The Illusion of the Self: How Science, the Brain and the Buddha Explain Who We Really Are

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

What if the self you experience every day is not what you think it is?

The Illusion of the Self is a disciplined inquiry into one of the most persistent assumptions of human experience: the belief that there is a fixed, independent “I” at the center of life.

Drawing on modern neuroscience, physics, and biology—alongside early Buddhist analysis—this audiobook examines how the sense of self is constructed and stabilized. Rather than offering spiritual reassurance or speculative metaphysics, it proceeds methodically, revealing identity not as an inherent entity, but as a functional model shaped by perception, conditioning, and habit.

Classical ideas such as dependent origination and emptiness are presented not as religious doctrines, but as precise descriptions of conditionality that closely parallel contemporary scientific understanding. Science is used as skillful means, not as authority or proof, to loosen deeply ingrained intuitions about agency, ownership, and permanence.

This book is not a self-help guide, a meditation manual, or a religious text. It is a clear, rigorous exploration of how experience is constructed—and an invitation to examine identity with clarity rather than belief.