Abstract: We need to clarify at least four aspects of selfhood if we are to reach a better
understanding of consciousness in general, and of its alternate states.
First, how did we develop our self-centred psychophysiology? Second, can the four familiar
lobes of the brain alone serve, if only as preliminary landmarks of convenience, to help
understand the functions of our many self-referent networks? Third, what could cause one’s
former sense of self to vanish from the mental field during an extraordinary state of
consciousness? Fourth, when a person’s physical and psychic self do drop off briefly, how has
conscious experience then been transformed? In particular, what happens to that subject’s
personal sense of time?
Our many-sided self arose in widely distributed brain networks. Since infancy, these self-
oriented circuits have been over-conditioned by limbic biases. Selfhood then seems to have
evolved along lines suggesting at least in shorthand the operations of a kind of ‘I–Me–Mine’
complex.
But what happens when this egocentric triad briefly dissolves? Novel states of consciousness
emerge. Two personally-observed states are discussed: (1) insight-wisdom (kensho-satori); (2)
internal absorption. How do these two states differ phenomenologically? The physiological
processes briefly suggested here emphasize shifts in deeper systems, and pivotal roles for
thalamo-cortical interactions in the front and back of the brain.
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