I am not sure that I understand your question:
- I would have the mind of some historical character here in this body in this apartment in the city?
- Would it coexist or be controlled by what until now had been assumed to be my mind, like a memorized biography or an available heretofore unknown mode of rumination?
- Would the mind and my mind drift together, merge in a composite, or be superimposed somehow?
- Or would I, now, remember having been that person and how that person thought?
- Would my mind simply wink out the moment that historical mind arrived, or switch places Freaky Friday-style?
- Do the characteristics of my body preclude my choosing the mind of a woman?
if, suddenly, "mitochondrial Eve" found herself snatched away
from her body in its stinking lair
on the periphery of some prehistoric savanna somewhere,
to appear, male and clothed, slouched in this chair
surrounded by materials she has never seen, in front of a glowing screen
which her hands are touching (!) I'm not sure
she wouldn't break everything I own
and kill herself diving through my fourth-story window.
Mitochondrial Eve is my answer.
Although many of the founding religious leaders would be interesting also:
Mary, Mohammad, Goatama Siddhartha, Bodhidharma, Lao Tsu.
So many of the interesting artists were tortured and/or mad;
William Blake or Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Clemens might be interesting.
I hesitate to choose an artist or philosopher for fear of
making some currently sublime insight merely mundane
(some of Thos. Jefferson's most passionate
and poignant passages about liberty and whatnot might
cease to be monumental, inspiring language
and become merely a digression in some small part of
a letter I wrote to so-and-so two hundred years ago
on an altogether different topic;
or Shakespeare!?!).
Hmm. And you?