Altered states of selfhood can be understood through three distinct components—self, me, and I—that appear in spontaneous experiences. Eight neurophenomenological case studies describe how these components can become dissociated or recombined during non-ordinary states, such as meditation, flow, or depersonalization. The reports illustrate that the sense of being a subject (I), the sense of having a personal identity (me), and the sense of agency or ownership (self) can each be altered independently. This framework helps clarify the structure of self-consciousness and its variations in everyday life and clinical conditions.
Altering the sense of self through mental manipulation in experienced meditators causes corresponding changes in the brain's self-referential network (SRN). Participants induced states of increased or decreased witnessing agency, body-emotional agency, or narrative agency while EEG recorded their brain activity. The results strengthen evidence for a direct causal link between three specific aspects of subjective selfhood and three corresponding modules of the SRN. A new integrative model of dynamic interrelations among these SRN modules is proposed.