Human personality is not a granite or flint pillar. Man is not a solid object. "Your personality" or "my individuality" - whatever it may be called - is not a solid object like a stone, a brick, or a heavy substance. It is a movement, a continuous transition, rather than a thing that exists exclusively. Man is a concentrated point of movement. This is an important thing to remember. Movement can be higgledy-piggledy, chaotic action, running about in any direction, or like the cyclone or the wind that blows, but the movement that is human personality is not a jumble of agitation. It is not a tempest that blows in any direction as it wills. It is a well-organised purposive movement. There is a system even in madness, as they usually say. In this transitoriness that the human personality is, in this movement that man is, in this complex of forces rather than of substances that he seems to be, there is an order, a system, a method, and a logic of its own. That is why human beings are actually sane and not wild sceneries. If man were to blow like wind, and the components of his personality were to go anywhere they willed, like a storm in the ocean, he would be torn to pieces; a part of him would be there, and another part of him would be anywhere else.

Does not everyone think that he has a status and a substance of his own, which makes him feel that there is a method in his existence? Everyone has a memory of the past, and an anticipation of the future. The memory of the past is an important aspect of human psychology, which brings us to the point of a consideration of there being a connection between the past and the present; to mention only one aspect of it. If the past had no relationship with the present, there would be no such thing as memory. How could anyone know what happened to him days back, when he is now, today, many days afterwards? There is, in this transitoriness of the motion of the mind, a continuity that seems to maintain itself. If this continuity were not to be there, there would be only bits of thoughts, like bricks thrown here and there, without any kind of a cementing element in them. Every moment man thinks of one thing; and every other moment he thinks of another thing. There is not always a connection of one thought with another thought. Though it is true that there is a psychological disparity in the human personality, accepting and granting that there is a multiplicity of thoughts and feelings arising in minds every moment of time - man keeps on changing his moods and feelings, thoughts and volitions all the time - yet, there is a unity that is maintained by him, all the same.

There is a differentia of the selfhood present in every object. Everything regards itself as itself. "I am myself, you are yourself," says everyone. This so-called affirmation of a self identity of any particular thing is the 'selfhood' of that thing. It may be even an atom; it maintains itself. There is a pattern of compactness which even a small atom maintains. It cannot become something else. The affirmation of the compactness of a particular thing is the selfhood of that thing. So, everybody has an insistence or a persistent feeling of maintaining an indivisibility, or an isolation of oneself. This study has been taken up in the Vedanta philosophy. It asks: "What are you?" What is this personality that is referred to? What does man see when he looks at himself? He sees only the body, a six-foot height. Is this the self? It is taken for granted, generally, that the body is the self, because the "I" that everyone speaks of is generally associated with the body. This is a common feature among everyone. It can be easily observed in our own selves. We say, "I am tall; I am thin; I am heavy; I am light; I am strong."

Sometimes we say, "I am hungry; I am thirsty." When we say "I am hungry, I am thirsty," we are speaking in a manner different from the way when we said that we are tall, short, etc. Or, sometimes, we say, "I am upset; I am unhappy, I am agitated; I am annoyed; I am disturbed." Here, statements of this kind, naturally, do not refer to the body. And, "I slept yesterday, I had a good sleep" - when we speak like this, we are referring to a different personality. An analysis of the structure or the components of the individuality of a person has resulted in a discovery of what man really is.

Sometimes we talk of ourselves as, "I am Mr. So-and-So, I am Mrs. So-and-So, I am a judge, I am a minister, I am a rich man," and so on. This is to define an individual by social relationships. When we say, "I am hungry, I am thirsty", we refer to ourselves in a manner different from the way when we talk of our height, weight, etc. When we say, "I am happy, I am upset, I am unhappy, I am agitated, I am annoyed, I am disturbed", or when we talk of any individual as "intelligent, good, efficient, moral, ethical, rational," etc., an inward constitution is referred to and not the physical body. Again, when we say, "I slept yesterday, I had a good sleep," a different personality is indicated.

Thus, we refer to man at different levels of understanding, though it is another matter that, generally, there is a mix-up. These different levels may be termed as the layers of personality. Even the psychologists and psycho-analysts hold that man is but layers of psyche. He is not one mass of mind like a heap. Man is, again, layers vertically, like clouds which form themselves into a thick mass by the coming together of various strata of atmospheric pressure. The psyche seems to be a heap of clouds, but made up of different strata.

Human personality, thus, is said to be constituted of certain layers, which may be considered to be material, basically. The Vedanta philosophy accepts the fact of the existence of matter, though it has its own definition of it, quite different from that of Samkhya or the materialistic definition.

It was seen that society is but a notion. Does it exist? The existence of society cannot be denied. It is as real as human beings, or matter. If a thought or a notion has as much reality as matter, can it be considered to be constituted of a type of matter? Can the psyche be a substance? Yes, says Vedanta. This, probably, is one of the ways of understanding matter, as referring to the constituent substance of the layers of the human personality.

The body is a material substance, but constituted of layers of matter, and not one solid thing. All these different layers of personality may be brought under three broad categories: Gross Body, Subtle Body and Causal Body.

The Gross Body is the physical sheath; The Subtle Body is the psychic one. Though, when man consciously thinks, he cannot think of himself to be anything other than the physical body, mostly he is psychological in nature. Human life is more mental than physical. Actually, it is the essence of one's personality.

In passing, it should be mentioned that there is another familiar classification which says that the human personality is made up of layers, or koshas, namely: annamaya kosha, pranamaya kosha, manomaya kosha, vijnanamaya kosha, and anandamaya kosha. But this classification is not different from what is given above. Annamaya kosha is the Gross Body; the next three koshas, viz., pranamaya kosha, manomaya kosha, and vijnanamaya kosha constitute the Subtle Body, and anandamaya kosha forms the Causal Body.

The Gross Body, known as sthula-sarira in Sanskrit, is nothing but the physical body. This is the outermost layer. This mass of flesh, bone, marrow, and the solidity that is seen, is the physical body. It is called the annamaya kosha. In Sanskrit, anna means food. It is said that the physical body exists and is maintained by the food and drink that one takes. If one does not take meals for days together, he gets emaciated physically. The physical matter, which is the physical body, is worn out on account of no plastering applied to the physical structure, just as walls, if they are not plastered, wither and fall. Every day, one has to eat food. The energy that is present in the vitality of the food is the source of the strength that is gained by the physical body. The body is made up of the essential components of one's parents. A very subtle, minute potentised form of the physical essentiality of the parents becomes the source of the physical body. So, matter is the origin of the body. It may be a highly potentised form like an homeopathic medicine. Nevertheless, it is physical. This little drop of a force, with which man originates his physical life, grows in thickness, solidity, substance, length, breadth, height, and weight; but after all, with all its features, it still remains a physical substance only, a Gross Body.

The physical sheath is inert, essentially. Matter has no consciousness. Man can be insensible at times when the vitality of the body is withdrawn. There can be schizophrenic action by which the mind splits itself into parts, and one person imagines himself to be two, three, four, etc. In a paralytic stroke a part of the body loses consciousness or sensation. Paralysis is an outstanding example of one's having a physical body, and, yet, having no sensation about it, no consciousness of it. The body is not the same as consciousness. Many materialists, and schools of this kind, imagine that consciousness is an exudation of matter. This cannot be, because consciousness is that which is aware of the existence of the body and it cannot be an effect of that body itself, as it is prior to the body. The cause is there, which is the knowing factor. How could the body, if it be the source of consciousness, be the object of the very knowledge which it produced from within itself? Consciousness cannot be identified with the body. This is made clear when it is seen in one's own life that existence as a conscious entity, even without being conscious of the body, is possible. One of the examples is the phenomenon of dream and sleep, in which states the body is present, but consciousness of it is absent; and man is not dead, he is alive. So, man can exist as a conscious entity, and a living being, even without connection with the physical body. This Gross Body, or the physical sheath, is, therefore, not the true personality of man.

Inside the physical body there is the astral body, or the subtle body. It is more rarefied and ethereal than the physical one. In Sanskrit, it is called sukshma-sarira. Sometimes this sukshma-sarira, or the astral body, is also called linga-sarira. In Sanskrit, linga means an emblem, an insignia, a mark, or an indication. One may wonder why this Subtle Body is known as a linga, or an indication, or a mark. It is because whatever the sukshma-sarira or the Subtle Body is, that man is. It is an indication of what man is made of. The physical body, or the physical feature, or the physiognomy of the body, is also an expression of the internal composition of the Subtle Body. Electricity is there inside physical matter. Something like that, one may say, is the way in which the Subtle Body is inside the physical body. The Subtle Body is a force. It can be compared to electric energy to some extent. It is not a hard substance. This Subtle Body, or the sukshma-sarira, or the linga-sarira, is the essence of one's personality. All that one is, all that one thinks, contemplates, and conducts, is the outcome of the nature of this Subtle Body which is within. Just as the physical body is made up of the subtle essence of the food that the parents have taken, and also the food that one eats, the Subtle Body is constituted of many other small components. Prana is a part of the Subtle Body; the senses are a part of the Subtle Body; the mind is part of the Subtle Body; the intellect is part of the Subtle Body. These are broad divisions; further subdivisions can be made, if one likes, on deeper analysis.