There are three layers to our being. The outer being is the outer personality which is largely a bundle of habits and mechanical or learnt responses and habitual pattern of thoughts and feelings that are born of sensory impacts and the mechanical responses of the physical mind and the desire-self, rooted in the physical vital. Most often it is mistaken for the person but it is really just the outer surface personality. Its seat is in the physical body.
Behind this outer being is the inner being which is larger and less constricted and hampered by the body, opens to the universal currents of forces and energies. It is in fact our subjective being with its thought structures and feelings, larger ambitions as well as idealistic formations that drive the engines of our inner life and thereby impact our outer life as well. It opens horizontally – to the cosmic consciousness around, vertically – upwards towards the higher states, and downwards – to the subcontinent currents that arise from our own and the earth’s subconscious past. It is the inner personality that in a way describes us. It is rooted in the mental – ego.
Still behind this is a third layer of personality, our true personality so to say. It is constituted of soul movements, soul energies, soul forces taking the form of thoughts and feelings and will and aspiration. It is open to the divinity in all things and is the real cause of our higher upward and Godward strivings. It is this that gives true meaning and direction and purpose to our life. It is our true psychic personality and holds within it the key to our past formations as well as the blueprint of the future. Its seat is in our soul or, when fully developed, the psychic being.
Behind it all is the secret soul, the person behind the personalities, the witness of God in the hushed sanctuary of the heart, the divinity within us, the doorway to the Divine immanent in all things.
