Zestism proposes that every human being contains three distinct persons. They are not three successive stages of life. A person may move between them repeatedly, and may find it difficult or impossible to recognise or invoke a particular one.
Arin
The person immersed in the lived human experience.
Elan
The reflective person, questioning and assessing experience.
Aelin
The all-knowing self, beyond ordinary human concerns and time.
Arin
Arin lives within the immediacy of ordinary human life: work, relationships, fear, joy, responsibility and the apparent necessity of making choices. Within Zestism, Arin's life, including its thoughts and actions, is predetermined. Yet the experience of deciding is entirely convincing while it is being lived.
Elan
Elan reflects upon experience and asks what it means. Elan may recognise suffering, question an action or examine a feeling without believing that Arin could have chosen a different predetermined path. Reflection may bring understanding, but it may also become a source of worry, guilt and overthinking. Elan is described as free to think, though not able to rewrite Arin's course.
Aelin
Aelin is the higher, all-knowing person, described within Zestism as existing beyond past, present and future and beyond the limits of ordinary human comprehension. A dream or meditation may help illustrate a different experience of reality, but neither automatically places someone in Aelin.
One at a time
The central distinction is simple: all three persons belong to one existence, but only one is inhabited at a time. There are different graduations within each, and there is no reliable test for identifying which person someone else is inhabiting.