Books like Meditation and Kabbalah by Aryeh Kaplan

Hebrew scholar Ken Hanson tells the enthralling story of Kabbalah - the sacred writings of the Jewish mystics. It is a story that took place through three millennia as Kabbalah gave rise to the mystic strains of Judaism and Christianity. Hanson follows this amazing history, from the appearance of early Kabbalists like the mysterious Teacher of Righteousness of 200 B.C. to Brooklyn's Hasidic rabbis of today. He explores the meaning of Kabbalist mysteries: the sacred Name of God with its immense creative power, secret understandings of the Creation, the Kabbalistic art of numerology, and the practice of magic that developed from Kabbalistic studies during the Middle Ages. Kabbalah weaves together the content of Kabbalist writings with the story of its writers, sages whose travels lead us on a genuine adventure across many lands and cultures.

This book presents important topics regarding the *more mystical trend of Kabbalah- the **ecstatic Kabbalah***. It includes the mystical union, the *world of imagination, and concentration as a spiritual technique*. The emphasis in the text is on the **interaction** between the "original" Spanish stage of **Kabbalah** and **Muslim mysticism** in the East, mainly in the **Galilee**. The influence of the **Kabbalistic-Sufic synthesis** on the later developments of **Jewish mysticism** is traced, thereby providing a more precise understanding of the history of Kabbalah as an interplay between the theosophical and **ecstatic mystical experiences**.