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This is a very interesting observation, and I have recently been thinking along these lines myself. This entry reminds me of a topic that I introduced in the forum several months ago when we were at the very beginning of our discussion of the brain, the I-function, and the nervous system: out of body experiences (or OBE). I revisited this topic and did some additional research, and I found some interesting information on OBEs on Wikipedia:

"An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE), is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body...OBEs are often part of the near-death-experience...It is claimed that those experiencing an OBE sometimes observe details which were unknown to them beforehand... There appear to be two common forms of such lucid experiences. The first involves lucid dreaming, where the subject is immersed in unrealistic worlds, or in a modified form of the reality with impossible or inconsistent features. A second experience is of a more physical nature where the environment is consistent with reality; this is often called an etheric or ethereal experience. This type can be frightening, as extremely realistic physical sensations may occur, often including magnetic and vibrating phenomena, loss of balance, and confusion. The person believes he has awoken physically and panic can be caused by the realization that limbs appear to be penetrating objects...English psychologist Susan Blackmore suggests that an OBE begins when a person loses contact with sensory input from the body while remaining conscious.The person retains the illusion of having a body, but that perception is no longer derived from the senses. The perceived world may resemble the world he or she generally inhabits while awake, but this perception does not come from the senses either. The vivid body and world is made by our brain's ability to create fully convincing realms, even in the absence of sensory information. This process is witnessed by each of us every night in our dreams, though OBEs are claimed to be far more vivid..."

I find this phenomenon very interesting, and it is very much related to hypnosis and Mahvish's questions...except that the 'input' to the system is the person herself/himself, and NOT another person (the hypnotist). While it seems impossible that one could actually exit his or her body and observe himself/herself from an external point of view, I find it very interesting that these OBEs are so 'real' to people that they often cannot distinguish them from everyday physical 'reality' as perceived by the eye. It almost seems to me that most people have two distinct memory-banks that have minor overlap; one for the perceived reality, and one for dreams that we have when we sleep. For instance, you might have had a dream that your nose started to bleed in the middle of our Neuro class, but several days or even weeks later, your memory-bank would make it known to you that this did not actually happen...but rather that it was just part of your dream...and you would be quite certain about that. But how did you know that? How are so many people able to know that? What's really cool (but also frightening) about OBEs is that people cannot distinguish these two...and that my recently-created memory-bank hypothesis does not apply here. Why is this true? Is this a glitch of the I-function? If these OBEs often happen in near-death experiences...do we 'see' these dreams and do they seem 'real' and inseparable from 'reality' because the I-function is in disbelief?