When the self-illusion drops away, what is revealed is so much more alive than the experience of self. It’s like waking up from a night-dream, but infinitely more compelling. There is no me. There is no you. There is no experience because there is nothing to experience anything. The taste of chocolate is simply wholeness appearing as the taste of chocolate, to nobody (there is no subject/object split; it is an illusion). The taste of chocolate is enormously degraded by being experienced by someone; it’s dead.
The self-illusion clings to the hope that one day it will find wholeness, never being able to know that wholeness is all there is. The self-illusion is wholeness appearing as an illusion that hides wholeness.