MAN AS ONION

This planet Earth is a series of concentric circles: core, mantle, crust, surface, atmosphere. Each layer can be further layered and distinguished: The atmosphere is divided into tropo-, strato-, meso-, thermo-, exospheres; the ionosphere is part of the thermosphere, and the ozone layer is an element of the stratosphere. Even the surface of the planet, the thinnest layer of all, is land and water, and the layers of each of those can be distinguished by levels of depth or altitude.

A human being, likewise, as Hermann Hesse observed, is an onion.  But for here, now, let's keep it simple.

The innermost circle is the Body level: The level of physical reality, of manifestation, of embodiment.  In terms of awareness, it's the layer whose center is "I," the conscious center of the Self that observes and decides:  It weighs and balances the information it perceives from outside, with the influences of beliefs stored within, and makes the choices that propel us through our lives. 

If a human being is a planet where the first level belongs to the body, the physical reality, then the second layer, the atmospheric layer belongs to the mind: It is the level of the unconcious aspects of the self. I call this one the level of "We." The Unconscious is the warehouse, like that one in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK,  that holds the bazillions of crates and boxes that hold our beliefs, our truths. Each container is a part of the Self. (I'll get to the "Parts Model.) Spiritually speaking, this is the level of the "astral Self,"  as thought-form.  In this layer, thoughts are real, rather than physical things.

The outer layer, like the Earth's most outer edge of the most outer layer, where atmosphere meets space, is the layer of a human being that is the most "being."  It is the layer of the Self as Spirit, closest to Universal Consciousness, God, First Cause, or whatever name you know it by....  It is the  level of intent, the idea before the blue-print/thought-form is sorted out, before the thing is manifested physically.

Someone who enjoys sorting and stacking can have hours of fun identifying what the more detailed layers are and how they all relate to one another.  The boundaries of these circles are not firm lines, either, but more like zones of confluence. And you can probably define layers withing those zones, too.

I've had tons of fun with this model!  It has a place in it for just about every aspect of being human.