“Indeed the technique may give us a handle on elusive psychological phenomena such as the empathy and love that you feel for a child or spouse. If you are deeply in love with someone, is it possible that you have actually become part of that person?” “Perhaps your souls—and not merely your bodies—have become intertwined. Now just think about what all this means. For your entire life, you've been walking around assuming that your "self is anchored to a single body that remains stable and permanent at least until death. Indeed, the "loyalty" of your self to your own body is so axiomatic that you never even pause to think about it, let alone question it. Yet these experiments suggest the exact opposite—that your body image, despite all its appearance of durability, is an entirely transitory internal construct that can be profoundly modified with just a few simple tricks. It is merely a shell that you've temporarily created for successfully passing on your genes to your offspring.”