There is an elaborate structure of inter-reliant thoughts and feelings around the notion of a self, but no directly evidencing experience of such an entity. The element which requires of all other experiences a certificate of authenticity, or at least a lineage rooted in direct experience, itself has no such certificate and can only evade the request to fully reveal itself. The law itself is a-legal. The self can fulfill such function as is required of it as pure fiction, but it seems that there is also a push to assert its existence off-stage, to insist that its presence concentrated at a kind of vanished centre is of vital importance since without such a belief we would fall into fatal disarray. Normally to need something is also to have a pretty good idea of just what it is you need, but here the whole point is that there is no, and cannot and must not be any, idea of the absent presence, or present absence. Honi soit qui mal y pense.