A more intense level of growth is self-perfection. In this process, the person idealizes himself and believes that no real reaching out towards the world is required of him. All of his efforts to grow concern matters which lie immediately within his grasp. Any goal which is beyond what he can touch is disqualified, disparaged. The world is not real to him, and he treats people as figments of his own imagination.
Mysticism becomes a badge of honor, communication a pointless chore.
Such people seem to walk around with halos over their heads, and give numerous signals that their transcendent tranquility is not to be disturbed. Their simplest acts become corrupted with a saintly beneficence, where style is all and no merely human goal is worth breaking the spell. Some of them, though, are better off this way. Self-development could be defined as the growth process which kills as much as it gives birth to. Unlike the other two stages, its purpose is to leave behind, to forget, as much as to learn.