dreaming

So one thing that has been bothering me is this.
The self is NOT:-
The body
The emotions
The intellect
The thoughts
Sensations
Memories
Desires
None of it.
And the idea that the self is a separate entity encased in skin is illusory.
That’s only how it seems, because our perception of the reality “outside” ourselves is based on the senses, and our perception of the reality “inside our heads” is based on emotion and the intellect and thoughts. None of these are real and objective. All are subjective. And behind/under all of these is pure consciousness, which cannot be expained or described or even comprehended but only known! Like God, I know, awful, I hate sounding religious, and I loathe churches and dogma. But thats how it seems to be. And pure consciousness is an empty space, a blank screen with no projection, a silence waiting to be filled, a void.
But as none of this is actually the self, then the self is neither “outside” as perceived by the senses nor “inside” as perceived by the brain – thoughts, emotions, and the intellect.
So, according to all the seers and mystics and great thinkers and religious leaders, the self is actually – nothing.
I can actually accept that although I can’t pretend to grasp it conceptually, it’s sort of beyond intellectual understanding, at least for my limited intellect.
So the self is nothing.
But what is “outside” the self?
Is that also nothing? Are the material world and all its creatures “maya” and illusion? Are other people real? Is History real? Is war and famine real?
Is it all like some dream of a great living entity that seeks to bring into being every conceivable experience from hellish suffering to heavenly ecstasy, with every shade in between?
Sometimes I’ve sort of grasped it to some extent but then, when I really feel the dissolving of the boundaries between self and outside the self, I get really bogged down in this point: surely other people are real, its not just me, like that saying about a man who wakes up after dreaming he was a butterfly who dreamt he was a man.
Is it that the individual "I" is an illusion? Or is the idea of everyone/everything else an illusion? Is there only "the ONE"? Or, are we all individuals ( as Monty Python said), each of us a "nothing self", wildly projecting our emotions, sensations and thoughts, blindly groping for meaning, comfort, sensation?
Is there just the sort of timeless all seeing nothing of pure consciousness, beyond my own senses and mind experiences? Solipsism claims that the table is only there when an observer is observing it. Leave the table alone and unobserved in the room and it ceases to exist.
But doesn’t this sort of train of thought seem insanely egocentric and dangerous too?
There have been times when I thought, maybe all this horrible stuff about the Jews and the Nazis for example, with its ties to my personal past, was just a horrible nightmare fantasy of mine, or rather, of a being who is experimenting with every conceivable possibility and not excluding anything, no matter how extreme.
Dreaming.
This all sounds bonkers but anyway.