"The experience of dreaming is instructive here. Each night, we lie down to sleep, only to be stolen from our beds and plunged into a realm where our personal histories and the laws of nature no longer apply. Generally, we do not retain enough of a purchase on reality to even notice that anything out of the ordinary has happened. The most astonishing quality of dreams is surely our lack of astonishment when they arise. The sleeping brain seems to have no expectation of continuity from one moment to the next. (This is probably owing to the diminished activity in the frontal lobes that occurs during REM sleep.) Thus, sweeping changes in our experience do not, in principle, district from the unity of consciousness. Left to its own devices, consciousness seems happy to just experience one thing after the next. If my brain harbours only one conscious point of view - if all that is remembered, intended, and perceived as know by a single "subject" - then I enjoy unity of mind. The evidence is overwhelming, however, that such unity, if it ever exists in a human being, depends upon some humble tracts of white matter crossing the midline of the brain."
- Sam Harris
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