Think of these moments or particles of consciousness not as presences but as comparative absences; as if they are like small windows or punctures in the opacity of the world through which the noumenal subject can shine. The reference to a self in these moments is then a threshold effect, what 'shines' is pure darkness, but the rim of each window diffracts this energy and glows, producing a location and a specificity, which effects being profoundly strange and alien to the subject, give birth to the subject as self. It would seem as if the only adequate witness of the particular or personal self must be another particular or personal self, but this conclusion depends on a begging of the question. We see it only from the point of view of the particular consciousness, and so cannot infer what it looks like from the other side. It cannot even be regarded as an illusion of the noumenal subject, illusion does not belong to it, at most it is the expression of a possibility. The fact that our reality is witnessed by a self is the form our understanding gives to our being an instance of universal consciousness, and does not point to any metaphysics.