By carefully altering the focus of your gaze a 'magic eye' picture pops into a three-dimensional gestalt in which a figure seemingly cut out of patterned paper stands out from its equally cut-paper background. Concentration is needed to stabilise this but the trick once seen is easy to repeat. The illusion of the self seems to be the opposite of this, it is the spatial gestalt which is the recurrent and stable one and the perception of a flat plane which is hard to maintain. Consciousness does not split into subject and object but into subject and background subject. The subject however is oddly insubstantial, it defers and retreats from inquiry, but as long as you are sure that it is really there, distinct from its mute witness, then, in spite of all its vanishing tricks, the illusion persists.