[M]eaning is part of an object to the extent that it acts upon intelligence in a predictable way. - Douglas Hofstadter

In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.

Perhaps the greatest contradiction in our lives, the hardest to handle, is the knowledge 'There was a time when I was not alive, and there will come a time when I am not alive.' On one level, when you 'step out of yourself' and see yourself as 'just another human being', it makes complete sense. But on another level, perhaps a deeper level, personal nonexistence makes no sense at all. All that we know is embedded inside our minds, and for all that to be absent from the universe is not comprehensible. This is a basic undeniable problem of life...

"To paraphrase Descartes again: "I think; therefore I have no access to the level where I sum.