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I have heard many times that the Rambam's omission of mystical ideas is proof, or evidence, of his rejection thereof. However, if one accepts the authenticity of Kabbalah as being a legitimate tradition sourced back to at least R' Shimon Bar Yochai, then that includes the fact that it was a secret tradition, as would be supported by the Mishna in Chagiga 2:1 that the מעשה מרכבה should not even be taught directly to an individual. From the way the Ramban introduces Kabbalistic ideas in his commentary on Chumash, it seems that he was not entirely comfortable to let the cat out of the bag. Therefore, silence seems inconclusive.

Is there positive evidence of the Rambam's rejection of Kabbalah, by which I mean statements which seem to acknowledge it and dismiss it?

user15464
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Y     e     z
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Menachem Kellner wrote a book on the topic, where he builds on work by Moshe Idel. Kellner takes for granted that Rambam rejected (what was taught as) kabbalah of his day, and his book 'shows' how much of the Rambam's writings were aimed at presenting an alternative to kabbalah. You could read his book as indirectly proving that the Rambam rejected kabbalah, because if he's writing with an anti-kabbalah agenda he obviously rejected it. However, in my mind, Kellner's book still doesn't prove anything conclusively.

All in all, the scholarly consensus is that the Rambam rejected kabbalah, or what he knew of it, and not just because he writes in a teshuvah (Blau ed. I:117) that the kabbalistic book Shiur Komah is heretical. The Rambam's whole outlook doesn't seem to fit with many of the tenets of kabbalah, at least of what we know of it from that time. While you're right that these things were kept under wraps by those who knew them, the Rambam states in the introduction (and throughout) Moreh Nevuchim that in his book he is revealing the secrets of מעשה בראשית and מעשה מרכבה as he understands them, and they certainly don't look like kabbalah.

Of course, this is all kind of tenuous because we can't be sure how to read the kabbalistic works just because we have the texts. Maybe we're reading them incorrectly, as many authentic mekubalim (like R. Yaakov Hillel) of today will tell you that certain terms are codes for certain concepts, and that the mekubalim speak metaphorically, etc... This is especially so because later mekubalim actually did use the Moreh Nevuchim and picked up some of the Rambam's terminology here and there.

(For the sake of completeness, however, I should mention that there are two letters supposedly written by the Rambam which do in fact praise the kabbalah, though scholars have dismissed them as forgeries. One of them is quoted by the Migdal Oz to the first chapter of Hil. Yisodei HaTorah, where the Rambam is said to have discovered kabbalah later in life, and another well known one published in R. Shilat’s edition of the Rambam's letters, pg. 695. See there where he discusses the veracity of the letter)

