Sören Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death (reference to the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John, in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead), talks about the three forms of despair, and the first stage of despair is “not being conscious of having a self” (the other two are: “not willing to be oneself, but also despair at willing to be oneself”) but, to the masters of wisdom, enlightenment is just “being conscious of not having a self”.
