How Elevated It Is

by Rav Avraham Yitchak Kook

How elevated it is, how much concealed truth and song it is—the mystical thought that man affects all of existence from the aspect of his spiritual power.

The light of life within free will, which can rise when a person chooses good (with strength, might and wisdom), rises to an extremely elevated realm, whose worth no space [is large enough] to contain.

How wondrous is the moral perspective that emerges from such a form of great responsibility, a responsibility for all existence, for all worlds. [This responsibility comes] because a person has the power to increase within [those worlds] grace and light, life, joy and glory, when he walks upon a straight path, when he strengthens and girds himself with a pure might to master the ways of a good and mighty life, and rises from strength to strength.

But [on the other hand] it is within his power to cause pain in [life’s] every good portion if he lowers his spirit, if he corrupts his ways, if he darkens his spiritual light, if he ceases his moral purity.

The high moral peak [that a person] builds when he takes into account the [entire] world, so great and splendid—with its appearance, [that moral awareness] refines his spirit to the point that it can no longer be degraded. [His spirit then] rises upon over the walls and towers of all existence, of all being, of all the eternity and loveliness of all the worlds—so that, with their assistance, it is protected from all evil.

How could the quality of evil [possibly] rise up to take a portion of the life of [this] man and his deeds, when such an exalted and elevated awareness as this is spread out before him?

It is true that [this person’s] previous moral corruption can close his eye so that will not be able to gather the strength to see the clear light of that universal awareness, that his ear might be uncircumcised, dulled by sins, until it can by no means heed the voice of God calling powerfully from the midst of the elevated moral wealth, which encompasses the entirety of eternal worlds.

But if only a good thought of once more being sanctified and purified from all sin rises upon his heart, then his eye is opened and his ear grows keen. And the voice of God powerfully calls to him from the entire totality of worlds to transcend the dwelling places of darkness and to rise with that great spiritual elevation that is fitting for his great responsibility over all being, which is spread out before him.

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The knowledge that man is the central meaning of all reality expands his moral responsibility and arouses his desire to do great things.

After the form of the physical world has been made great by means of many revelations, then [our] knowledge presents us with free rule in the form of man. And this revelation [within man] is the most elevated concentrated essence of being. This is because life is certainly the concentrated essence of insensible reality. And the concentrated essence of life is free rule, which comes to the height of its strength when it unifies with the absolute good, and as it appearance in actuality in the most possible form.

Orot Hakodesh, pp. 63-64