[roywiggins]

The boring possibility is that humans have to self-generate an ego- babies don't really know the difference between themselves and other people, it's one of the recognized developmental stages. So in unusual situations it's maybe not surprising that that particular ability could get disrupted, it might actually be quite fragile.

[sammalloy]

Agreed. This kind of ego dissolution starts to look like philosophical panspychism if you stare at it long enough, particularly when you read the reports of people identifying with non-human animals, plants, and yes, even rocks. At that point, there might be another mechanism at work. If life and mind are just emergent properties of organized and self-replicating matter, is it really crazy (or juvenile) to look back and reflect on everything around us and see it not as a discrete set of things, but as one continuous form? Maybe the problem isn't what we are experiencing, but how we think about it.