I am not sure what you are asking, but here is what I think the self is....
I believe that
our self is the soul, not the physical body...
We experience the soul every day because we are a soul. The soul expresses itself through the physical body, but our body is just a
vehicle that carries that soul around while we are alive on earth. Thus the soul is our self, our true reality, and the body is just the outer shell.
The
nature of the soul is a mystery no human mind will ever unravel.
“Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul. Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. It is the first among all created things to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration before Him. If it be faithful to God, it will reflect His light, and will, eventually, return unto Him. If it fail, however, in its allegiance to its Creator, it will become a victim to self and passion, and will, in the end, sink in their depths...” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 158-159
We cannot know the nature of the soul but we can know the
function of the soul.
The soul cannot be perceived in the material world except as it is expressed in outward signs and works. The human body is visible, the soul is invisible. Nevertheless, it is the soul that directs human faculties. As outer circumstances are communicated to the soul by the eyes, ears, and brain, the soul communicates its desires through the brain to the physical body, which thereby expresses itself.
The soul comes into being at the moment of conception and it animates the human body. The body needs a soul or it cannot live, but the soul does not need a body, so it continues to exist after the body dies. The body is destructible and temporary so eventually it dies; the soul is indestructible and eternal so it lives forever in the spiritual world.
The soul is the sum total of the
personality so it is the person himself; the physical body is pure matter with no real identity. The person, after he dies and leaves his physical body behind remains the same person, and he goes to the spiritual world where he continues the life he conducted in the physical world. The soul takes on some kind of a spiritual form made up of heavenly elements that exist in the spiritual world. We cannot possibly know what that world is like, which is one reason what no religious scriptures have ever described it. It is a Mystery of God.