True deathlessness...

The personal ‘I’ is but a bundle of impermanent hopes and transi­ent fears,

a little sheaf of cravings that change with the changing years.

Nothing that we know among them is immortal even dur­ing this present earth‑life; how then can they be immortal through all eternity?

To cultivate a belief in a personal ego that will per­manently survive in a state of fixation is to prolong the illusion that even now blinds our eyes to truth ‑

unless of course we choose to regard the series of continuous reincarnations as a kind of immortality which, in one sense, it certainly is.

But this con­ception will not satisfy those who demand conscious unbroken continuity as a characteristic of their immortality.

We shall cer­tainly exist after death, whether in the dream‑like stage with which it begins, the sleep‑like stage with which it ends or the new reincarnation which completes the whole circle of personality.

Yet in none of these shall we have done more than achieve a mere survival.

Let this satisfy those who want it but it is not the same as true deathlessness,

which can be achieved only by transcend­ing the transient personality.


Wisdom of the Overself
Paul Brunton