This model can help explain a common apprehension of advanced meditators: that “thoughts think themselves.” All told, what I call the “interior” version of the not-self experience—an experience that calls into question your “ownership” of your thoughts and feelings and calls into question the existence of the chief executive “you” that you normally think of as owning these things—draws validation both from experimental psychology and from prevailing ideas about how natural selection shaped the mind.
