There is a kind of personal identity that is mediated by memory, by the intricate interrelation of mental contents, by the ability, by confidence in the ability to pose questions and to respond to them. This kind of identity makes a meal out of time and the different states of mind that it brings with it. There seems to be another kind of identity as well, that the mental stream on which the positive and reflexive form of identity is carried but which could just as well carry different and disassociated streams, is in some profound way the 'same' stream. This kind of identity seems to be needed because of the strong belief that reality consists of many such originary identity-conferring streams, running in parallel and entirely cut off from each other, so that a different kind of metaphysical relation is required to mediate these different streams. It may be enough to point out that these deeper notions of identity do not match with the level of reality on which they are supposed to act, but are a kind of mirror projection of basic phenomena on the level of positive experience, of questions and answers and memory.