If the self exists what would it be? There is nothing in the stream of consciousness that can witness identity through time since by its nature it is only made up out of ever-present appearances. There may be a will-to-exist, something immediately felt, but if you were to ask it what of you were essential to it, that were for it like some little household god that it always traveled with, it would answer, 'none at all'; the feeling for being would happily renounce any icon or memory as weightless and beside the point. It is an empty will to will, and again, exists only in the moment. Or there could be some sort of epiphany of time exposing all of a long series of past lives, and future ones, an opening of history, but if this were the case then again it would merge seamlessly into a larger collective history in which any trace of you would be entirely dissolved, and from which ultimately you were free since nothing particular would survive. All ideas of continuity fail to go beyond the moment, even the apparent witnessing of these very moments.