These Asian ways of life are focused on certain problems peculiar to every individual, on the understanding that the average human being—and the more civilized he is, the more this is true—that the average human being is hallucinating; that he has a delusive sense of his own existence.
To awaken from the illusion is, then, to undergo a radical change of consciousness with regard to one’s own existence. It is to cease being under the impression that you are just “poor little me.” To find out who you really are, or what you really are, behind the mask.
That’s why the Hindu would say that the real you is the Self—capital S—the Self of the universe. Because at that level of one’s existence, one is not really separate from everything else that’s going on.