There are things I write about that are not understandable by the mind.

Then how can you assume the position you’re arguing for is valid?

How can you know, or even have reason to believe, that it’s the sense of self that is the illusion and not the other way around?

What if it’s the sense of nonduality attained by these “zombies” (and by Buddhists, meditationists, etc.) that is, in fact, the illusion?

Because there is no me. It seems like there’s a me, but all of it’s claims are false: I am here, I am real, I am doing this, I am experiencing this. When the self-illusion stops happening, all of that is seen to have never been real. There is only what seems to be happening.

This is where you lose me.

I suppose you’re saying that if the sense of self is an illusion, then all of the materialistic observations we’ve made about the natural world are called into question.

In other words, to reframe my analogy, it sounds like your’re saying that: we may have a sense that we are individual cogs in a giant clock, but we are not, and when the illusion that we are individual cogs slips away, then so too does the illusion of the clock itself. That reality is just one giant cog with no moving parts.

That makes sense. I can accept that as a premise.

What I still don’t understand is how anyone can say this premise is any more likely to be true than the alternative, which is that the clock does exist, and that we are truly individual cogs.