The statement “consciousness is an illusion” is often echoed in certain corners of neuroscience and philosophy. It’s meant to challenge our deeply held assumptions about selfhood, agency, and the mind. Yet, when we take this claim seriously and follow its implications, it forces a deeper and more paradoxical question: If consciousness is an illusion, what is experiencing said illusion?

An illusion, by definition, is something that appears to be one way but is not. It is a perception that misleads. A mirage in the desert, for example, may look like water, but when approached, it reveals itself as light and heat dancing off the sand. The experience of the mirage is real, even if the object it points to is not. For an illusion to occur, there must be something that perceives the illusion. A void cannot be deceived. A rock cannot hallucinate. Illusion implies perception. Perception implies an experiencer.

This is where the idea begins to eat its own tail. To call consciousness an illusion presupposes the existence of an entity—however fleeting, however non-material—that is being tricked. You cannot be fooled unless you are. So, if the mind is producing a phantom sense of self and agency, there must still be some kind of field or witness in which this phantom appears.

Some thinkers attempt to resolve this by suggesting that the brain’s computations are simply generating a model that has no inner essence. From this view, the “I” is a trick of language and memory. But again, who is interpreting the model? Even if the self is just a recursive symbol within a neural network, the symbol is still interpreted. Something is being presented with the illusion.

This leads to the idea that perhaps illusion and experience are inseparable. That even if the self is a fiction, the experience of fiction is itself real. In this light, consciousness doesn’t need to be a stable entity or soul. It could be more like a screen on which flickering patterns appear. The patterns are illusory, but the screen is not.

Alternatively, we might question whether calling consciousness an illusion is a misuse of language. Illusions typically exist within consciousness, not instead of it. The rainbow is an illusion within the sky, but the sky is still there. Dreams are illusory, but they unfold in consciousness. So to call consciousness itself an illusion may be a confusion of levels. Consciousness is the condition for illusion, not its product.

In the end, saying “consciousness is an illusion” risks being a rhetorical flourish rather than a serious metaphysical claim. Because the very act of experiencing illusion demands some form of awareness. We may not yet understand what awareness is, or where it comes from, or whether it’s continuous or discrete, but we cannot dismiss it as entirely fake without nullifying the meaning of illusion itself.

Perhaps the better question is not whether consciousness is real, but how deep the illusion goes. Are we simply experiencing the illusion of being a self, while still immersed in real awareness? Is the illusion the contents of consciousness, not consciousness itself? These questions remain unresolved. But one thing is certain: whatever consciousness is, it is what stands at the center of all inquiry—real or illusory, it is what asks, wonders, suffers, and seeks.

If consciousness is an illusion, it is the only illusion that knows it is one. And that alone makes it real in a way nothing else is.