Thirdself phantoms are the residual shapes, textures, and forms of my thirdself which persist in secondself when I extinguish my thirdself by closing my eyes. They have both a secondself mental component but also a convictional component. For example, closing my eyes right now as I type this and focusing on my hands in front of me resting on my keyboard, I have a non-visual sensation of the substance of my hands, but I also imagine (in secondself) the visual shape of my hands (in thirdself) as they rest on my laptop’s keyboard. The phantom is that lingering imaginary visualization of the thirdself appearance of my hands even while my thirdself has been extinguished.
Thirdself phantoms are comprised of two distinct parts:
- The secondself conviction that my thirdself persists even when I extinguish it by closing my eyes.
- The secondself imagination of my thirdself through visualization.
These phantoms obscure the true nature of my being because they contradict my direct experience that closing my eyes actually compresses and even eliminates my thirdself, rather than merely blocking it from my perception. The thirdself phantoms convince me that I am merely an observer of something external to me, rather than its creator.
One way to understand this is to imagine a darkened move theater in which a projector is projecting a moving onto the screen. When the projector is turned off, or the shutter closed, does the movie still exist? On the wall it does not, but in the reel in the projector it does. The same can be said for my thirdself. The movie of my thirdself continues to exist within the reel in my secondself, but it requires the equipment of my secondself to actually project. Once I turn off the projector — i.e., I close my secondself eyes — the movie only remains on the reels but is no longer projected onto the larger screen.
My thirdself is a projection through my secondself. That projection does not persist if the equipment is not turned on. When I close my eyes, I literally stop projecting my thirdself. Imagining in secondself with eyes closed that my thirdself still exists outside of me despite my not being able to see it is the same as imagining that the movie continues to display on-screen even after I have turned off the projector.
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