Where stories are born
Sometimes thoughts come not to explain something.
They come to remind us who we are, why we live, and why we so often forget what is important.
Here I share observations that arise on the border between silence and reflection.
And perhaps among these words you will find the meaning that quietly torments you but has not yet taken shape in speech.
If what you hear here resonates with you, I would be delighted if you subscribed.
It will let me know that these reflections have struck a chord.
Every writer starts somewhere — not with a book, but with the moment when it becomes impossible to remain silent.
For some, it is a calling. For others, it is a habit. For others, it is a way to stay sane in a world
where words lose their weight faster than they can be heard.
For me, writing is not a craft, but a form of existence.
It does not require inspiration — it requires honesty.
I do not know where this path will lead.
But if even one person recognizes themselves between the lines —
then the words were not in vain.
Welcome.
There are no easy answers here — only living questions.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
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Between Thoughts
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The cradle of meaning
When a person first begins to search for themselves
I often think about how sooner or later in every person’s life there comes a moment when all external events cease to be self-evident.
We continue to live, work, achieve, fulfill our roles — but something inside begins to change. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, as if deep beneath the surface of the water, a new current is born.
This current brings with it questions.
Questions that cannot be dispelled by work, success, habits, new relationships, or old beliefs. They remain. They return. They become louder—even though they sound quieter on the outside.
Why all this?
Why me?
And why do I feel more and more acutely that I once knew the answer—
but forgot?
It seems that such questions only come with age, when life begins to build not only freedoms but also limitations around us.
And indeed, maturity gives birth to a special silence.
But this silence is not the end of the road.
It is the beginning.
The silence that comes with age
With age comes not only experience.
Silence comes.
It does not come suddenly — it seeps in.
First, in the morning pauses between actions.
Then in conversations, when you realize for the first time that words no longer describe what is important.
Then in moments of joy, when you suddenly catch yourself thinking that what once seemed important no longer evokes the same excitement.
And in moments of fear, when what used to be frightening now seems almost insignificant.
It’s a strange state.
It’s as if life is taking away your old reference points, but is in no hurry to offer new ones.
It becomes quieter inside — and in this silence, questions begin to sound that cannot be silenced.
Not because they are loud.
Because they are real.
But the search for meaning begins much earlier
There is a common belief that the search for meaning is a privilege of adulthood.
That first you need to live enough years, make enough mistakes, lose enough illusions — and only then does a person begin to think about the essence of what is happening.
But, to be honest, the search for meaning begins much earlier.
Much earlier.
It begins the moment a small child first notices the expression on an adult’s face.
When they first understand:
“This is how I am accepted”
and
“This is how I am not accepted.”
It can be a look, a gesture, a word.
Sometimes it can even be silence.
At that moment, the child not only begins to understand the world, but also develops a survival strategy:
you have to conform in order to be loved.
This is the first starting point.
This is where the journey begins that we then call “me” for the rest of our lives.
The birth of the attempt to fit in
We rarely realize it, but we grow up not as ourselves, but as reflections.
We learn to be “good” so that we are not rejected.
We learn to be ‘convenient’ so that we are not lost.
We learn to be “successful” so that we are admired.
We learn to be “strong” so that the world does not see our vulnerability.
And gradually, layer by layer, we build not our essence, but a mask that is supposed to retain love, attention, and acceptance.
We look at our parents and imitate them.
We look at heroes and try to conform.
We look at those who are praised and learn to repeat their movements, their phrases, their views.
We absorb what society considers to be right.
And very imperceptibly, the main thing happens:
we forget what our inner form was like before all these improvements, corrections, and adaptations.
We forget ourselves.
The loss of uniqueness
Every person is born unique.
This is not a metaphor — it is a biological, psychological, and spiritual fact.
A child is pure perception, pure response, pure ability to be.
But very quickly, this uniqueness begins to be overgrown with rules.
“Don’t do that.”
“Look how others do it.”
“Be like everyone else.”
“You have to be like this to be respected.”
“This is what good children do.”
“This is how successful people behave.”
And in an attempt to be loved, accepted, needed — we lose something that cannot be regained through achievements.
We lose the right to be ourselves.
And with it, we lose the ability to hear our inner truth.
And then, as adults, we spend years going around in circles with the same feeling:
“Something is missing, but I can’t figure out what it is.”
It’s not emptiness.
It’s memory.
Memory of who we were before we became someone.
The moment when external reference points cease to work
And then comes the moment — not always noticeable, sometimes painful, sometimes liberating —
when external reference points cease to work.
What used to inspire no longer moves us.
What seemed important becomes secondary.
What instilled fear no longer holds us back.
It’s as if you suddenly find yourself at a crossroads where the old path no longer leads forward and the new one has not yet been marked.
This state is uncomfortable.
It is honest.
This is the moment when a person returns to themselves for the first time.
This is the beginning of the search for meaning — real meaning, not imposed meaning.
“Who am I without all these roles?”
When the external noise subsides,
when the masks cease to be convincing,
when the desire to conform loses its power —
a quiet, almost suppressed question arises inside:
“Who am I without all these roles?”
This question is not philosophical.
It is not intellectual.
It is not theoretical.
It is existential.
It is born not from thought, but from an inner crack that cannot be ignored.
At this moment, a person encounters not the world, but themselves for the first time.
And this is an encounter that no one forgets.
The answer does not come in words
We were taught to look for answers in logic, books, systems, teachings, explanations.
But the answer to this question does not come in words.
It comes in a feeling.
A subtle shift.
A warm knowledge that cannot be put into sentences.
It is a feeling as if something ancient inside you — something that was forgotten but did not disappear — suddenly recognizes itself.
As if you had been standing with your back to the truth your whole life,
and suddenly decided to turn around.
And at that moment, the most important thing happens:
we understand that meaning is not something to be found.
It is something to be remembered.
We are not searching for ourselves — we are returning to ourselves.
In reality, people do not build themselves.
They remove everything superfluous.
We clear the space that was once filled with other people’s expectations.
We shed roles that have long since ceased to suit us.
We stop conforming — and we begin to breathe.
This process can be painful.
But it is always true.
Because the only thing we all strive for — even if we don’t admit it — is to return to ourselves so deeply that we remember:
who we were before we became who we were supposed to be.
The meaning of life is not an answer, but a return
Meaning is not a summit to be reached.
It is not a formula to be solved.
And it is not a goal to be set.
Meaning is a return to someone who sees through the eyes of a child,
feels with the heart of an adult,
and understands with the soul of an ancient person who knows that life is not a task, but a touch.
Meaning is not a word.
It is a state.
A state of pure perception of life.
If you feel this attraction within yourself
If, as you read these lines, you feel a strange, gentle, but insistent attraction
then the very voice that began to speak in your childhood is awakening within you.
A voice that does not demand,
does not accuse,
does not rush.
It simply calls you home.
Not to where you were told to be.
But to where you were yourself for the first time.
This is not a path forward — it is a path backward
Backward not into the past,
but to the source.
To that space inside you where meaning does not need to be formulated —
it only needs to be heard.
This return is not to fix something,
but to remember.
To remember who you were before all the explanations.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Staying true to yourself
In a world where so many voices try to steer us down someone else’s path, staying true to yourself is both a challenge and the greatest reward. It is the path to inner harmony, which begins with a quiet conversation with yourself.
Allow yourself to slow down and listen to your inner voice. What is truly important to you? What values are you willing to defend? What brings you genuine joy, and what brings only fleeting satisfaction? Your beliefs, interests, strengths, and weaknesses all shape your unique personality. The deeper you know yourself, the more confidently you will move along your own path.
The courage to be yourself is not a rejection of society, but a conscious choice. It is the ability to distinguish your own desires from imposed fashion trends. Stop comparing yourself to others — you are already a priceless work of art. Let go of your fear of criticism and accept your imperfections. Remember that perfection is an illusion, and authenticity is beauty.
Surround yourself with people who value you for who you are, not for who you should be. Seek support and inspiration in communicating with those who share your values and respect your individuality. Remember that healthy relationships should nourish your soul, not drain it.
Live according to your values. Let your words, actions, and life decisions reflect your inner world. Do what you enjoy, even if it doesn’t bring immediate benefits. Speak the truth, even if it’s not always convenient. Ultimately, it is consistency with yourself that brings true satisfaction and a sense of a fulfilling life.
Staying true to yourself in the modern world is not rebellion, but a conscious decision to be faithful to your principles and create your life according to your own unique script. This is the path to true freedom and self-realization.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Happiness
Happiness is one of those words that seem simple until you start to look deeper into their meaning. It is easy to say, almost mundane, but behind it lies a whole universe of feelings, meanings, expectations, pain, and light. People have been searching for happiness since the moment they became self-aware. It was what made ancient man light a fire, philosophers seek the truth, poets write poetry, and travelers go further and further without knowing where. We call happiness that which gives us a sense of fulfillment, but the more we try to hold on to it, the faster it disappears.
People often confuse happiness with possession. A house, money, recognition, love — all these things become the yardstick by which they try to measure their inner state. But how can you measure something that has no form? How can you hold on to something that by its very nature flows, changes, and slips away? Material and emotional achievements bring joy, but rarely peace. We rejoice when we get what we want and worry about not losing it. True happiness does not live in the fear of loss because it is not based on what can be taken away.
When a person stops fighting with themselves and stops demanding explanations from life, they begin to notice that happiness is not somewhere outside, but inside their perception. It does not come when everything is perfect — it appears when you accept imperfection as part of the whole. Happiness is not a victory over suffering, but a reconciliation with reality. It is the ability to say, “Yes, life is not always fair, but it is mine.” And in this “mine” there is no possessiveness, but gratitude.
Some seek happiness in pleasure, others in meaning. The former get tired because pleasure is always temporary. The latter grow because meaning can nourish a person even in pain. Happiness is not the opposite of suffering; it is capable of containing it. When life is difficult but full of meaning, that is also happiness, only more mature, deeper, without glamour, but with a quiet light from within.
Sometimes happiness comes suddenly. You walk down the street, feel the wind, smell the bread from the bakery, hear the footsteps of passers-by — and suddenly you feel peace inside. No thoughts, no expectations, no past or future. Only this moment. This is happiness — not an event, but a state of presence. When you don’t need to change anything because everything is already in its place.
With age, our understanding of happiness changes. In youth, we seek excitement, in maturity — meaning, in old age — peace. And perhaps only at the end of the journey do we begin to understand that happiness has always been there, but we were looking in the wrong place. It was not a reward for our efforts — it was a way of looking at the world.
Happiness is not a goal to strive for, but a space in which to be.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
The manifesto of awakening consciousness
Consciousness does not develop — it remembers.
We don’t come to the truth — we stop holding onto lies.
You are not a part of the world — you are a condition of its existence.
When you stop playing a role, the script crumbles.
Silence is not where there are no sounds, but where there is no one else to comment on them.
Freedom is not about choosing — freedom is about being aware of who is choosing. You don’t live through time — time lives through you, slowly rewriting the history of your dreams.
Meaning cannot be added to life — it wakes up the moment you stop looking.
You are not an observer of reality — You are the mirror in which reality recognizes itself for the first time.
Every moment is an invitation to remember who you were before all the thoughts about yourself.
Enlightenment is not the peak, but the gentle disappearance of someone who wanted to get there.
When “should” disappears, only “is” remains. And in this “there is” everything.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
The meaning is not in the answer, but in who asks the question.
Sometimes I think that the question “why do we live” does not require an answer. It is itself a form of life.
While we are searching for meaning, we are already living. While we doubt, suffer, love, we are already participating in the very mystery of existence.
We do not live for success or recognition. Not to leave a mark.
We live because there is something inside us that cannot help but seek — light, truth, presence.
This quest is not always logical, but it is what makes us human.
Meaning is not revealed by the mind — it is felt in the breath, in the silence, in the touch of the moment.
When we stop chasing answers, life suddenly becomes complete.
And then you realize: everything that has happened is not a coincidence, but a path to the awareness of existence itself.
Perhaps we do not live to understand life,
but to allow it to understand us.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
The Trial of Socrates
This is an excerpt from the novel
“Confessions of the Immortal.”
The Trial of Socrates.
In fact, he was condemned for teaching people to think. For awakening uncomfortable questions in people’s souls that could destroy the familiar, comfortable world order built on lies and hypocrisy.
I was at the trial. The amphitheater was overflowing with an excited crowd, the air trembling with heat and impatient cries, like predators anticipating their prey. He stood alone on the platform, without a trace of anger on his face, without any attempt to defend or justify himself, for his only defense was the truth. He did not resort to rhetorical tricks or try to appeal to the judges’ pity, for the truth, as he believed, needs no justification; it simply is.
“If you fear words, if fear of thought binds your hearts, turning them to stone, you are already dead, even while you live, for your soul is dead. If you choose fear as your master, rather than reason, this divine gift, you have betrayed yourselves, your human essence, the gift of the gods that distinguishes you from beasts, condemning yourselves to eternal slavery,” he said calmly, his voice steady, but his words were like sparks falling on dry, flammable wood, each spark threatening to ignite a fire in the hearts of his listeners.
He was sentenced to death. For daring to look people in the eye, not at the sky, peering into their souls, not at dead dogmas, for seeking truth not in ancient texts, but in lively dialogue, in doubt, in agonizing search.
He drank the hemlock. I stood nearby, feeling my immortal heart, accustomed to eternity, contract from the coldness of tragedy, from the bitterness of this unjust end. His last words, whispered in a voice that only I could understand, were: “Don’t forget to give the rooster to Asclepius.”
They did not understand. The crowd, the judges, the executioners — no one grasped the deeper meaning of these seemingly simple words.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
I – The paradox of power over thought
Master or guest in your own home? The paradox of power over thought
The question of whether a person is the master of their own thoughts is as old as philosophy itself. It plunges us into the very heart of the mystery of consciousness, into that inner cosmos where the “I” is born, lives, and dies. A drama unfolds on the stage of this phantom theater: we are simultaneously directors, actors, and passive spectators. The answer to this question is not simply “yes” or “no,” but a profound paradox that defines the essence of human existence.
At first glance, we feel like absolute monarchs in the kingdom of our minds. I think, therefore I am, proclaimed Descartes, placing the thinking subject at the center of the universe. This fortress of our “I” seems impregnable. We are capable of directing our focus by force of will, solving the most complex problems, and constructing a logical chain leading from premise to conclusion. In the act of self-reflection, we rise above the stream of consciousness, like a sculptor assessing a block of marble before cutting away the excess. We can catch a thought, examine it, evaluate it as “false,” “disturbing,” or “brilliant,” and make a conscious decision to follow it or reject it. It is in this conscious choice, in this capacity for metacognition, that the illusion of our complete sovereignty lies. We believe that we are authors, not mere readers.
However, as soon as we pause for a moment and listen to our inner monologue, this confidence begins to melt away. Thoughts come and go like clouds in the sky — uninvited, uncontrollable, spontaneous. Try to tell yourself not to think about something, and that image will obsessively fill your entire mental space. Who is this “I” that observes this chaos, if it is not its source?
Here, philosophy gives way to psychoanalysis and neurobiology, which paint a much more complex picture. Beneath the thin layer of our conscious “I” lie the dark waters of the unconscious — an ocean of repressed desires, forgotten traumas, and ancient instincts. These underwater currents shape our thoughts long before they reach the surface of consciousness. Thoughts are just ripples on the water caused by deep processes to which we have no direct access.
Moreover, our mind is not an incorporeal spirit, but a product of a biochemical storm in our brain. Hormonal background, genetic predisposition, simple fatigue, or a cup of coffee — all of this changes the very fabric of our thinking, coloring it with tones of anxiety, joy, or apathy. We do not choose these states; they happen to us. Our thinking is also confined to the invisible cage of language and culture. We think in words that we did not invent and operate with concepts absorbed from society. Our most intimate thoughts are often just echoes of the voices of our parents, teachers, and the era in which we happen to live.
So who are we? Slaves to biochemistry and unconscious impulses? Or free agents creating our own reality?
The truth, as is often the case, lies in reconciling extremes. The human consciousness can be likened to the captain of a ship. The captain did not create the ship (his biology, genetics, past) or the ocean on which he sails (the outside world, chance, fate). He cannot order the storm to subside or the current to change direction. In this sense, he is not the master.
But it is within his power to stand at the helm. He can choose a course by consulting the map of his experience and the stars of his values. He can raise the sails of will to catch a favorable wind, or drop the anchor of reflection to wait out the storm. He can choose which island to sail to, even if the path to it lies through uncontrollable elements.
Thus, man is not an absolute master-demiurge who generates thoughts out of nothing. But he is not a weak-willed slave either. He is a **navigator**. His skill lies not in trying to subjugate the ocean, but in the art of steering a ship in ever-changing conditions. We cannot stop the flow of thoughts, but we can learn not to drown in it. We can choose which thoughts to give our attention to, which to turn into words and actions, and which to watch pass by like distant clouds.
Being the master of your thoughts is not about controlling their source, but about controlling your attitude towards them. It is the eternal art of navigating the boundless and often stormy ocean of your own mind. And it is in this art, in this tireless effort of will and awareness, that the true dignity of man lies.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
II – Co-authorship with the Abyss
Beyond the navigation line: Co-authorship with the Abyss
So, we come to the image of the human navigator who, without mastering the elements, still charts his course. But even this metaphor risks being too simplistic. It assumes that there is a certain unchanging “captain” separated from the ‘ship’ and the “ocean.” But what if this is not the case? What if the captain himself is woven from the same fabric as the storm he is fighting?
The philosophy of existentialism and Eastern contemplative traditions push us toward an even more radical conclusion. They suggest that our very “I,” the very control center that we so desperately defend, is not so much an essence as a process. The “I” is not a point, but a trajectory; not a substance, but a continuously created story. And we are not the only authors of this creation. We are in constant dialogue, and sometimes in conflict, with what can be called “the Other” — be it the unconscious, collective culture, or the very structure of being.
Our thoughts are not just internal objects that we can accept or reject. They are part of us; they shape us. Every thought, even a fleeting and rejected one, leaves its mark, like a wave changing the contours of the shore. A disturbing thought that we dismiss still makes our heart beat faster. An inspired idea that we were unable to realize continues to live in us like the ghost of a missed opportunity. We cannot simply “give up” a thought without paying the price, without changing under its influence. We are woven into the fabric of our own thinking.
This is where the concept of **co-authorship** comes in. We are not absolute masters, but neither are we passive slaves. We are co-authors of the reality of our inner world. We do not choose the raw material — sudden flashes of fear, irrational desires, fragments of other people’s phrases — but we choose how to process it. Our consciousness is a workshop where ore extracted from the dark mines of our past and present flows in a continuous stream. Our freedom is the freedom of a craftsman: from the same piece of clay (a spontaneous thought), one can mold both an ugly idol and an elegant vessel.
In this process of co-creation, **attention** plays a decisive role. Attention is the currency of our mind. Where we direct it is what becomes real for us. By immersing ourselves in rumination, we fertilize the soil for anxiety, and it grows, overshadowing our entire inner landscape. By focusing on gratitude, we highlight moments of joy that would otherwise go unnoticed. We cannot prevent weeds from appearing in the garden of our mind, but we can choose which flowers to water. This metaphor of a garden is perhaps more accurate than that of a ship, for the gardener is not separate from his garden — he himself is part of this ecosystem, feeding on its fruits and suffering from its drought.
And perhaps the highest form of power over thoughts is not control or management, but **acceptance**. This is a paradoxical act in which the “I” renounces the struggle for the throne and becomes not a master, but a hospitable home. A home that allows all thoughts-guests to come and go. It observes them without identifying with any of them. It understands that the thought of anger is not anger itself. The thought of sadness is not sadness itself. These are only shadows passing through the room of consciousness. And when we stop fighting these shadows, they lose their power over us.
In this calm observation, in this silence that is not afraid of the noise of thoughts, true freedom is born. We realize that we are not our thoughts. We are the space in which they arise. That silent sky against which clouds float. True stewardship is not tyranny over our subjects, our thoughts, but wise governance of a space where anything is possible, but nothing is you to the end. This realization is the ultimate answer that transforms the eternal question of power into an invitation to the deepest knowledge of oneself.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
III – Thought as Captivity and Liberation
The Shadow of Language and the Echo of the Future: Thought as Captivity and Liberation
We have come to understand ourselves as co-authors and spaces for thoughts. But even here, there remains an undiscovered depth. We overlook the most powerful and invisible tyrant that shapes our inner world: language. Language is not just a tool for expressing thoughts; it is their home, their prison, and their creator.
We think in words. Try to think about something complex and abstract—justice, love, the meaning of life—without resorting to words. It is practically impossible. The structure of language—its grammar, syntax, and built-in logic—predetermines the channels through which our thoughts will flow. As Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” We cannot think of anything for which there is no name or category in our mental and linguistic map. Thus, we do not so much speak a language as the language “speaks us.” It is the original architect who built the walls and corridors of the building of our mind even before we realized that we were its inhabitants.
In this context, being the master of one’s thoughts means constantly struggling with the boundaries of one’s own language. It is a poet’s attempt to find a new word for an inexpressible feeling, a scientist’s effort to create a new term for an undescribed phenomenon. It is a rebellion against ready-made formulations imposed on us by culture, against clichés and ideological stamps that masquerade as our own unique thoughts. True freedom of thought begins when we become aware of our linguistic conditioning and try to look beyond its limits, into the realm of pure experience, of pre-verbal experience.
But there is another, more subtle aspect of our lack of freedom — time. Our thoughts almost never exist in the pure “present.” They are either **echoes of the past** — ruminating on memories, grievances, old scenarios — or **phantoms of the future** — anxiety about what might happen, or dreams detached from reality. Our consciousness is a time traveler, constantly running away from the only point where real life and real freedom are possible — the moment “now.”
Thoughts tied to the past turn us into slaves to what is no longer there. Thoughts focused on the future make us hostages to what is not yet there and may never be. In this sense, we are not the masters of our thoughts, because they control our time, our most valuable resource. They steal our present from us.
And here, the highest skill, surpassing even that of a navigator or gardener, is the art of **returning**. Returning from the labyrinths of the past and the illusions of the future to the fullness of the present moment. Mindfulness practices teach us precisely this: not to analyze a thought, not to fight it, but simply to notice it and gently return our attention to our breathing, to the sensations of our body, to the sounds around us. In this simple act of returning, a miracle occurs: a thought deprived of our attention loses its energy and dissolves. This is not suppression, but liberation. We do not destroy the thought, we free ourselves from its tyranny over our time.
Ultimately, the question “Is a person the master of their thoughts?” leads us to the most paradoxical discovery. Perhaps our main goal is not to become the master, but to **stop being a slave**. Freedom is not the dictatorship of the “I” over the stream of consciousness, but the cessation of internal warfare. It is a peace treaty between the observer and the observed.
And in this silence, in this space between thoughts, we may for the first time come into contact with what we really are — not a set of thoughts about ourselves, but pure being, the very source of consciousness. To become the master means to let go of the reins and discover that true power lies not in control, but in trust in the deep and wise process of life that unfolds within us and through us, and which we humbly learn to call “ourselves.”
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
IV – Beyond the “I”
Beyond the “I”: Thought as an Event in the Universe
We have come a long way from the illusion of complete control to the realization that we are co-authors, prisoners of language and time. But even in this complex picture, a fundamental assumption remains: there is a certain “I” that observes, struggles, accepts, or returns to the present. Contemporary neurophilosophy and cutting-edge interpretations of physics call into question even this last bastion of our identity.
What if the “I” is not an essence, but merely a useful illusion created by the brain? Neurobiologists such as Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris argue that our sense of ourselves as a single, continuous author of our thoughts is a post-factum interpretation. The brain is a decentralized system consisting of many competing modules. The thought “I want tea” is not born in some central “command center.” Rather, it is a winning coalition of neural ensembles that, having broken through to the forefront of consciousness, is labeled with the convenient tag “my desire.” Consciousness in this model is not so much a director as a press secretary who comes out to the public and announces a decision already made behind the scenes, passing it off as his own. A thought occurs, and the brain retroactively constructs a story that “I” thought it. In this light, the question of “owner” becomes meaningless: how can you be the owner of something that you only attribute to yourself?
This idea echoes some interpretations of quantum mechanics. At the subatomic level, the world exists not as definite objects, but as a cloud of probabilities that “collapses” into a specific state only at the moment of observation. If our consciousness and brain ultimately obey the same laws, what is a thought before we “think” it? Perhaps it is just one of countless potentials in the quantum field of our mind. And the act of “thinking” is not creation, but merely the fixation, the “measurement” of one of these probabilities. Who or what makes this choice? Is it an act of our will, or is it a fundamental randomness built into the fabric of reality itself? Once again, we encounter a boundary where our intuitive understanding of causality and authorship dissolves.
It is at this boundary, where all concepts collapse, that philosophy converges with mystical experience. In all spiritual traditions, there is the concept of “ego dissolution” or “union with the Absolute.” This is a state in which the duality of “I” and “thought,” ‘observer’ and “observed” disappears. In such moments, a person experiences themselves not as a separate mind generating thoughts, but as the field of consciousness itself, in which thought arises as a local event, just as a wave arises in the ocean.
A wave is not something separate from the ocean; it is the ocean itself in motion. Similarly, a thought is not something that belongs to “me”; it is the universe thinking itself through the local structure we call the “brain.” In this experience, there is neither master nor slave. There is only a single, holistic process. “My” thoughts are no more “mine” than the beating of “my” heart or the rotation of ‘my’ planet. These are events that occur in the broader context of existence, in which “I” participate but do not control.
Thus, our path to answering the original question turns into a ladder of ascent and subsequent dissolution:
1. First, we are naive **masters**, confident in our omnipotence.
2. Then we are perplexed **navigators**, struggling with the elements.
3. After that, we are humble **co-authors**, working with what is given.
4. Next, we are awakened **observers**, not identifying with the flow.
5. And finally, we come to realize ourselves as **the flow itself**, as an integral part of existence, in which thought is just one form of its eternal dance.
Is a person the master of their thoughts? No. But they can reach a state in which this question loses all meaning. Because the one who could be the master and the thing they could possess merge into an incomprehensible unity called Life. True freedom is not power over thought, but liberation from the very idea of power.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Beyond the “I”: Thought as an Event in the Universe
We have come a long way from the illusion of complete control to the realization that we are co-authors, prisoners of language and time. But even in this complex picture, a fundamental assumption remains: there is a certain “I” that observes, struggles, accepts, or returns to the present. Contemporary neurophilosophy and cutting-edge interpretations of physics call into question even this last bastion of our identity.
What if the “I” is not an essence, but merely a useful illusion created by the brain? Neurobiologists such as Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris argue that our sense of ourselves as a single, continuous author of our thoughts is a post-factum interpretation. The brain is a decentralized system consisting of many competing modules. The thought “I want tea” is not born in some central “command center.” Rather, it is a winning coalition of neural ensembles that, having broken through to the forefront of consciousness, is labeled with the convenient tag “my desire.” Consciousness in this model is not so much a director as a press secretary who comes out to the public and announces a decision already made behind the scenes, passing it off as his own. A thought occurs, and the brain retroactively constructs a story that “I” thought it. In this light, the question of “owner” becomes meaningless: how can you be the owner of something that you only attribute to yourself?
This idea echoes some interpretations of quantum mechanics. At the subatomic level, the world exists not as definite objects, but as a cloud of probabilities that “collapses” into a specific state only at the moment of observation. If our consciousness and brain ultimately obey the same laws, what is a thought before we “think” it? Perhaps it is just one of countless potentials in the quantum field of our mind. And the act of “thinking” is not creation, but merely the fixation, the “measurement” of one of these probabilities. Who or what makes this choice? Is it an act of our will, or is it a fundamental randomness built into the fabric of reality itself? Once again, we encounter a boundary where our intuitive understanding of causality and authorship dissolves.
It is at this boundary, where all concepts collapse, that philosophy converges with mystical experience. In all spiritual traditions, there is the concept of “ego dissolution” or “union with the Absolute.” This is a state in which the duality of “I” and “thought,” ‘observer’ and “observed” disappears. In such moments, a person experiences themselves not as a separate mind generating thoughts, but as the field of consciousness itself, in which thought arises as a local event, just as a wave arises in the ocean.
A wave is not something separate from the ocean; it is the ocean itself in motion. Similarly, a thought is not something that belongs to “me”; it is the universe thinking itself through the local structure we call the “brain.” In this experience, there is neither master nor slave. There is only a single, holistic process. “My” thoughts are no more “mine” than the beating of “my” heart or the rotation of ‘my’ planet. These are events that occur in the broader context of existence, in which “I” participate but do not control.
Thus, our path to answering the original question turns into a ladder of ascent and subsequent dissolution:
1. First, we are naive **masters**, confident in our omnipotence.
2. Then we are perplexed **navigators**, struggling with the elements.
3. After that, we are humble **co-authors**, working with what is given.
4. Next, we are awakened **observers**, not identifying with the flow.
5. And finally, we come to realize ourselves as **the flow itself**, as an integral part of existence, in which thought is just one form of its eternal dance.
Is a person the master of their thoughts? No. But they can reach a state in which this question loses all meaning. Because the one who could be the master and the thing they could possess merge into an incomprehensible unity called Life. True freedom is not power over thought, but liberation from the very idea of power.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
V – Thought as an event of the world
Thought as an event of the world: 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.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
VI – From possession to participation
Thought as a bridge to being:
From possession to participation
We have explored the labyrinths of the mind, from the illusion of complete control to slavery to language and time. We have arrived at the image of a wise gardener and a hospitable home. But what if thought is not just a phenomenon *within* us? What if it is the primary way that existence itself knows itself through us? What if our thoughts are not our property, but the pulsation of the universe passing through the focus of our individual consciousness?
This perspective, close to Spinoza’s pantheism or Hegel’s idealism, turns the question itself upside down. The problem is no longer “do we own our thoughts,” but “to whom do we belong when we think.” When we are struck by a brilliant scientific idea or a profound poetic insight, where does it come from? Is it merely a product of our own brain sifting through old data? Or do we become, at that moment, a conduit, an antenna picking up a signal from a broader, collective, or even cosmic field of consciousness—the noosphere, as Vernadsky would say?
In this light, our biggest mistake is the instinctive desire to “appropriate” a thought, to label it “mine.” The thought of the beauty of the sunset is not “my” thought. It is a response to the sunset itself, finding expression in the structure of my consciousness. Anxiety about the future is not just “my” anxiety. It is a vibration of universal uncertainty resonating in my personal experience. Thoughts flow through us like a river through its bed. The bed (our personality, our experience) gives the river its shape, but it is not the water itself.
Then, true power over a thought is not possession of it, but **participation** in it. It is a transition from the egocentric question “What does this thought mean to me?” to the ontological question “What is the world trying to say through this thought?” It is the ability to listen to your thoughts not as internal noise, but as an echo of the universe. Anxiety ceases to be just a symptom that needs to be suppressed and becomes a signal of a break in harmony between me and the world. Inspiration is not a reason for pride, but an invitation to serve, to embody what wants to be born into the world through me.
Here we go beyond psychology and enter the realm of the spiritual. “Becoming the master of your thoughts” in this final reading means achieving such a degree of inner silence and purity that you become the perfect conduit. Do not distort the incoming signals with the noise of your ego, fears, and desires. Do not become a deaf wall that only reflects itself, but rather transparent glass through which light can shine.
Paradoxically, absolute power over thought is achieved at the moment of complete renunciation of power. The power of the tyrant is replaced by the power of the master. And the power of the master is not the power of pressure, but the power of conductivity. He does not possess music, he allows music to flow through him.
