While psychologists and philosophers now use the term "transpersonal" to refer to experiences or states of consciousness beyond the usual human range, Rudhyar has always used it to refer to the deliberate, focused, and functional action of spiritual forces through a human being. He probably was the first to use the term in English, in 1930 in an article published in the magazine The Glass Hive:
      "Instead of impersonal, let us use another word more telling — transpersonal. A personal behavior (or feeling or thought) is one rooted in the substance and conditioned form of the personality. A transpersonal behavior is one starting from the universal, unconditioned self in Man and using the personality merely as an instrument."
      Hence the source of transersonal activity may be interpreted as being the spiritual Quality seeking to contact an individual person; the archetype Man seeking to reveal a particular aspect of anthropic potentiality to humanity or to a particular culture-whole through him or her; or the Pleroma seeking to guide, test, or assist an individual or group of individuals treading the Path of transformation. Holarchically speaking, transpersonal activity represents a focusing of power from a greater through a lesser whole.
      For Rudhyar, however, transpersonal activity is not mere "channelling" or passive mediumship. For him, the latter operates primarily at the level of psychism (collective or individual), while the former must be focused by an individual's well-formed mind if it is to be truly transpersonal. Symbolically speaking, the mind of the true transpersonal agent operates not merely as a pane of glass allowing the passage of diffuse light, but as a clear lens bringing light to a sharp focus. For while light passing through a window does so relatively unchanged, light focused through a lens can ignite material. at the focal point. Thus is "light" (spirit) concentrated into "heat" (symbol. of increasing speed of motion and change) and eventually into the incandescence of the Pleroma state.