All notions of seeing, being, and realizing this depend on the sense that someone is present to do them. Yet the sense of presence and the self are both illusory. There is no observer positioned apart from what appears. The sense of being aware is itself the illusion of separation—the feeling that what is apparently happening is occurring to a separate "me." But nothing is happening to anyone. When the illusion falls away, there is no understanding or awakening—only the end of the one who sought to see, to be, or to realize this.