The life of sense and thought veils the life of the soul from the non-mystical extroverted person. The rapture of ecstatic trance veils the external world from the mystical person. Neither man's condition is full, perfect, and complete. The mystic's is higher, but he needs to advance still farther to a continuous balanced state where the activity of sense and thought does not veil the external world from him, but where both are felt as different phases of one divine reality and seen as the same experience from two different points of view. Such is the philosophic achievement. Although it contains the ordinary state it is not limited to it, and although it experiences mystical union it does not need to enter into an abnormal condition like trance to do so. Thus whether the physical world and the thinking intellect reveal or conceal this reality depends upon whether or not the philosophic insight is brought to bear upon them.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 4 : Its Realization Beyond Ecstasy > # 123
