 The lesson taught seven times in the central part of the Oration (part 4 above) is a curriculum whose felicitous goal is mystical union with God: first elaborated by the ancient Neoplatonists, it was taken up by the Church Fathers and became a commonplace of Christian mysticism, though Pico would also have found it in such Kabbalist texts as the commentary on the Song of Songs by Levi ben Gerson. The student starts with moral philosophy and then moves through dialectic and natural philosophy toward theology, until discursive thought gives way to ecstasy, pure contemplation and finally unification. The stages of this paideia are