Page "Baal Shem Tov" Paragraph 40

The later developments of Hasidism are unintelligible without consideration of Besht ’ s opinion concerning man ’ s proper relation with the universe.

True worship of God, as above explained, consists in the cleaving to, and the unification with, God.

To use his own words, “ the ideal of man is to be a revelation himself, clearly to recognize himself as a manifestation of God .” Mysticism, he said, is not the Kabbalah, which everyone may learn ; but that sense of true oneness, which is usually as strange, unintelligible, and incomprehensible to mankind as dancing is to a dove.

However, the man who is capable of this feeling is endowed with a genuine intuition, and it is the perception of such a man which is called prophecy, according to the degree of his insight.

From this it results, in the first place, that the ideal man may lay claim to authority equal, in a certain sense, to the authority of the Prophets.

This focus on oneness and personal revelation helps earn his mystical interpretation of Judaism the title of panentheism.