Degraded and Holy Literature

by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook

There has been an increase in degraded literature, which comes not because of an intensification of the power of creativity and an increase of the light of the soul, but which comes rather because of the low level of the creator, who cannot make any spiritual acquisition but who instead is outwardly profuse, like the teeming small creatures and swarming things.

There is, on the other hand, an elevated type of person whose profuseness is due to the flow of the light of the soul—for the world of consciousness does not cease manifesting constant, limitless phenomena.

It is impossible to explain and precisely demarcate the line that separates these creations. Such matters are given over particularly to the sense of understanding of the person involved in these creations.

The sense of spiritual scent can distinguish between a new light that wells up from a wellspring of holiness--the cause of whose creation is an intensification of supernal life that illumines lowly life, descending into it in order to raise and improve it--and between the twitching of a creation that is not elevated beyond low physical movements, which comes from a weakness in awareness and ethics that lacks the strength to remain quiet.

Pinkas 81 Piskaot (Jaffa), #67