Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

by Sam Harris

Love was at bottom impersonal—and deeper than any personal history could justify. Indeed, a transactional form of love—I love you because . . . —now made no sense at all. The interesting thing about this final shift in perspective was that it was not driven by any change in the way I felt. I was not overwhelmed by a new feeling of love. The insight had more the character of a geometric proof: It was as if, having glimpsed the properties of one set of parallel lines, I suddenly understood what must be common to them all.