הנער הזה
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    The problem that I have is, the Gaonim also gave rational explanations which could be taken as alternatives to Kabbala, and yet there exist teshuvos where the Gaonim "hushed" people who espoused Kabbalistic views - didn't correct them, but hushed them. That is why I want positive proof, not proof in abstentia. Rejecting Shiur Komah is closer, but still not really conclusive. – Y     e     z Jun 23 '14 at 23:54
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    Re Shiur Komah, that isn't conclusive because specific kabbalistic ideas in the book could have been problematic to him. I don't know what it says in the book, or which parts he called heretical, so I can't really judge, but it's certainly incomplete. – Y     e     z Jun 24 '14 at 02:20
  • @YEZ true, but the geonim never say that their explanations of aggada are to be considered 'maaseh beraishis' and 'maaseh merkava' (Truth is though that I don't think that's right about the geonim, if we're talking about rav sheriara and rav hai, but that's another topic) – הנער הזה Jun 24 '14 at 02:21
  • @Matt There is a specific teshuva which I think is from R' Sherira about how kevutzas haderech works, in which he had given a very rational explanation, someone wrote him asking "doesn't it work like this" with a "kabbalistic" explanation, and he essentially responded "we don't talk about those things" – Y     e     z Jun 24 '14 at 02:23
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    @Matt I don't have a link, but it's brought in Otzar HaGe'onim on maseches Sukka. – Y     e     z Jun 24 '14 at 02:28
  • @Matt, do you know of any dating (what year it was written) of that Teshuva from the Rambam? – Yishai Jun 24 '14 at 15:28
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    @Yishai rambam liked sheeu3r qoma in the beginning of his life, but as he learned philosophy and the sciences, he rejected it and said it is kafeero. it is also mentioned by rabbeinu abrohom ban ha rambam zl in his meel7omoth hashem that some rabbis were mistaken in taken it as actual fact and that it is kafeero – MoriDowidhYa3aqov Jun 25 '14 at 00:00
  • @MoriDoweedhYaa3qob, what is your source for that statement (that he liked it at the beginning of his life)? In the Teshuva quoted by Matt, he writes לא חשבתי מעולם שהוא מחיבורי החכמים ז"ל. – Yishai Jun 25 '14 at 02:06
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    @Yishai In Shlomoh ben Yosef's translation of Rambam's opening to his commentary on Sanhedrin Ch. 10 (Pereq Cheleq), in the section on the seventh foundation, it says "ויכנס בזה שיעור קומה ועניינו" ( see here, five lines before the end of the page). In Yosef Qafih's translation it doesn't appear, but in the footnotes he says that it was in the first edition of Rambam's manuscript, but was later erased from it. (See also here, s.v. "Earlier I noted ...") – Tamir Evan Jul 06 '14 at 16:34
  • Your edit actually does address the question in a roundabout way - if those claims were correct, it would mean that up until then he had not heard of it, not just that he was being secret about it. – Y     e     z Jul 20 '14 at 17:57
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    @YeZ I recently renewed my efforts to find this teshuvah that you mentioned about the Geonim refusing to speak about kabbalah and instead give alternative explanations, but I'm coming up short. Do you remember where you saw it? I don't think that it's in the Otzar HaGeonim to Sukkah, and I've looked through several studies of the Geonim's approach to aggadah without seeing even a passing reference to this idea – הנער הזה Jan 25 '15 at 16:16
  • It should be noted (I think R. Dr. Twersky makes this point in Rabad of Posquieres) that the kabbalists insisted that kishuf had actual power whereas Rambam (following R. Saadya Gaon, et al.) insists that it is mere slight of hand. – mevaqesh Apr 23 '15 at 00:05
  • @Yishai Apropos, Maimonides originally accepted Shiur Qomah as an authentic and legitimate Jewish treatise, but eventually rejected it as equivalent to idolatry.21 It may have been the Rambam himself who penned, in substitution for the laudatory original, the following closing lines to Shiur Qomah found in a medieval quotation: ‘ – MoriDowidhYa3aqov May 23 '17 at 00:39
  • All these things are great abominations and blasphemies/cursed is he who believes it and cursed is he who composed it/by the numerical value of every letter in it/for the Lord is a true God/He has no image or measure/neither breadth nor length / as it says, ‘To whom then can you liken God etc. [What form does compare to Him?]’ (Isaiah 40, 18), ‘To whom then can you liken me, to whom can I be compared?’ (ibid., 40, 25).22 – MoriDowidhYa3aqov May 23 '17 at 00:40
  • 21 ‘For only foreign gods have ‘stature’ [= qomah] (Maimonides Responsa, 117, ed.Blau, p. 201). See Lieberman, 1939, 12, 89–98; Lieberman apud Scholem, 1960, 124; Cohen, 1985, 230.

    ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND ITS ERADICATION by shamma friedman

     – MoriDowidhYa3aqov May 23 '17 at 00:41
  • http://i.imgur.com/hDdPzVL.png http://i.imgur.com/Rl5mc50.png Moses Narboni‘s “Epistle on Shi‘ur Qomā” by alexander altmann – MoriDowidhYa3aqov May 23 '17 at 00:50
  • @Matt He might be referring to the teshuvah of R. Hai Gaon, #22 in Teshuvot Hageonim (Horowitz). – Alex Oct 21 '18 at 21:57
  • @Yishai (footnote 38) http://chabadlibrary.org/books/admur/tm/9/13/index.htm#_ftnref_630 – hazoriz Nov 22 '18 at 11:11