now i want to talk about that serpent and really focus um firmly on what the 01:18:05 self illusion is this will be the last part of this little section that self is supposed to be something that stands outside of the world not something embedded in the world 01:18:17 it's the wittgenstein um the austrian philosopher of the first half of the 20th century um expressed this beautifully in his book the trektatus he said that the self stands to the world 01:18:30 like the eye stands to the visual field we don't see the eye but the fact that we have a visual field lets us know that there is an eye behind it but not in the field 01:18:42 the self he said is just like that we see a world we experience a world we act on a world and that tells us that there has to be a subject that stands outside of that world and experiences it just like the 01:18:56 eye stands outside of the visual field that's one of the worst things about the self-illusion is the illusion that we're not even in the world that we're totally transcendent to it that's really weird right i mean when you realize that 01:19:09 that's what you believe in your gut um that is it's like the eye and the visual field um that the self is continuous it doesn't stop as hume said talking about descartes 01:19:22 that it's always present to us that it's conscious it's the thing that's aware of everything else that it's free from causation that we can act freely on our motives without being caused so when you go to the 01:19:34 notary public to have a document notarized and she asks you those beautiful questions is this your free act and deed and if you said no i'm being caused to 01:19:46 do this she wouldn't notarize it would you so you say yes this is my free act indeed and i always just have my fingers crossed behind my back i don't believe in free acts and deeds but 01:19:59 we do take have this ideology about ourselves that we're with our free actions aren't cause we just do them as can't put it spontaneously that we are independent not 01:20:11 interdependent that when your mom tells you you've got to learn to stand on your own two feet that somehow that makes sense that ourselves can stand on our own two feet as independent objects 01:20:24 and mostly the self is what i am i am not my body my body is constantly changing my body was once young and fast now it's old and has a new knee um i'm 01:20:36 not my mind my mind was once sharp now it's dulled and beaten into submission by years of overwork but that i the jay who was once young is still here in this old man's body 01:20:49 so when we think about that self-illusion the self-illusion is partly bad because it's only a root illusion that leads to a whole cascade 01:21:01 of terrible illusions so now i want to really dump on the self-illusion by showing you just how dangerous it is