From Personal to Transpersonal

Until now, we have considered thought as something that happens *inside* a person — in their brain, in their psyche. We have debated the degree of control over this internal process. But what if this very premise is incorrect? What if thought is not our personal property, but a transpersonal, or even cosmic, phenomenon that only *manifests* itself through us for a moment?
This perspective turns the whole question upside down. We cease to be the source and become the **receiver**. Our consciousness is not a generator, but an antenna tuned to pick up waves from an infinite ocean of information, ideas, and archetypes. Carl Jung called this ocean the **collective unconscious** — a repository of the experience of all humanity, common to all of us. A sudden flash of insight, a brilliant guess that seems to come “out of nowhere,” from this point of view, is not a product of our personal mind, but a successful connection to this universal field. Poets and mystics of all times have spoken about this: they do not compose, but “listen”; they do not invent, but “record.”
If this is so, then the question of “power” over thoughts becomes absurd. Can one control the wind? Can one be the master of rain? We can only create the conditions to catch the wind in our sails or collect rainwater. Our task is not to generate thoughts, but to **become a pure channel** for them. This requires not an effort of will, but, on the contrary, its weakening; not tension, but relaxation; not control, but surrender. The “master” here is the one who has managed to clear his antenna of the interference of personal ego, fears, and prejudices in order to better hear the “voice of the world.”
Further, we can go even deeper, to the ideas of objective idealism (from Plato to Hegel) or panpsychism, which assumes that consciousness in one form or another is inherent in all matter. In this picture of the world, thought is not just a product of the human brain, but a fundamental **event of the universe**. Every thought that arises in our mind is not just a neural impulse. It is an act in which the universe cognizes itself through us. Our tiny mind becomes the point at which the boundless cosmos finds its voice and self-awareness.
When a scientist discovers a new law of physics, he does not “invent” it. He reveals the order that was already embedded in the fabric of existence. His thought is the moment when this objective order is reflected in subjective consciousness. When an artist creates a masterpiece, he does not simply combine colors; he captures and materializes a certain universal harmony. In this act, there is neither complete control nor complete passivity. It is a dance in which individual will and universal mind merge together.
Then true mastery is the **art of resonance**. It is the ability to tune one’s inner world so that it resonates with deeper, universal truths. We cannot *command* a brilliant idea to come. But we can study a problem for years, immerse ourselves in it, live it — and thereby create conditions under which the solution will “manifest” in our mind, like an image on a photographic plate.
So, our last step into the depths leads us to dissolve the boundaries between ‘I’ and “not-I,” between the internal and the external. Thought ceases to be a personal thing that can be controlled and becomes **an event on the border between worlds**. And a person is not a master, not a slave, not a navigator, but **a witness and participant** in the eternal process of self-knowledge of the universe.
True power over thought is not the power of a commander over a soldier, but the power of a Zen master who creates a perfect circle with a single precise movement. This movement is neither completely spontaneous nor completely controlled. It is born from the unity of body, mind, and world in a single perfect moment. To be the master of your thoughts is to achieve such unity that the question of who controls whom simply loses all meaning. You are thought, you are the world, you are this dance.

With gratitude and silence,
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
“Between Thoughts”