That would be fine, once that the question “what is self” has even been conceived of - which was part of the Buddhas enlightenment process, seeing causality and conditioning - to realise (Dependent Liberation) that Self wasn’t there.
See the citation on Bhantes work earlier in the posts (I clicked on the link and copied in a bit larger part of the post)
Ajahn Brahmali 's Paper, above, goes into detail, with full sutta references, on many of the issues of what exists or does not exist and what ceases, according to the Nikayas.