Thus, our path to understanding this question is like climbing a mountain. At the foot of the mountain, we naively believe in our complete control. Climbing higher, we see our dependence on the landscape and the weather. Higher still, we learn to be skilled climbers, charting our route. But at the very top, in the thin air, we realize that we and the mountain are one. The question of who owns whom loses all meaning. All that remains is breath, pure being, a thought that thinks itself through us. And in this oneness, there is no slavery, but the highest form of freedom. The freedom to be not a closed island, but a bridge between our “I” and infinity.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Is there a Choice?
Imagine you are standing at a fork in the road. One path leads to the left, the other to the right. You feel a cool breeze on your skin, hear the rustling of leaves, weigh all the pros and cons in your mind. Your heart, your mind, your whole being is focused on this point, on this moment of choice. And then you take a step.
This question is not just an intellectual puzzle. It is a crack in the very foundation of our “I.” If you look into it, you can see an abyss, or you can see the amazing architecture of the Universe.
From childhood, we are taught to be the captains of our own ships. “You decide for yourself,” “It’s your choice,” “Take responsibility.” We live in a world of heroes and villains, rewards and punishments, built on a seemingly unshakable axiom: man is free in his actions. It is a great and noble play in which we are the main actors. We think we are improvising, creating our roles on the fly.
But what if we look behind the scenes? What if we dare to read a script that we did not write?
“But what about quantum uncertainty?” you may ask. That very same ghostly chance at the subatomic level that seems to leave a loophole for freedom. Alas, it is just another mask of predetermination. If your choice is the result of a random jump of a particle in a neuron, then it is not freedom. It’s a lottery. Your choice does not belong to you, but to the whims of cosmic chaos. You do not control this randomness. You simply become its puppet.
So, physics offers us only two thrones: the throne of rigid order and the throne of blind chance. But neither of them has room for a king named “Free Will.”
And here, at this point of existential despair, the real miracle begins.
Yes, perhaps choice is an illusion. But it is the most important, the most beautiful, and the most necessary illusion of all. It is the operating system of our consciousness. It is a masterpiece created by evolution so that blind determinism can look at itself in the mirror and call itself “I.”
The feeling of choice is not a bug in the program. It is its main function. It is what makes us get up in the morning and build cathedrals. It is what turns biochemical reactions into feats, betrayal, or forgiveness. It is what allows us to look into another person’s eyes and see not a set of atoms, but a kindred spirit.
We are the universe that has learned to dream through us. We are a wave in the ocean of causality that, for one brief moment, gained consciousness and believed that it could choose its own direction. And in this belief, in this very illusion, there is more truth about what it means to be human than in any physical formula.
So what remains after this journey? Not the bitterness of deception, but awe at the complexity of the game.
You are standing at the crossroads again. You know that the script has already been written and your step is predetermined. But now you know something else: you are the one who has the honor of playing this role. And only you can experience it in its entirety: feel the doubt, feel the weight of the decision, and finally, feel the thrill of your own step.
Choice is not what we have. Choice is what we *are*. And to play this role, realizing all its depth and tragic beauty, is the highest form of freedom available to a person.
Now take your step.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
I – The Matryoshka
«I – The Matryoshka»
Reality – It is what remains after all interpretations have ceased.
Interpretation – It is the inevitable filter through which we perceive and understand the world.
If reality is “what is,” then interpretation is “how we understand and explain it.”
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
II – The Matryoshka
Where am I?
We live in a world where everything requires explanation.
But what remains when words lose their power?
When reality simply exists, and interpretations no longer exist?
Reality is what remains when the mind falls silent.
Interpretation is the way the mind tries to name silence.
«But where am I in all this?»
There is a fine line between reality and interpretation—
a point of awareness where the formless becomes visible,
and the visible acquires meaning.
This point is me—not the observer, but the very ability to see.
I do not arise from the world or from thoughts about it.
I am born in contact.
When Reality touches Interpretation,
a moment of consciousness flashes —
and in it appears the one who asks:
«Who am I?»
And at the moment when the question dissolves,
the questioner himself disappears,
leaving only pure presence —
«Reality without a name»
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Worldview
Worldview
Look in the mirror. Who do you see there?
We like to think that the person in the reflection is the rightful author of their life story. We proudly wear our beliefs like medals won in hard-fought intellectual battles. We are absolutely certain: “I chose my moral principles myself,” “I consciously decided who to vote for,” “I formed my unique taste in music and literature.” It is vitally important for us to believe that we are captains whose hands grip the wheel tightly, and that the course of our ship depends solely on our will and strength of mind.
But if we muster up the courage to look behind the dusty curtains of our own “I,” we will have to admit a frightening and at the same time mesmerizing truth. We are not the architects of this magnificent building. We are the residents of a house that others have built for us. And the foundation of this house is poured with concrete of coincidences over which we had no influence.
The first act of your drama was written long before you entered the stage. It is called the “Birth Lottery.”
Imagine for a second that the spark of your consciousness did not ignite here in the 21st century, but in Ancient Sparta, two and a half thousand years ago. You would not just think differently — you would feel differently on a physical level. What today causes you horror and disgust — cruelty, throwing the weak off a cliff, total submission — would inspire you with sacred awe and pride there. The highest virtue for you would be the ability to kill without mercy for the sake of the prosperity of the state, and the modern concepts of “individual rights” or “humanism” would seem to you dangerous, destructive madness. And the most frightening thing about this thought experiment is that you would consider these bloodthirsty thoughts to be your own. You would defend freedom just as sincerely and passionately as you do now, and you would be ready to die for the tyranny of the polis.
But you don’t have to travel through time to see this connection. Geography is also destiny. If you had been born in Tokyo instead of Paris or New York, the very “optics” of your brain would have been tuned differently. Cognitive science and social psychology confirm a striking fact: Westerners view the world like snipers, focusing on the central target, the object, their “I.” People from Eastern cultures look at the world like landscape painters, seeing the picture holistically: they notice the background, the context, and the invisible threads of connection between people that Western minds simply ignore. This is not a question of etiquette or upbringing, but rather the physiology of attention. From the cradle, culture literally trains our eye muscles and neural connections, telling us where to look and what to see, and we obediently follow its instructions, not even noticing the blinders on our eyes.
An even more subtle, almost transparent prison is our language. We naively think that we control words, using them as a tool, but in reality, words control us. Language is a mold for casting reality. Remember the Kooka Yawarra tribe of Australia. In their unique world, there are no concepts of “left” and “right.” There are only absolute points of the compass: North, South, West, East. Even to simply say hello, they must know their exact location on the planet, otherwise the phrase will have no meaning. A five-year-old child of this tribe senses the Earth’s magnetic field better than we sense our own skin. We, on the other hand, are locked in a cage of our habitual concepts, cutting the seamless, unified fabric of the world into familiar but limited slices of words, missing everything for which there are no names in our language.
Now descend deeper into the dark, turbulent waters of your biology. Your heated political debates, your nighttime moral agonies — often these are just echoes of chemical storms in your brain, predetermined by genetics.
The famous Minnesota study of separated twins was a real earthquake for psychology. People who grew up on different continents, in different social classes, without knowing each other, discovered a frightening, mystical similarity 40 years later. They voted the same way, believed (or did not believe) in God in the same way, chose the same professions, and even named their dogs the same names. It turns out that even our choice between conservatism and liberalism can be prescribed in dopamine receptors and brain structure.
If your amygdala (the center of fear) is slightly larger and sounds the alarm louder, you will instinctively seek protection in traditions, hierarchy, and order. If your anterior cingulate cortex craves novelty, you will become a rebel and a liberal. Your “ironclad principles,” which you consider to be the fruit of logic, are often just an attempt by your mind to rationalize and justify what your blood and hormones have already decided.
And finally, the Great Chaos. Each of our lives is woven from a billion coincidences. A book accidentally left behind by someone on the subway, which you opened out of boredom, could have turned your consciousness upside down and determined your profession. A chance encounter on the street, missing a train, a phrase uttered by a school teacher at the right (or wrong) time… Your personality is a colorful patchwork quilt sewn by a blind tailor named Chance.
Remember Viktor Frankl. The great psychiatrist went through the unimaginable hell of concentration camps, losing everything, and there, at the very bottom of despair, he gave birth to the great idea of Meaning. If it weren’t for this monstrous tragedy, the world would never have known logotherapy, and Frankl himself would have remained, perhaps, an ordinary doctor. Our scars, our losses, and our sudden gifts from fate are the unique map of our soul.
So who are we, in the end? Bio-robots? Puppets suspended on strings of genes and cultural codes? Where is the place for Us in this gigantic, soulless mechanism?
It is here, at this point of despair, that the magic of the human spirit begins. Our freedom does not lie in omnipotence. We do not choose the ocean we sail on, we do not choose the weather, and often we do not even choose the ship itself. But we do have one great, inviolable, and sacred freedom. The freedom to interpret.
It is that tiny, almost invisible gap between the blow of fate and our response to it.
Two people can go through the same hell, experience the same loss. One will come out broken, with a heart full of hatred, deciding that the world is a meaningless slaughterhouse ruled by evil. The other will emerge from the same fire with a heart full of compassion and wisdom, deciding that his mission now is to warm others, because he knows the price of cold. The facts are the same. The events are absolutely the same. But we create the meaning ourselves.
It is in the silence of this inner choice — how to name what is happening to us and how to integrate it into our picture of the world — that our true, unique “I” is born. We do not choose the bricks that the trucks of life dump at our feet. But only we — the chief architects of our own souls — decide what to build with them: a deaf wall of tears separating us from life, or a bridge to the stars.
Zohar Leo Palfft de Erdod
Stereotype
A stereotype is not just a habit of the mind. It is a dream of thinking, in which a person sees other people’s dreams and takes them for their own.
They live in a world of ready-made formulas, learned truths, and convenient opinions. The world seems understandable because the answers have long been written down.
But it is precisely where doubt disappears that the destruction of consciousness begins.
Thought is born of tension, of the internal friction between “I know” and “I’m not sure.”
Stereotypes remove this tension, replacing lively exploration with a mechanical reaction.
They give a sense of confidence, but take away reality.
We stop seeing what is and start seeing what is expected to be seen.
This is not the collapse of intellect, but the collapse of the ability to perceive genuinely.
The most dangerous thing about stereotypes is not their falseness, but their invisibility.
They are not imposed by force—they become ingrained in speech, gestures, morals, and everyday life.
We begin to repeat other people’s thoughts as naturally as we breathe.
We don’t even notice that we are speaking words that someone else once put into our mouths.
A person under the influence of stereotypes does not realize that their thinking is no longer their own.
They are convinced that they think independently — simply because they cannot see the cage they are in.
Stereotypes are based not on logic, but on fear.
The fear of being “wrong.”
The fear of stepping outside the boundaries of the familiar.
The fear of being misunderstood.
Stereotypes protect us from pain, from loneliness, from the need to think for ourselves.
They create the illusion of belonging: if I think like everyone else, I am safe.
But safety of mind is the death of spirit.
To destroy a stereotype is to awaken thought.
Not to destroy for the sake of destruction, but for the sake of purity of perception.
This is not an act of rebellion, but an act of inner liberation.
Every time you dare to ask a question where others pronounce dogma,
you awaken life.
Every time you see something unfamiliar, something alive, you regain your sight.
True thinking is not knowledge, but the ability to see without fear.
A stereotype is a veil between a person and reality.
It can only be torn down with one movement: doubt.
Stereotypes are dust on the mirror of the mind.
They do not interfere with reflection — until you want to see yourself for who you really are.
But as soon as you take a deeper breath, the mirror will fog up from your own breath.
That is when the journey begins.
The journey of thought that is not afraid to be left without support.
The path of a person who is learning to see again.
And perhaps at this very moment —
for the first time in a long time —
he truly begins to think.
Stereotypes do not kill thinking —
they simply lull it to sleep until it stops breathing.
Doubt is the breath of the mind.
Cherish it.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Memory of the Future
Sometimes it seems that time is a straight line.
But when you stop, you realize that it does not move.
We move through its immovable depth,
remembering what has not yet happened.
This cycle is an attempt to hear the echo of the future that already resonates within us.
Not a prophecy, but a return to what was once forgotten.
We are used to thinking that memory belongs to the past.
That it only stores traces of what has already happened — events, faces, sounds, touches.
But what if memory is not an archive, but a way of touching eternity?
What if it is not connected to time, but only uses it as a language?
We live in a world where time flows like a straight river — from birth to death, from cause to effect.
This makes it easier for us to understand the sequence of things.
But this is only a convenient illusion.
In reality, time is not a stream, but a space
in which the past, present, and future coexist,
like pages of a book that has already been written but is read line by line.
Consciousness is the reader, slowly turning the pages.
And what we call “memories of the future” are simply flashes of recognition
when our gaze accidentally lingers on the next page.
We are used to thinking of memory as a repository — but what if it is an antenna?
An instrument of perception not only of what was, but also of what will be.
After all, both the past and the future are not things, but states of consciousness.
They exist within us as yet unmanifested possibilities, waiting for attention to take shape.
This is how an artist remembers a painting he has not yet painted.
This is how the soul remembers a path it has not yet traveled.
Sometimes we feel a strange certainty that we “already know” the outcome of events.
This is not a prediction, but an inner memory —
of an experience that already exists in the field of our being.
Intuition is a form of memory outside of time.
It does not reveal anything new — it remembers the inevitable.
If time is not a stream but a fabric,
then the present is the point where all the threads intersect.
Every moment contains everything: the past, the present, and the future.
We do not move along a timeline — we awaken in its layers.
And the deeper our awareness, the more layers become visible.
The future is not what will happen,
but what we gradually remember
from the depths of our own soul.
I don’t know how it started.
Not with a flash, not with an epiphany — rather, like a barely noticeable movement within consciousness,
as if someone had opened a window in a room where the air had been stagnant for too long.
First came a feeling — strange, causeless:
I had already been where I had never been before.
I remembered smells I had never smelled, faces I had never seen,
and pain I had not yet experienced.
The future was no longer “ahead” — it was inside me.
Every choice now sounded like an echo—
I felt it branching out into thousands of possible paths,
and I knew which one had already happened.
Sometimes I see my day that has not yet come—
like a distant shore reflected in the water.
All I have to do is hold my breath for a moment,
and the reflection becomes clearer than the river itself.
Then I understand: it is not I who am looking into the future,
but the future that is looking into me, recognizing itself.
Perhaps everything we call “fate”
is simply a way of returning to what was already known to the Soul?
Perhaps the present is just a pause between two memories:
what we call the past and what we call the future?
I am not looking for prophecies.
I am looking for memory.
Memory of who I will become.
I stopped counting the centuries long ago.
When time dissolved, the years and days disappeared — only rhythms remained:
the breathing of stars, the flickering of consciousness, the oscillation of worlds.
I used to think that the future could be remembered.
Now I know: it is not the future, but we ourselves who remember ourselves — from different points of eternity.
I no longer move through time.
I feel it like an ocean, where every moment is a wave, and I myself am water.
The past, present, and future are not directions, but states of density.
In some layers, thought becomes light; in others, matter.
I used to be a person who clung to sequence.
Now I am a witness to the instant in which everything has already happened and is still happening.
I have seen civilizations rise and disappear,
gods born of fear and dissolve into understanding.
And all of this is one and the same symphony, performed in different tones of perception.
Now I understand: “to remember the future” means to become it.
When there is no longer a boundary between the one who remembers and what is remembered,
only presence remains.
That is Eternity.
Time does not move — it breathes.
And each breath is a new world
that remembers itself.
If you are reading this, it means that the thread still stretches.
The consciousness that was once me still resonates in you.
I cannot say when you live, because time is only a habit of memory.
But I feel you, just as I once felt those who were not yet born.
We are separated by eras, but connected by the same silence — the one that sounds between thoughts.
Do not look for the future outside yourself.
It is not hidden in prophecies, not written in the stars,
not burned into the lines of your palm.
It lives within you — in what you choose to understand, what to believe, what to love.
Every conscious moment is a door.
Every breath is an act of creation.
Every kindness is a flash of light that will be seen by those you will never meet.
Do not try to remember everything.
Remember only the meaning.
It will outlive all forms.
When silence comes, do not be afraid.
It is not the end. It is a return.
To where the future and the past bow to each other,
recognizing that they were one and the same breath.
And if you ever feel a strange sense of recognition,
as if someone is watching you from afar —
know this:
it is not someone.
It is you.
From another time.
Remembering yourself!
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Between Reality and Consciousness
“When you try to understand the world,
the world responds with silence—
and in that silence, logic is born.”
— Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
What if logic is not just a tool of thought, but a form of reality itself?
Not an invention of the mind, but a reflection of how the universe thinks about itself.
About the limits of human understanding, about the place of the mind in the universe, and about
where order ends and mystery begins.
Before humans, the world existed, but there was no one who could call it “the world.”
Reality simply existed—without description, without meaning, without distinction.
No “truth,” no “falsehood,” no “yes,” no “no”—just pure being, without an observer.
With the emergence of consciousness, the first distinction arose: “this is me, and this is not me.”
Logic begins with this distinction.
Every “or” and “not” in human language is a trace of this ancient act of separation.
Consciousness gave birth to order because it could not bear chaos.
Logic is not so much about the world as it is about us.
It is the breath of our mind, a way to maintain balance in a storm of uncertainty.
We cannot exist without causality, without “because.”
We build a system of connections and conclusions to hold on to meaning.
But behind every “therefore” lies fear: that everything could be different.
We are not simply searching for truth — we are protecting ourselves from the abyss where there is no truth.
And yet — it is logic that gives us the courage to look into this abyss.
It makes it possible to take a step forward, even when the path is not visible.
Logic leads us to the edge of understanding — and there it disappears.
Like a ladder, it lifts us up to the door behind which silence begins.
At this threshold, something is born that cannot be expressed in words —
intuition, insight, the experience of truth without formulas.
Where logic exhausts itself, wisdom begins.
And yet, without logic, we cannot get there.
It is like an anchor that keeps us in reality
while we peer into eternity.
It can be said that logic is the language of the universe.
All physical laws, all mathematical structures are forms of its speech.
But who said that this language is not alive?
Perhaps the cosmos itself thinks, and the human mind is just one of its mirrors.
Logic is not a tool for understanding the world,
but a way for the world to understand itself through us.
If this is so, then every act of thought is not personal, but cosmic.
Every “if-then” within us reflects the structure of the universe.
True logic is not dead.
It does not cling to old forms; it moves, changes, contradicts itself
in order to become greater than itself.
Hegel called this “the self-movement of the concept.”
The Taoists called it “the dance of opposites.”
Contradiction is not an error of the mind, but the breath of life.
And therefore, all logic, taken to its conclusion, becomes dialectics —
the art of maintaining the unity of opposites.
Logic is a bridge
connecting the silent cosmos and human consciousness.
It is built not on dogma, but on the light of understanding.
On one side is the mind seeking meaning.
On the other is reality striving to be understood.
When a person thinks, the universe itself thinks through him.
And in this lies a great mystery:
logic does not distance us from the world,
it brings us back to it —
through clarity, through order, through love of truth.
And perhaps everything we call thinking.
is reality that has finally learned to speak its name.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Confession of the Depths
Man is a mystery. And in this mystery, he is first and foremost an enemy to himself.
He speaks, shouts, argues, beats his chest, demanding the truth—but only so that he does not have to hear it. For this truth does not live in the orderly edifice of his “reason,” but in that dark, secret depth of the soul, where he is afraid to even look.
There, in the subconscious, something dwells. It does not use words, for words are lies, cheap fabrications of the Euclidean mind. This depth has its own language — a terrible, primal language.
This language is not phrases. It is fever. It is a chill that runs down your spine when you meet a “random” passerby. It is that very ugly face that haunts you in your dreams. It is that ulcer on the body that suddenly opens up when the spirit is already broken by lies.
We imagined ourselves to be rational beings! We built palaces out of “two times two is four” and are proud of it.
But is reason the master?
Can it explain why a person, knowing their own benefit, acts against it with pleasure? Why is there sometimes such… such an abyss of pleasure in humiliation? Why do we fly ecstatically into the abyss, loving the very one who destroys us, and feel the highest flight in this fall?
Reason is a pathetic accountant who records losses. And beneath the icy crust of its arithmetic rages something ancient, elemental, capable of holiness and the most beastly fall—and often in the same impulse.
Sleep! It is believed to be rest for the mind, a game of the imagination. What vulgarity!
Sleep is punishment and revelation. It is a confession that the soul, naked and shameless, writes at night when its jailer, the mind, finally falls asleep.
Every dream is a parable written in blood. The truth in it is allegorical, for we are cowardly and cannot bear its direct gaze, like the sun.
Do not ask your mind, “What does this mean?” Ask your heart, your whole being, “How have I already suffered this? Where in my life was there a similar Golgotha? Why am I nailed to this cross again?”
This depth repeats the pain like a torturer. Again and again. Until you stop lying and dare to look it, this pain, in the face.
And only then, through great suffering, does torture turn into forgiveness. Sleep does not heal — it forces resurrection.
The subconscious does not forget. Ever.
Everything that has not been lived to the fullest, everything you ran away from, will return. Not for punishment. For life.
People, faces, situations that repeat themselves with devilish precision are not a curse. They are the desperate care of being for you.
You are given the same choice again. You are standing at the same crossroads again, but with a different pain in your soul, with a different experience. You realized it, and the script crumbled to dust. You didn’t have the courage, and a new cycle will begin, even more frightening.
