Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism Quotes

“This brings us to a further aspect of the doctrine of Tikkun, which is also the most important for the system of practical theosophy. The process in which God conceives, brings forth and develops himself does not reach its final conclusion in God. Certain parts of the process of restitution are allotted to man. Not all the lights which are held in captivity by the powers of darkness are set free by their own efforts; it is man who adds the final touch to the divine countenance; it is he who completes the enthronement of God, the king and the mystical Creator of all things, in His own Kingdom of Heaven; it is he who perfects the maker of all things! In certain spheres of being, divine and human existence are intertwined. The intrinsic, extramundane process of Tikkun, symbolically described as the birth of God's personality, corresponds to the process of mundane history. The historical process and its innermost soul, the religious act of the Jew, prepare the way for the final restitution of all scattered and exiled lights and sparks.”
― Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

“Dr. Rufus Jones, in his excellent “Studies in Mystical Religion” defines his subject as follows: “I shall use the word to express the type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, on direct and intimate consciousness of the Divine Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense and living stage.”4 Thomas Aquinas briefly defines mysticism as cognitio dei experimentalis5 as the knowledge of God through experience. In using this term he leans heavily, like many mystics before and after him, on the words of the Psalmist (Psalm XXXIV, 9): “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good.” It is this tasting and seeing, however spiritualized it may become, that the genuine mystic desires.”
― Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

“But Scholem was a scholar who would never have dreamed of anything so vulgar as a conscious attempt to make his material “relevant.”
― Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism