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The thing that passes for illumination with most mystics is generally a mixture of genuine mystical experience with an interpretation of it furnished by the intellect, the emotions, tradition, education, teachers, suggestion, and so on. The medium through which the experience is brought down into conscious communication or understanding often interferes with it and reshapes it. The philosophic discipline, with its self-criticizing, keen rationality and its ego-subordination, purification, and illumination, is intended to prevent this interference from happening.

-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 3 : Its Requirements > # 89