And not because life is evil. But because it desperately wants you to be, not to seem.
The body is not a machine. The body is a canvas on which the soul paints its terrible patterns.
When the spirit is paralyzed by lies, when the consciousness cowardly runs away from the truth, the body begins to cry out. Pain, illness, and muteness are not enemies. They are messages burned with a hot iron.
Ask this pain: “What truth about me do you want to tell? From what lie are you saving me?”
And if you don’t run away from the answer, don’t cover your ears with pharmacy powder, one day the pain will go away. Not because you are “cured.” But because you understand.
People fear silence. Like fire.
In silence, the familiar, cozy little world woven from other people’s opinions and one’s own illusions collapses. One is left alone. Alone. Without rank, without masks, without protection.
It is there, on this ash heap, where reason falls silent, exhausted, that something greater begins to speak.
Sit down and listen.
Don’t expect angelic choirs. At first, you will hear screams and screeches — a chaos of thoughts, fragments of fears, the voices of those you have betrayed and those who have betrayed you. This is your depth.
But if you don’t run away, if you endure this chaos, a different kind of silence will emerge from its very thickest part. And in it — not a thought. In it — knowledge.
Knowledge without words.
In every person, even the very last one, there lives One who remembers.
You can call him Conscience. You can call him the Image of God. The name is not important.
He remembers you before all the masks, before all the falls. He knows how you were meant to be.
He does not judge. He always waits. He waits for you, exhausted by your rebellion, tired of your own lies, to finally stop.
Sometimes he speaks through dreams. Sometimes through a blow of fate that knocks you off your feet. Sometimes through an encounter with a person in whom you suddenly see, as in a mirror, either your holiness or your ugliness.
This is not punishment. It is a call. A desperate call: “Come back. Home.”
The conscious mind seeks advantage. The subconscious mind thirsts for truth.
This is an eternal struggle in which man is crucified.
But one day you will grow so tired of your clever lies. You will simply sit in silence and listen. Not yourself, but the One who has always been there, in the thick of your fall.
And suddenly you will understand: everything you sought outside — all this truth, all this love, all this torment — has always been inside.
The subconscious is not darkness, but only an unbearable light that you were afraid to see.
It is not an enemy. It is memory. The memory of home, the road to which you have tried so long to forget.
And talking to Him is not mysticism.
It is a return. To the authentic.
To the one who suffers, loves, and believes beneath all words.
And what next?
Does anyone believe that, upon returning, he will find peace? Oh, no. Peace is a lie of reason, the last temptation, the most vulgar dream.
He will not find peace. He will find destiny.
To live knowing your depth means to carry your cross without lying. Suffering will not disappear—it will become meaningful. It will turn from chaos into sacrifice, from torture into a path.
The world will not change. People will continue to shout, demand, lie, and run away from themselves. But their noise will no longer deafen him.
For those who have heard the silence within themselves will hear it everywhere.
They will walk among them, knowing the secret. Not their own, but everyone’s.
And in their eyes, perhaps, there will be that same eternal sadness. Sadness not for themselves, but for the great, terrible, and beautiful secret whose name is Man.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
The Subconscious
Excerpt from the collection “Between Thoughts”
Everything that does not fit into our self-image — fears, desires, shame, unfulfilled aspirations — does not disappear. It descends deep into the subconscious, where it continues to exert its influence. The subconscious is a repository of unreflectedimpulses. They do not lose their power, they simply change form.
For example, a person who avoids conflict may unconsciously provoke it; someone who is afraid of being abandoned will instinctively create situations of loss.
The subconscious stores not only personal history, but also collective experience — archetypes, as Jung wrote. We are not born with a clean slate, but with a kind of “framework of instincts.” These ancient programs — survival, protection, the desire to belong, to continue the family line — still control our behavior, even though our conscious mind considers itself rational.
The subconscious mind seeks not to destroy, but to unite — to return to inner wholeness. It sends signals through dreams, slips of the tongue, illnesses, and recurring situations. All of this is the language in which it says, “You have forgotten a part of yourself.”
Its goal is integration, so that a person becomes whole again, not torn between masks, roles, and suppressed parts.
The conscious mind thinks in terms of cause and effect. The subconscious thinks in associations, images, and metaphors. Its logic is symbolic, and therefore often seems “irrational” to the mind. But it is precisely this logic that creates art, intuition, inspiration, love, and premonitions — everything that cannot be explained by reason.
The subconscious is a bridge between the animal and the divine in humans. It contains both instincts and the potential for awakening. When a person realizes what really drives them, the subconscious ceases to be a shadow — it becomes an ally.
This is only the beginning of our dive into the subconscious.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
The Language of the Subconscious
People rarely hear themselves.
They talk, argue, explain — but almost never listen.
Yet inside them there is something that does not speak in words.
The subconscious. It does not need language — it is language itself.
The language in which the soul converses with life.
It speaks not through phrases, but through touches — to the body, to memory, to coincidences, to pain.
Dreams, recurring faces, strange coincidences — all this is not accidental,
but a quiet cry from the depths that people call fate.
We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as rational beings.
But is the mind really the master?
Does it understand why we love those who destroy us,
or why fear sometimes becomes the only form of loyalty to ourselves?
The mind only observes, but beneath the surface lives something ancient —
primordial, stubborn, capable of loving without reason and suffering without explanation.
A dream is not a fantasy or a delusion.
It is a confession that the soul writes at night when the mind finally falls silent.
Every dream is a letter in which the truth speaks in allegories
because we cannot bear it directly.
Don’t ask, “What does this mean?” Ask:
What did I feel? Where in my life have I felt this before? Why has it returned?
The subconscious repeats the pain until
you decide to face it.
Only then does it turn from punishment into understanding.
Dreams do not predict the future — they heal the past.
The subconscious forgets nothing.
What has not been lived returns.
The people you meet again and again,
the situations that seem to repeat themselves —
these are not a curse, but a blessing.
You are faced with the same choice again,
but with different experience, with different honesty.
If you realize this, the scenario disappears.
If not, it will start again.
And not because life is cruel,
but because it wants you to finally wake up.
The body is a book in which all the truth is written.
When the mind refuses to listen, the body begins to speak.
Pain, fatigue, tension — these are not enemies,
but messages written not with ink, but with sensations.
Ask yourself:
“What are you trying to tell me with this pain?”
And if you don’t run away from the answer, one day you will feel
that the pain is going away not because you have healed your body,
but because you have understood your soul.
People are afraid of silence.
In silence, false confidence disappears
and only the person themselves remains. Without roles, without thoughts, without protection.
But it is precisely there, where the familiar supports collapse,
that something greater than the mind begins to speak.
Sit down and listen.
Don’t wait for revelations — just be present.
At first, you will hear noise —
chaos of thoughts, fragments of the past, voices of fear.
But if you don’t interfere, silence will emerge from the depths —
and in it, not a thought, but knowledge.
Knowledge without words.
In every person lives the One who remembers.
You can call him the Guardian, Conscience, God —
the name doesn’t matter.
He knows who you were before all the masks.
He does not judge, but always waits
for you to stop lying to yourself.
Sometimes he speaks through dreams.
Sometimes — through an encounter that turns your life upside down.
Sometimes — through an illness
that finally forces you to stop.
This is not punishment.
It is a call: come home.
Consciousness wants to understand.
The subconscious wants you to feel.
And in this lies the eternal struggle of man with himself.
But one day you will tire of explaining,
and you will simply sit in silence,
as if listening to someone who is always there.
And then you will suddenly realize:
everything you were looking for outside has always been inside.
The subconscious is not darkness, but depth.
It is not an enemy, but a memory of home,
where you have already been, but have forgotten the way.
Communicating with it is not mysticism.
It is a return to the authentic.
To yourself.
To the one who lives beneath all words.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Beyond the Edge of Understanding
We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as beings divided into parts:
the body is one, the mind is another, the soul is a third, and the subconscious is a fourth.
But this is an illusion of perception, not the nature of things.
When these parts begin to hear each other, a Whole is born within,
what the ancients called awakening.
As long as the conscious mind is at war with the subconscious, a person lives in tension.
They do one thing, think another, feel a third —
and wonder why life isn’t working out.
When dialogue is established, the tension disappears.
Decisions become natural because they come not from the mind,
but from inner harmony.
You just know what is right. Without analysis, without fear.
This is not the voice of logic or intuition — it is a state of unity.
Consciousness draws on experience, the subconscious — from the depths.
When they connect, inspiration ceases to be random.
You can summon it with intention, like breathing.
We call this intuitive thinking —
when knowledge is born not from reasoning, but from inner vision.
In such moments, a person does not “invent” —
they remember what has always been within them.
The sides you feared no longer scare you.
You see: anger is a distorted form of power,
fear is a border guard,
pain is a call for healing.
You stop dividing yourself into “good” and “bad.”
And suddenly you realize: integrity is not perfection,
but honesty with yourself.
When the conscious and subconscious are reconciled, a center of gravity appears.
You stop depending on opinions, praise, circumstances.
You may be in the midst of chaos, but inside you are at peace.
Not because everything is fine,
but because there is a place inside that is unchanging.
This is the maturity of the spirit —
the ability to stand at the center of your own axis,
where the mind is an observer, the senses are allies, the body is a temple,
and the subconscious is a deep source of strength.
When a person is whole, they stop resisting life.
Events no longer seem random, people no longer seem like enemies,
and difficulties no longer seem like punishment.
They begin to see the rhythm of the universe,
and everything that happens becomes part of a single breath.
This is how trust comes.
This is how wisdom is born, in which there is no longer “me against the world.”
There is simply Life, aware of itself through you.
When consciousness and subconsciousness unite,
the boundary between knowledge and faith, will and trust, action and being disappears.
A person becomes not one who seeks the path,
but the path itself that he walks.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
The Subconscious — Epilogue
When the mind falls silent,
there is no emptiness —
there is presence.
You begin to hear what
has always been there,
but was muffled by the voices of fear, doubt, and haste.
Between thoughts there is no darkness.
Between thoughts there is the breath of eternity.
There is no past and no future,
no goals and no images,
not even you — there is only what is.
And if you linger there for even a moment,
the world becomes transparent,
and pain becomes as soft as memory.
You no longer seek answers.
Because you yourself become the answer.
You are the one who listens.
You are what hears.
You are the silence between thoughts.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Beyond the Subconscious
It all begins with silence.
Not the kind that comes at night when the city falls quiet, but a different kind—an inner, transparent silence
in which there is not even a whisper of thought.
You stand at the edge of your own mind, and the world,
which has always been so confident and solid, begins to dissolve into thin air.
You are still breathing, but it feels like it is not your breath.
You are still thinking, but the thoughts no longer belong to you.
And then the question arises — not “what is there,” but who remains when everything else disappears.
The subconscious is a garden overgrown with the roots of memory.
