ABSTRACT
A helpful list of salient characteristics is however given by Roberto Gimello in his article on Mysticism and meditation'. As a source of knowledge, mysticism is of course in opposition to the scientific mode the empirical, testable, provable knowledge which is the currency of the modern Western world. The great Jewish scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem considers that the phenomenon of mysticism occurs under specific historical conditions in the history of the human race. Evelyn Underhill, throughout her book on mysticism, paints a graphic picture of the unrealized self, the equivalent of Plato's prisoners in their cave, the prisoners of the psychological and social conditioning to which we are all subject. Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah, a transcendental picture of reality with emphasis on the seeker, was also part of Assagioli's inheritance. The neoplatonic, gnostic and hermetic streams of mysticism have often remained underground through the last fifteen hundred years, but have a direct bearing on Assagioli through Theosophy.
