Not entirely thought this through yet but it seems like the whole problem, and the maze which reveals itself to the philosophical or scientific investigator of mind, comes from the complex ways that the self identifies with its many manifestations.
The simple truth to always remember is that we are the viewer of this scene. Even if we are Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon facing multiple images of himself he knows there is only one person seeing them!
No matter how complex the maze of mirrors there is only ever one person actually seeing it. This is very profound that the mind never fragments. It only ever sees one thing at a time.
The problem of course is when Bruce Lee tries to work out which of these images corresponds to his body. Like the mind there is only one Bruce Lee. But the difference is that the body shows up in the reflections while the mind is always only just the viewer. In the film this is not an abstract contemplation, Lee is in combat with Han and so it is essential to know where their bodies are. This distracts from the point here that no hall of mirrors can upset the mind, which has only one awareness in the here and now. That one mind can see any number of reflections of the body and become very confused. And this is what happens in philosophy and science and also my own musing as a child.
We need be clear that any content of any sense, including thinking is not the self, for the self is the manifestation of this experience itself. If following Descartes I really was responsible for my thoughts, then who is responsible for experiencing those thoughts to know that I am thinking? Thinking is just part of it, the existence of thoughts, the manifesting of thoughts in a real experience is the main feature. If I am thinking, I am completely missing that someone else is involved in the experience of those thoughts. That would be exactly the difference between the false Ego and the real dynamic self in the moment linked inseparable from the manifestation of the Here and Now.
Now I wish to go through this hall of mirrors to explore how we get trapped in what we see and think.
Firstly though a problem. If the self is intimately bound to the apparent nature of experience how can it also get stuck? How can there be suffering, as Buddha points out is the cost of this ignorance, if we are at the level of experience itself not what it experienced?
I believe what happens here is that it is the body and mind that get trapped, not the self. But when the body and mind gets trapped it creates suffering and our true self is then integrated with the experience of this. So the self never actually suffers, but it can be experiencing the suffering of the body and mind.
So when we Enlighten what happens is that the body and mind no longer takes itself as the source of existence, and reality and "life". I mean "life" there in the sense we use it when we talk about "my" life. We don't mean the beating heart and biology we mean the sense of existing and being a real being. When the body and mind think they are source of existence, when they grasp this for themselves, then we get the Solipsism problem of the body and mind becoming a closed room. If this limited existence of my body and mind is also the source of experience then I don't need anything else. Brains in Vats type thinking. But this is also the exact source of suffering.
The truth is that ALL of this is just body and mind. The source of vivid reality and existence, that makes the Here and Now different from the There and Past has nothing to do with the body and mind whose very manifestation depends upon the self!
But while the body and mind search for the truth within themselves they are on an endless treadmill and are never at peace.
What I don't quite understand is how the body and mind become silenced. What triggers them to stop searching and recognise that the source is beyond them in the self.
However note this is like a mirror itself. When body and mind is on a spiritual quest it is doing exactly this of searching for the truth which lies outside itself. Some call it God. Humility before and submission to God is one way that the body and mind starts to become silenced in its acceptance of something greater.
The irony of course is that the true self is intimately involved in watching and manifesting this spiritual path. Looking in on the body and mind and allowing it to be real.
So the true self is always there. But what it is watching is a body and mind gradually unfolding a path to submission and acceptance that its whole existence depends upon a greater feature of reality that actually gives it its sense of reality.
When philosophy science explores all the phenomena of body and mind, noting for example that the brain is central to experience, that consciousness arises from a messy asynchronous brain, that there are multiple selves in a person: all of this is just the true self observing and manifesting into reality the otherwise mundane features of a world.
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