With any great poem, any great music, any great mountain, for a second or two, there is the absence of the self. Or one takes drugs to come to that. The mountain is a stimulus, and a drug is a stimulus. Reading a poem is a stimulus or seeing a painting. They all act as a stimulus. Can there be selflessness without stimuli? Otherwise I am dependent on stimuli, which means what? If I keep on being stimulated, my brain becomes dull.