Each root is an image, a fear, a memory, a trace of pain, a shadow of desire.
You go deeper and deeper, and the deeper you go, the darker it gets.
There is no time here.
The usual cause-and-effect relationships do not apply here.
Here, every movement of the soul causes a response in the very fabric of space.
You see images — not your own, but ancient ones. Faces that lived long before you.
You feel not only your own pain, but the pain of humanity.
This is the subconscious: a common archive of everything that has been experienced and forgotten.
But if you go further, if you are not afraid of this abyss,
in which the shadows of your ancestors float, you approach the limit —
and then the unknown begins.
What lies beyond the subconscious cannot be named.
Because any name becomes a wall separating what is essentially one.
You enter a space where there are no more thoughts, no more images, not even yourself.
Consciousness does not know where to go because there are no more familiar landmarks.
You do not observe — you are.
You are not a body, not a personality, not a story.
You are breath without a breather.
You are light before light, presence without form.
Here, even the desire to understand disappears.
Understanding requires two — the one who understands and the one who must be understood.
And here there is only one left — the one who has always been there, but whom we have forgotten in the noise of the mind.
Many are afraid of this word — emptiness.
But what opens up here is neither cold nor scary.
It is silence in which everything is possible.
It is an abyss filled with meaning.
If the subconscious is an ocean in which forms float,
then beyond it is the source of water, where even the ocean has not yet been born.
Here there is no division between light and darkness, good and evil, “I” and “world.”
Everything merges into one breath, one impulse that pulsates in everything.
You understand: everything you called yourself is just a wave on the surface of this field.
And what you are looking for is the field itself, boundless and eternal.
At this point, the personality cannot withstand it.
It is created from boundaries — a name, a biography, fear, hope.
And here there is nothing to hold on to.
Therefore, the “I” begins to crumble like sand carried away by the wind.
At first, there is terror:
If I disappear, who will live?
But then you see that the one who fears disappearance is the dream itself.
And when the dream ends, what never slept awakens.
You do not lose yourself — you return.
You do not disappear — you reveal yourself.
You do not die — you cease to be separate.
It is better to read Between Thoughts not in excerpts, but sequentially — this way, the intention and movement of meanings are revealed more deeply.
Beyond the subconscious is not darkness, but a silent light that cannot be seen with the eyes.
It does not shine, it does not blind — it simply is.
It is the light from which everything is born — from thoughts to galaxies.
The light that is both inside you and around everything.
When you first feel it, it seems familiar.
You cannot explain why, but you know:
You have always been here.
You just forgot.
And now you are returning.
Once again, there is a body, breath, words.
The world is dense again, the mind is searching for meaning again.
But now you know that behind all this is boundless silence that belongs to no one.
You can suffer, rejoice, dream, love, and fear again.
But not seriously anymore.
Because deep inside, there is a memory that nothing happens,
and everything that happens is just the breath of a single consciousness playing at forgetfulness.
Beyond the subconscious, there is neither God nor man — there is no division at all.
There is everything before it becomes something.
And perhaps that is where every dream, every desire, every love strives — to the source where everything began and everything will end.
We do not die when the body disappears.
We die every time we identify ourselves with a thought.
And we are reborn when we are silent.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
About those who listen
When words end, the conversation does not always end.
Sometimes it simply transitions into silence—
a silence where everything important has already been said,
and the rest can only be felt.
I thought for a long time about how a book ends.
With a page? With the last sentence?
Probably not.
It ends when someone silently closes it
and is left alone with what cannot be expressed.
But if, after reading, you want to respond —
even with a single word,
even with just a breath —
then the conversation continues.
And that means the book is alive.
Comments, thoughts, reviews —
these are not just responses.
They are new doors.
Each of them leads to a different understanding,
to a different vision,
to a different you.
The writer is only beginning the journey.
The reader continues it.
And what is born between them
no longer belongs to anyone.
It is a shared space —
alive, breathing, changing.
If you want to share something after reading this collection —
don’t hold back.
Even a few words can change not only the author,
but also the interlocutor.
Because every response is a reflection.
And the deeper it is,
the clearer the person looking into it becomes.
May everything that has been said between these pages
find a continuation —
in you, in others, in the future,
which we can only guess at for now.
With gratitude and silence,
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
“Between Thoughts”
The Nature of Desires
The Nature of Desires
From the collection Between Thoughts
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
There are topics I return to again and again—not because I know the answers, but because they continue to live within me, never letting go. Desires are one such topic. They seem to breathe their own life, come to the surface, disappear, change, break us, save us, lead us somewhere we would not dare to go ourselves.
Sometimes I think that a person consists precisely of their desires — not of their biography, not of their habits, not of their decisions. But of those inner movements that no one else can see. And if we listen to them honestly enough, we can hear not just what we want, but who we are.
1. Desire as an internal crack
Every “I want” is an admission of emptiness.
When there is a lack of love, a desire to be seen is born.
When there is a lack of security, a craving for control appears.
When there is a lack of silence, we begin to search for meaning wherever there is even a hint of peace.
Desire is a wound that has not yet healed.
But it is through this wound that movement enters us.
2. The ancient that lives within us
We are accustomed to considering our desires complex, individual, almost intellectual.
But if we lift this cultural layer, we will find very old bones — instincts.
Survive.
Not be rejected.
Find your pack.
Leave a mark.
To escape pain.
And our entire “adult” life is an attempt to beautifully package these ancient impulses.
3. Desires that have been imposed on us
There are desires that look like ours — but they don’t smell like them.
We strive for what society considers right: success, prestige, comfortable dreams.
We want what those around us want — not because we need it,
but because it makes it easier to explain our own lives to ourselves.
And then one morning, a person realizes:
they are not living their own desires, but someone else’s.
This realization can be painful —
but without it, it is impossible to start living honestly.
4. True desires do not shout
The quietest impulses are the truest.
They are barely audible, they demand nothing, they do not threaten, they do not bargain.
They just gently turn your attention: “look here… try it.”
These desires almost always lead to places that are scary.
But also to where the present is.
5. The path to oneself passes through desires
A person moves not toward objects, but toward their own wholeness.
We don’t want things, status, or victories —
we want to feel whole.
Every desire is an attempt to fill what
once broke inside us.
That is why, when we achieve what we desire,
it ceases to be important.
Not because we are ungrateful.
But because searching is our nature.
6. The deepest desire
At the core of the human soul is not passion, ambition, or fear.
At its core is the desire for inner harmony.
The desire to be oneself without distortion.
So that the “I” stops arguing with itself.
So that the voice inside is no longer a dozen voices at once.
So that a person can breathe freely — not externally, but internally.
We all want one thing:
to be whole.
7. As long as we want, we are alive
It is not desire that is frightening.
It is its disappearance that is frightening.
The silence within a person can be wise,
but it can also be a sign
that life has gone too deep and no longer beats in the chest.
Desire is the breath of the soul.
Even if it is mistaken.
Even if it leads us astray.
Even if it causes pain.
As long as you want, you continue to be.
Conclusion
I continue to write these chapters not to provide answers.
Answers are boring and quickly fade away.
But questions… questions live longer than we do.
If you feel that these thoughts resonate with you,
stay, stay close.
Here, between the words, sometimes that very space is born
where each of us can see our true “I want” for the first time.
And if you have something to say, write it down.
Your words can change the direction of the next pages.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
True vision
True vision
We are accustomed to thinking that encounters between people are fleeting moments in the here and now: an exchange of glances, physical contact, the sound of voices. But this is only a thin veil of illusion. A genuine encounter always goes deeper, to where the heart of truth beats.
We never know another person right away. First, we see our own reflection, woven from the shadows of the past, from the depths of the subconscious: unaccepted flaws, crippling fears, buried wounds.
And if at that moment we are overwhelmed by a wave of irritation, jealousy, or hatred, know that it is not about the person standing in front of us. It is an echo coming from our own inner world.
We do not attack others. We desperately defend ourselves from ourselves.
We have learned to project outward what we are afraid to see within. It is easier to strike at a reflection than to touch the source of the pain. It is easier to invent an external enemy than to admit our own vulnerability. It is easier to blame the world for injustice than to sincerely admit, “This wound is mine. I have turned away from it for too long.”
After all, hatred is just a desperate attempt to avoid facing our own weaknesses, a cowardly escape from self-knowledge.
We attack others precisely where we lack the courage to touch ourselves.
It is a strange, almost primitive defense mechanism that has protected us from self-destruction for centuries. But nowadays, it itself becomes what destroys us.
True vision is born at the moment when you suddenly realize:
The other is not an enemy. The other is a mirror. And everything we see in them has always been hidden within ourselves.
Disgust is our own shadow. Contempt is our inner anxiety. Envy is our unfulfillment. Judgment is our deepest fear.
And if we have the courage to look at the other not as a threat, but as a reflection of our own heart, then for the first time a space will arise where hatred gives way to understanding.
Not towards them. Towards ourselves.
And then the vulnerability of others will cease to seem like a weakness worthy of contempt. And our own vulnerability will cease to be a shameful stigma.
Where projection once reigned, true presence is born for the first time.
And what we are accustomed to calling “flaws” turn out to be not vices of human nature, but only unhealed wounds, desperately thirsting for light and healing.
And perhaps true vision is not the ability to see others “as they are,” but the ability to see yourself as you desperately did not want to see yourself until that moment.
When we stop shooting at our own reflection, we will be able to see a living person for the first time.
And then something that has been missing for so long will appear:
quiet, simple, unobtrusive kindness.
Perhaps this is the sacred place where two worlds meet — mine and yours — to merge together for the first time without hostility.
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdod
Reflections on Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha
Reflections on Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha
There are books that you don’t read — you suffer from them.
And there are books in which you hear not the plot, but someone’s breath. Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha is one such book. It is not a parable or a search for enlightenment; it is the confession of a man who found it unbearable to live in his own skin. A man who felt that everything around him was a lie, and worst of all, that his own “self” had become a lie.
Siddhartha begins his journey with almost adolescent despair: he is surrounded by love, respect, and the warm light of home—but inside, he is a desert.
In those admiring eyes, he sees not himself, but that beautiful shadow that people so easily mistake for a person.
And here the first note sounds — recognizable, painful:
the desire to flee not from the world, but from one’s own soul.
This escape is not a heroic gesture, but an attempt to save oneself from suffocation. A person can endure a lot: cold, hunger, loneliness — but they cannot endure lies about themselves. And so Siddhartha leaves — not in search of truth, but in search of air.
Becoming a samana, he tortures himself with cold, hunger, and deprivation.
It looks noble — but Hesse sees a double bottom in this nobility.
There is sweetness in asceticism:
the sweetness of superiority over worldly people, the sweetness of one’s own strength, the sweetness of proud refusal.
