let me not not-be

 

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"Let me not not-be. Let me be. Let me not annihilate myself, and let not conditions arise to annihilate me. May I live always, and may I not not-live.”  

This is the feeling, the longing, the main desire of the Self. It is asserting its eternity. The eternity aspect of the Self always affirms itself in the desire never not to be, and the desire always to be.

This kind of love is always seen in the Self. When all things go, when the world itself goes, it would be good if we are alive – so the Self thinks. 

It is on the one hand Self-luminous, Self-conscious, Self-affirmative, and also Self-bliss. Eternal unending bliss – that is the Self.


—Ramana Maharshi 

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Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. 

So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?


—John Updike
Self-Consciousness

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