  It is certainly not evident that Maimonides literally has a mystical union in mind in this passage, even with his use of what might seem to be charged mystical language. The possibility of a mystical meaning for this and surrounding passages at Guide 3.51 remains subject to debate, although the most straightforward account of what Maimonides is up to here remains entirely non-mystical: purely in line with an Islamic Neoplatonized Aristotelian epistemological tradition of overflow/conjunction, Maimonides understands “passionate love” of God (and related Biblical claims about God's kissing the prophet Moses) as that moment in which the human intellect comes into full alignment with the active intellect, thus reaching the height of human perfection.