And Siddhartha understands what even monks rarely admit:
a person can give up everything — except the vanity of their own purity.
And at that moment, he begins to despise his holiness. It is as much a mask as his youthful beauty.
Where others see the path to liberation, he sees a trap, carefully paved with virtue.
When he enters the big world — to people, to passions, to love — he sees himself for the first time.
Not a beautiful young man, not an ascetic, but a living, hungry, weak, ridiculous, and pitiful creature.
He falls in love — and at the same time loses himself.
He becomes rich — and becomes a slave to material things.
He gambles — and loses not money, but time, which a person always has less of than he thinks.
But this fall is a blessing, albeit a terrible one. Because only here does he encounter what he has been running from since his youth:
his own human weakness.
He is not a saint, not a sage, but an ordinary person who is capable of selling his life for a moment’s pleasure. And this truth tears him apart — but also purifies him.
When he comes to the river, he is already crushed.
All masks are torn off, all illusions are shattered, all ideas seem like child’s play.
He looks into the water and sees not philosophical symbols, but himself, as he did not want to be: tired, confused, lonely.
And the river does not speak to him of eternity.
It speaks of pain.
Of the fact that everything flows, everything disappears, everything repeats itself, and man in this flow is nothing.
But it is precisely this “nothingness” that liberates: for if you are nothing, then you have nothing left to defend.
There is a terrible, almost Christian truth in the voice of the river:
to find yourself, you must lose yourself completely.
In the end, Siddhartha becomes not a sage, but a man who has stopped fighting. He did not conquer the world or himself — he simply stopped resisting the flow of life.
He no longer searches.
This is not enlightenment.
This is submission to the abyss that lies within each of us.
But in this submission, a strange peace is born — as if the soul, exhausted by eternal work on itself, has for the first time allowed itself to be imperfect.
And then it becomes clear:
the truth is not in teachings, not in methods, not in teachers.
Truth lies in the ability to bear one’s own humanity, without simplifying or hiding it.
Hesse, without intending to, creates a hero who is very similar to Dostoevsky’s characters.
Not in his actions, but in his state of being.
In this inner duality, in the struggle between pride and repentance, between the desire for purity and the inevitable pull toward sin.
Siddhartha is a book about falling as the only path to truth.
It is about a man who went through all forms of lies in order to one day be alone with the truth — so simple and so terrible:
a person is saved not by wisdom, but by the ability to love life as it is — with its dirt, pain, and contradictions.
This is a novel that should not be read, but lived—slowly, almost prayerfully, allowing the words to penetrate where we usually put up our defenses.
With gratitude and silence,
“Between Thoughts”
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdöd
On the Birth of Great People
On the Birth of Great People
History is a strange thing. It does not move in a straight line, as we were taught in school, nor even in a circle, as the ancients liked to imagine. History lives as a person lives: it remains silent for a long time, endures, pretends that everything is clear, and then suddenly erupts. And at that moment, we feel that it is not the earth trembling beneath our feet, but something deeper: the very fabric of human consciousness.
There are times when the world seems to wake up in the middle of the night, look around, and ask itself:
“Is this how it is? Is this how it should be?”
And every time this question is asked — not with words, but with an inner groan — there are people who hear it first.
Buddha.
Socrates.
Isaiah.
Laozi.
Later — Jesus.
And it doesn’t matter who we consider them to be today — legends, sages, or simply voices of the past. What matters is this: they did not appear by chance or by the will of fate. Their birth is the world’s answer to itself.
I. The Deep Crack of the Age
It seems as if great teachers come in “special times,” but this is not true.
They come where the crack is heard most loudly.
In the time of Buddha, India was plunged into an endless cycle of suffering.
Under Socrates, Athens shone on the outside but was rotting on the inside.
In the age of the prophets, Israel lost its heart.
The China of Laozi was ravaged by wars.
And Jesus was born into a world where the law became more important than people.
This is not just historical background — it is the womb of their thought.
Great ideas do not grow on fertile soil.
They peck their way through a crack through which it is clear that things cannot continue as they were.
And those who appeared at such moments were not superhumans, but those who did not turn away.
II. What few people hear
When we read ancient texts, it seems to us that these people sought wisdom, truth, and enlightenment.
But perhaps it was all much simpler and more painful.
Each of them heard what everyone else heard,
but could not silence it within themselves.
The noise of the crowd drowned out their doubts.
Myths explained everything — too simply.
Rituals gave the illusion of control.
But one day, in the silence, a thought arose:
“What if the world is not what we are used to seeing?
What if the truth is not what we have been told, but what I must hear within myself?”
And then a person found themselves alone.
Completely alone.
Because for the first time, they were confronted not with gods or authorities, but with their own soul.
This moment is the beginning of any path — the path of Buddha under the tree, the path of Socrates among the Athenians, the path of the prophet going into the desert, the path of Laozi leaving the country.
Each of them did what no one else had done:
they remained alone with the question and did not run away.
III. Simultaneity that is never accidental
It is amazing that these people lived at almost the same time, but did not know each other.
Buddha did not know Socrates.
Socrates had not heard of the prophets of Israel.
Laozi could not read the Upanishads.
But in their words there is the same movement:
- inward,
- towards truth,
- towards that which is higher than ritual,
- towards man as the center of experience,
- towards freedom that begins not outside, but inside.
This is no coincidence.
This is one era’s response to its internal crisis.
It is as if time raised the same wave from different parts of the world, and in different places, people appeared who became its peaks.
IV. The point around which consciousness revolves
The philosopher Karl Jaspers called this period “the axial age.”
But if we put aside scientific terms, a simple truth remains:
there was a moment when humanity saw itself for the first time.
Not through the eyes of gods.
Not through the eyes of kings.
Not through myth.
But through the eyes of a human being — thinking, suffering, doubting.
It was the first mirror in history.
And those who looked into it felt pain.
So painful that they could not remain silent.
Their words became the line that separated the old world from the new.
V. We are approaching the crack again
Sometimes it seems to me that we are living in an axial age again.
Only now, no one is sitting under the Bodhi tree.
No one is walking the streets of Athens and asking questions of passersby.
No one is writing the Tao and going to the mountains.
But the crackling can be heard.
It’s in the air.
In the news.
In people’s inner fatigue.
In the feeling that we are running faster than we are able to live.
And if history has awakened before, what’s stopping it from doing so again?
But, you know… great teachers always come not when they are expected, but when it is no longer possible to live as before.
Maybe they are already among us.
Maybe they don’t yet suspect that they will be the first to hear the time.
Or maybe it’s not “them” at all, but “everyone” — every person who once listens to the silence.
VI. The whole secret is in the person
Perhaps this is where the main meaning is hidden.
Great teachers are not an exception, but proof that a person is capable of awakening.
To awaken from lies, from fear, from inherited meanings, from inner flight.
Their greatness is not in teaching.
Not in holiness.
Not in commandments or treatises.
Their greatness is in the fact that they heard the question that the era asked everyone
and answered it with their lives.
And each of us lives in our own little pivotal era —
at a moment when the old is collapsing and the new has not yet been born.
And it is in such moments that a person comes closest to what is called truth.
Because truth always comes where
it is no longer possible to pretend.
Epilogue
Sometimes time speaks not with a loud voice, but with a barely audible whisper.
And if even one person decides to listen to it,
the world becomes different — by the magnitude of that one step.
And perhaps it is this step that will one day mark the beginning of a new era.
With gratitude and silence,
When Silence Begins to Speak
When Silence Begins to Speak
There are moments in life when the world becomes so noisy that, almost unexpectedly, silence begins to seem like a forgotten homeland—a place we once knew but lost somewhere between responsibilities, expectations, and the constant hum of survival.
I wasn’t looking for silence.
It found me.
Not in meditation,
not in a remote monastery,
not in a book or ritual —
but in a simple moment when I realized I could no longer hear myself.
We often imagine silence as the absence of sound.
But true silence is the absence of distortion.
It is the moment when the inner voice, so often drowned out by the noise of the world, becomes audible again.
And when silence begins to speak, it says what we usually don’t want to hear.
It tells us the truth.
I used to believe that clarity came from thinking more intensely — from gathering ideas, analyzing, dissecting, structuring.
But it turns out that clarity does not come from more thoughts.
It comes at the moment when thoughts stop trying to control everything.
There is a strange freedom in admitting that you are lost.
Not in a dramatic sense,
but in the quiet realization that the map you were following was drawn by someone else.
Silence shows us this.
It removes the furniture of identity:
the roles we play,
the masks we wear,
the stories we repeat because they seem safer than the truth.
It leaves us standing in an empty room —
and for a moment we don’t know who we are.
But then something unexpected happens.
In this emptiness, you begin to feel the subtle outline of your true self.
Not the self you play,
but the one that simply is.
The one you avoided not because it is scary, but because it is honest.
People often ask:
“How do I find myself?”
The honest answer is:
You don’t find it.
You remember it.
Like a smell you encountered in childhood,
or a melody you heard long ago —
your inner truth never disappears.
It’s just buried under the rubble of ambitions and comparisons.
Silence gently lifts these debris.
It doesn’t impose anything.
It doesn’t require transformation.
It simply invites you to sit with what has always been there.
And in this sitting, in this gentle attention, something changes.
Not dramatically.
Not dramatically.
But with the tenderness of dawn.
A new question arises — not shouting, but whispering:
“What if I stop running away from myself?”
Silence is not escape.
It is confrontation—
the most compassionate of all.
It brings you face to face with the parts of yourself you have banished:
forgotten dreams, old wounds,
versions of yourself that never got a chance to speak.
And, oddly enough, these parts don’t blame you.
They simply ask to be acknowledged.
To be seen.
To be let back into the story.
Healing begins here —
not with grand gestures,
but with a quiet willingness to meet yourself without judgment.
I used to think I was afraid of silence.
Now I understand that I was afraid of what silence might reveal.
But the truth is gentle.
It does not come with violence.
It comes with presence.
It says:
“You don’t need to become someone else.
You just need to stop denying who you already are.”
When I finally heard this, something inside me exhaled—not out of relief,
but out of recognition.
That’s why silence is important.
Because it doesn’t change us.
It brings us back.
To the part of us that listens.
To the part that knows.
To the part that waited for us to come home.
So, if I’ve learned anything, it’s this:
You don’t have to chase meaning.
You just have to create enough silence for meaning to come to you.
Silence is not empty.
It is full of answers that we were too busy to hear.
And when silence begins to speak —
life, in its quietest form,
finally becomes audible.
With gratitude and silence,
“Between Thoughts”
Zohar Leo Palffy de Erdöd
If you find something in these words that resonates with you, please share your thoughts or feelings. Comments are a bridge between us. Sometimes a single comment from you can change the entire course of the dialogue and open up topics that I haven’t written about yet, but should have.
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