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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
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Transpersonal Activity versus Mediumship - 1
Because of the several meanings of the Latin prefix trans, the word transpersonal is
ambiguous. For contemporary psychologists and participants in the "consciousness
movement," the word applies to a state of being or consciousness beyond the personal
level and to any direct or indirect attempt to experience or better understand such states.
However, I have used the term since 1930 to represent action which takes place through a
person, but which originates in a center of activity existing beyond the level of
personhood. Such action makes use of human individuals to bring to focus currents of
spiritual energy, supramental ideas, or realizations for the purpose of bringing about,
assisting, or guiding transformative processes. 43
The word through also has several shades of meanings. It can mean across in a strictly
spatial sense (as for instance a transatlantic line), or by the intermediary of — as
something done "through" a person's influence. When one speaks of diffuse sunlight being
focused through a lens, both of these meanings are implied; the light rays pass across the
specially shaped piece of glass, but the special form given to the glass condenses the rays
making them more effective in producing certain results, such as the production of heat.
A "transpersonal action" can refer to the release through a person of either a stream of
transformative energy, perhaps able to produce seemingly miraculous results, or of
information not normally available to the present-day mind. Nevertheless, the person
through whom the power or the information is released cannot be merely anyone, any
more than a lens can be any piece of glass. The personhood of the human being must have
a special kind of form as well as unimpaired translucency. It must be sensitive to
transpersonal impressions and attuned to the quality of being of the active source of what
is conveyed, transmitted, or "transduced."
Any transpersonal action or communication implies, first of all, the existence of beings,
or sources of power and information, beyond the level of personhood and culture, which
is always intellectually and emotionally limited and to some degree exclusivistic. Such an
implication, however, presents problems to the average intellectual person of our scienceworshipping
civilization. Intellectuals may be willing to peep through cracks in the walls
of their rationalistic castles and to accept the possibility of discovering exalting vistas
suggesting the wondrous nature of the country beyond the walls; they may be willing to
learn techniques to pierce windows through the walls, perhaps even to make doors so that
they can step outside. But if they do step out, they tend to see a blinding light under which
43 To my knowledge I was the first to use the term — though C. G. Jung may already have used it in German
without my being aware of it — in an article in the magazine The Glass Hive (1930) edited by Will
Levington Comfort. The word came into wider use in 1968 when Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, and
other psychologists started the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California.
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