The attempt to produce a coherent picture of how it is, or even what it is, no matter how subtle, already presumes a frame in which purposive action dissolves into nothing. It is not necessary to go into the latest findings of brain science, rather these are just the current constraints on a coherent account of the what or the how. The self-in-experience is a puppet or epiphenomenon of these questions, and only seemingly so of their ephemeral answers. If these considerations settle anything or make any sense they only do so in relation to purpose, any appeal to reason being first an appeal to will. It is easy to criticise will as productive through denying the reality of its productions - or affirming their illusory quality - but will is also receptive: we are informed so that we can decide. That there must be a purposive frame ordering the flow of experience as if to a free subject, is a fact about the kind of energy that must be expended to stay alive. We are immediately aware of this, of the moment to moment cost of presence, and if the volitional or responsible self is an illusion of such a process, the process itself, being purposive, cannot forever be an illusion of a still deeper process, finally without purpose. Purpose must always mean but it need not always say what it means, need not be fully conscious or reflective. There is a meta-level as well to purpose where the purpose of purpose is deliberated. This is where what we call free will resides, the autonomous will of a subject rather than just of the genes or the programmer. It can be pointed to in this indirect way, is even oddly self-evident, but it cannot be said to exist.