mystical tradition Quotes

After an interval of two and a half centuries, the tradition of mystic illumination renewed itself in Italy and Germany.

People don't know what Kabbalah is, and so they jump to conclusions. For me, studying Kabbalah is studying - is just - is asking questions. And I encourage all of my children to be that way, and I think people don't understand that. And so they make assumptions and they judge.

I take the assumption that every religion has been rooted in some mystical or transcendent experience. From that assumption, I just look at all the different systems as metaphors or doorways to God.

Most Kabbalists were theorists who were interested only in pure meditation. But there were so-called 'practical Kabbalists' who tried to apply the power of the Kabbalah in everyday life.

Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It's no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.

In short, then, the religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man, and the sorcerer is older than the priest.

I am not a Sufi, but I follow the Sufi.

The Lowcountry traditionally is a logical place where the big ships stopped and brought new things in from the ocean, and the islands have a mystical tradition. It is such a visual place, too, with these iconic villages with the Spanish moss and the village and historical homes and the coast.

I'm not a practicing kabbalist. I'm not a spiritual master. I'm not a rabbi. I don't - but it's part of who I am.

I was looking for something within Judaism that had a spiritual nature and not just a religious nature. So my trainer at the time was the one who took me to the Kabbalah center on my 40th birthday. I was like, "Oh, this is so cool." I was just ready for it. I was ready for something different.

The ancients had a term in the mystical tradition called the Akashic Records, which was suggestive that nature didn't lose it's experience, that the information accumulated was available forever.

And there are loners in rural communities who, at the equinox, are said to don new garments and stroll down to the cities, where great beasts await them, fat and docile.

There's a rich legend of this in other cultures, this speaking with ancestors. The Christian mystics communicated with angels.

In the Kabbala, it says that we receive the light in order to impart the light, and thus we repair the world.

If anybody asks what Sufism is, what kind of religion is it, the answer is that Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in which the thing of primary importance is to seek God in the heart of mankind.

Of course, mysticism is very hard to isolate because, given the kind of consciousness that I was sort of instructed in as religious consciousness; that borders on mysticism so closely that it's hard to know whether you qualify or not, or whether mysticism is artificially isolated when it is treated as a separate thing from experience. Obviously, mysticism can be a form of madness, but then consciousness can be a form of madness.

The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.

I once read that you die because you see the Angel of Death, and you fall in love. And you fall in love so hard your soul is sucked out through your eyes, and that's the moment of death. It's a lovely, strange old Jewish legend.