Modern man seeks mainly for ‘experience’ – putting himself at the center of things he wishes to make them subservient to this aim; too often, even God becomes the source from which the highest experience flows, instead of being Him whom we adore, worship, and are prepared to serve, whatever the cost to us. Such an attitude was unknown to the Desert, moreover, the Desert repudiated it as sacrilegious…

Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), intro to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers