Reality is made up of Beings. And these Beings exist 'in' Time.
In physics terminology, Beings are analogous to processes. If you try to think of a process outside of Time, it becomes frozen and not really a process anymore - and the same kind of thing happens with Beings.
If you try to think of a universe of Beings that are not 'inside time' then you will get something very unlike Beings - maybe a reality made of indestructible inert spheres, or something like that. But beings are intrinsically active, doing - to some degree.
Because Beings are in-Time, then they must be 'doing' something - and what Beings are doing is having Relationships with other Beings.
So, this is the irreducible basis of Reality - Beings have-ing Relationships... Time cannot be subtracted from ultimate reality.
Because Beings are active (like processes) and eternal (because fundamental aspects of reality) - Beings are self-generating, self-creating.
If beings were like physics things, Beings would be perpetual motion machines, with infinite inner resources for self-creation.
But as Beings are the most fundamental units, we infer that self-creation is simply a 'property' of ultimate reality.
What about the Self? Well, Self is what a Being calls it own Being - so a Being and it's Self are the same 'thing' - but the Being is externally and abstractly regarded, whereas the Self is a Being's conceptualisation of itself.
I assume that this is an intrinsic property of Beings - that Beings know they are Selves, to some degree distinct from other Beings.
There is no 'inside' to the Self. It is a primary unit of reality, indivisible, unanalysable - and this (I think) means that the Self is 'immaterial' - it is not solid, not localised, does not have a surface, cannot be perceived or detected...
This sounds like lots of negatives, but this is simply to state that when it comes to the primary units of reality, there can be no further analysis. We can describe what a Being is and what it does (much like describing the character of a person in terms of his attributes, or inferred dominant motivations), but we cannot discuss its 'inner workings'.
What is Consciousness? Consciousness is something outside-of and different-from the Self. The Consciousness observes - and one of the things Consciousness observes is the Self.
All Beings have some degree of Consciousness; although some entities (of what we call the mineral world, especially; but also the plant world) have a Consciousness that is relatively slow and weak, compared with men and some animals.
So all Beings are in relationships with other Beings, and all are somewhat Conscious of themselves and of this relationship with other Beings. All Beings therefore know themselves located within ongoing Time and reality.
What this means is that Self and and Consciousness are both attributes of Being. We can distinguish Self and Consciousness, but they are not divisible - you cannot have a Self without Consciousness or vice versa; S & C are characteristics of Being (which it may be helpful to distinguish), but S & C are not 'components' of Being.
This is a strange way of reasoning! ('Coleridge apparently called it Polar Logic; and you can read about it in Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought.)
But it essential to think in this way if we are to avoid the unresolvable paradoxes and problems that have plagued and paralysed Western Philosophy (and Christian Theology) since the Ancient Greeks invented it.
The key is to include Time in our fundamental metaphysical assumptions about ultimate reality - and this fits with (or naturally flows-from) the Christian scheme; since the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus happens in history, in time.
Christianity is linear, sequential and purposive.
