This is consistent with what Buddhism, Taoism, and other schools of Eastern thought have been saying for thousands of years: the self we think of as “me” is an illusion, an inference. Based on what I have presented so far, I hope you can see that several studies in neuropsychology are now suggesting the same thing. To be clear, saying the self is an illusion doesn't mean that it doesn't exist at all, but rather that it's akin to a mirage in the middle of the desert. The vision of the oasis is real, but the oasis itself isn't. In this same way, the image of the self is real, but when we look at
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