now i want to introduce you to my favorite 00:24:20 illusion which is going to be important because i'm going to use it as a model for everything that we're going to talk about later when we talk about the self and that's the mueller liar illusion so here we have two lines with little arrowheads and 00:24:33 those two lines those two parallel lines are exactly the same length as one another you can sort of line them up visually and see that um but the arrowheads on each side make the 00:24:44 top line look much larger than the bottom line and the amazing thing about the mueller liar illusion one of the reasons i like it is a it's really easy to draw and b um even if you know that it's an 00:24:56 illusion you're totally sucked into it so um and i'm just always amazed by that right you can just draw this illusion for somebody draw the parallel lines the same length they see that draw the 00:25:08 arrowheads and all of a sudden the lines change in apparent length and i use this because it um it illustrates an important thing about an illusion and this is something that we find again from india as a definition of 00:25:21 an illusion an illusion is something that exists in one way but appears to us in a different way or for being very technical we would say something whose mode of existence and mode of appearance 00:25:33 are discordant but that is just atrociously technical and sensibilitic um so these two lines exist as equally long but they appear to be of 00:25:45 unequal lengths and that would that's what makes them an illusion a mirage exists as a refraction pattern of light but appears to be water so whenever we get that difference between a mode of appearance and a mode of existence we 00:25:59 have an example of illusion and i say that because i want to argue that the self is an illusion that we exist in one way that is as persons but we appear to exist as selves and so we have to come to understand 00:26:11 that illusion in order to begin dispelling it