humans to explore how the sense of self impacts our existence and the societies we create. Go read, Hey is that me over there?