Holiness is the sleep of the ego and the wake of the immortal soul — of the ego, fed on sensorial impressions and filled with desires, and of the soul, free and crystallized in God. The moving surface of our being must sleep and must therefore withdraw from images and instincts, whereas the depths of our being must be awake in the consciousness of the Divine, thus lighting up, like a motionless flame, the silence of the holy sleep.
Frithjof Schuon, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 2012, p. 13.