Is the self like a rainbow and is it just as real?

No one can deny that a rainbow is as real as the term can be defined in any meaningful way. You can point to it so that others can see it and you can even photograph it. If a rainbow was a mind created phenomenon, then a camera, which has no mind or consciousness, would not be able to photograph it. Yet, if you got into a helicopter and traveled into the rainbow, all you would find would be atmosphere, moisture and sunlight, i.e. the elements of the rainbow. You would no longer perceive the rainbow itself. Yet, someone further away would see both the rainbow and the helicopter you were in, so even though you no longer perceived the rainbow because of your proximity at such close scale it would not mean that the rainbow ceased to exist or that it was never existent in the first place. Similarly, a meditator might perceive a dissolution of the self into its constituent elements and thus conclude that the self does not truly exist, yet it wouldn't mean that it actually did not exist, only that the meditator's awareness of it had ceased. As a comparison, if one is asleep and dreaming, one loses awareness of the body and the external world, yet both still exist for others, one of whom could wake up a sleeping person and return them to the world and body they had become unaware of. Thus, only awareness would have ceased, not the objects of awareness. Is the affirmation of a self somehow analogical to the affirmation of a rainbow ,is it just as real and not-real in that sense?