He was definitely lying - cos I was Merlin in my last life! (Send me The Lady Of The Lake's email address too if you've got it.  )

That's a lovely quote, Jees

I think life without an appreciation of death is true death. In a way life is only what it really is when we die to every second of it. There's nothing that survives from one second to the next.

Just as an intellectual exercise ... OK, I'm on the Starship Enterprise and they're just beaming me over to another spaceship. These transporters, as you probably know, are always going wrong. Because of some malfunction each of my atoms, instead of being turned into energy, moved and then returned to atoms at the destination, are each turned into two energy packets. At the destination each stream of energy packets is materialized into atoms and two versions of this body appear there. Each has the same memories, history, thought patterns, desires, unresolved emotional issues. Each remembers standing on the transporter pad on the Enterprise and leaving. I know "I was me" when I left and each knows "I am me" on arrival. If you stay with the illusion of me it's unfathomable.