When one is perfectly still-mind and body, silent and alone-there is no personality to speak of, thus personality is one's unique way of expression, it is what others see and know of us, nothing more or deeper than that.

Once beyond the self, however, holiness is no longer possible, because now, there is nothing left to give and no-one left to do the giving.

This search for perfection - which is a search for divinity - is nothing more than the failure to accept our existence the way it is.

In some ways, all our experiences of God are beyond belief, because all conceptual beliefs pale when compared to the experiential reality.

It is far more than the discovery of life without a self. The immediate, inevitable result is an emergence into a new dimension of knowing and being that entails a difficult and prolonged readjustment. the reflexive mechanism of the mind -or whatever it is that allows us to be self-conscious - is cut off or permanently suspended so the mind is ever after held in a fixed now moment out of which it cannot move in its uninterrupted gaze upon the Unknown

It is one step, and a giant one, to see clearly and participate in the love that flows between the persons of the Trinity, but even here, God is seen as the object of his own love. It is yet another step to realize that God is beyond all subject and object and is Himself love without subject or object. This is the step beyond our highest experiences of love and union, a step in which self is not around to divide, separate, objectify or claim anything for itself. Self does not know God; it cannot love him, and from the beginning has never done so.

Only God is love, and for this love to be fully realized self must step aside. And not only do we not need a self to love God, but for the same reason we do not need a mind to know him, for that in us which knows God, is God.