Theories

Three candidate theories hold across several of the fields. They can coexist until the evidence earns a single account.

The container is constitutive

Change happens to a mind inside a container, not to a mind alone: a tradition, a teacher, a community, a practice. The same structure that makes change safe is where its typical harms come from.

Trait, not state

The mark of real change is the resting baseline, not the peak experience. Ordinary life is the field of practice, not the place you return to between practices.

The self can be displaced

Possession shows a third shape of the self, beyond dissolved or witnessed: vacated and occupied. Science can explain the felt loss of agency. Whether anything else is present is a separate question.

The first two pull against each other. Is an ordinary household a large enough container? Still open.