There is a fantastic book on Shaiva Tantra written by Christopher D. Wallis, named Tantra Illuminated. The book covers the View (philosophy), history, and some

There is a fantastic book on Shaiva Tantra written by Christopher D. Wallis, named Tantra Illuminated. The book covers the View (philosophy), history, and some practices. The View can get very involved. I've been mining that for a while, applying it to living in our modern world. On Quora, there is a guy named Les Matheson who also wrote this fantastic essay on "authentic self". I think it is Les Matheson -- Quora is down right now, so I can't check my memory. It is a chapter he wrote for his book. He had dropped it in on his Quora blog and then removed it, said he was revising it. When I read it, it was a very clear discourse on what the authentic self, and how there are various stages in understanding that authentic self. Unlike Shaiva Tantra, which will have religious views woven into it, Matheson's essay does not (though I don't feel it mutually excludes the Tantric view). His essay starts with this idea of a single-piece puzzle. We usually think of puzzles as multiple pieces that you fit together to form something. But what about a single-piece puzzle? Where does that fit? Is our self puzzle of many pieces ... or a single puzzle piece? If it is the latter, what does that mean? This discourse goes from there -- is the self a box or light? Is it something you try to contain all the things you think of as "you"... or is it light, that radiates and shines? To answer the questions you brought up from the perspective of my shamanic experiences -- yeah, I have found multiple fragments of personalities that are within. I've found that pieces of ourselves are scattered all over. They might come into greater or lesser influence depending on situations, circumstances, who you are with. Some of these are the rejected shadows (part of Jungian psychology). There are shamanic methods to deliberately get in touch with these, perhaps by bringing temporarily individuating them (similar to gestalt therapy). These can be facilitated by dream work, by drumming, or other means. Reintegration is not really straightforward as, hey, put these things together and somehow they will fit. But no single piece are really Self.