There are layers of identification.    1. Body & Thoughts The most outer layer is the body and thoughts. I guess that's what most people identify with.   2. Non-physical Entity  By doing self inquiry you realize that you are not the body and thoughts, you are the one who has a body and thoughts. You are made of energy and intangible stuff like personality and a sense of self. All of that forms an energetic entitiy. A self, and this self is real and exists. It has free will and can control thoughts and the physical body, and during astral projection and after physical death it leaves the physical body and lives in a astral body. John Kreiter calls this self the ghost in the machine (projectionist and death defier books). This self is real relative to itself (relative to this state of consciousness). So this is the self I mean when I say that the seperate self exists.   3. Point of Consciousness  By inquiring deeper you become conscious how that self is essentially just made of appearances (energy, sense of self, personality,... ), and you are what is conscious of these appearances. You are pure consciousness. So relative to this state of consciousness, relative to this new identity, the energetic entity is an illusion and free will is an illusion too. That's the first stage of enlightenment.   4. Subject Object Oneness At the 3rd stage is a duality between consciousness and appearances (colors, sounds, body sensations, thoughts, personality structure, energy). These appearances happen within consciousness. Counciousness is conscious of these appearances.  But now at stage 4 this subject object duality collapses, they become one. You are everything and everything is consciousness. The appearances are Consciousness. Complete oneness.   Relative to this state of consciousness, this is the true self.