The self is not illusory

Another one from the archive, discussing Evan Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being:

As noted above, the self is neither identical with nor separate from the aggregates. The self is constructed co-dependently on conditions, one such condition being self-designation. Recall above this is a capacity of the narrative self. The latter is not in itself an illusion or nonexistent; that affliction only arises when it becomes a totally abstract, permanent, independent and disembodied existence. The self-designating self can and does have the capacity to interrelate and integrate the other aggregated selves.