If you do not insist on the existence of a central principle or absolute ego, you may define yourself in any way you please. When speaking roughly, it is quite correct to say that you exist and to describe yourself. But in minutely definite and exact language, it is impossible to define your own self or to describe yourself. However, there is no danger of losing yourself, for no one can extinguish the influence of your action, or latent energy. A particular manifestation of that energy in human form is yourself and the whole of you—for the present.

A substance may become energy and energy may become substance, but one must not think that the energy is preserved always in one and the same substance. By virtue of your own action you will get your next life and so on along the long line of lives. Having no permanent center, a living being changes itself as time goes on, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Your self does not exist apart from the changing manifestations, but the cycles of the changing manifestations as a whole constitute yourself. Therefore there is no possibility of the disappearance of your identity.