The Ladder of Creation: The Five Stages on the Path to Revelation

One of the central questions in the "School for Prophets" is: How do we begin? Is spiritual creation a matter of sudden inspiration, or does it have an order and a path?

In his writings, Rav Kook outlines a precise roadmap, a kind of "Jacob's Ladder" for the creator, describing the correct order of approach to the Holy Spirit (רוח הקודש) and prophecy. He writes thus:

"This is the order. One must purify and strengthen the body and all its powers, Afterwards comes the power of imagination and all its branches, which must also be strong and refined, And afterwards comes emotion and all its branches, And upon them shall come the clear intellect, and all its ramifications, And the light of the supreme listening, which comes from the sparking of the supernal Holy Spirit, comes upon them." (Shmonah Kvatzim, 1, 208)

The Revolution in the Order of Things

What is revolutionary about this order is that it is almost completely opposite to the Western artistic conception, which usually starts from the abstract "idea" (the intellect) or the imagination, and tries to "dress" it onto the material.

Rav Kook suggests an opposite journey. This is a holistic, unified perception, which sees creation not as an action that is only intellectual, or only imaginative, or only emotional, but as an organic development of all human powers together.

From Listening to Speech: Creation as Encounter

The word "Nevuah" (נבואה - prophecy) is close to two roots:

The first: N.B.A (נ.ב.א) – meaning listening to everything that comes (בא) to you from reality, from existence, from the soul, from the word of God. And the second is - "Niv Sfatayim" (ניב שפתיים - utterance of the lips) – meaning the execution, from the stage of listening to the stage of speech.

That is, the process does not end there. All the stages so far were the preparation for creation. They were the stage of listening. And only after the preparation is complete and the listening has occurred, comes the moment of creation itself, the transition from active listening to active execution. This is the stage of "Niv Sfatayim."

Speech, in its broad sense, is the place where the soul and the body meet. The soul (the idea, the inspiration) meets the body (the lips, the mouth muscles, the hands, the camera) and creates something new in the world.

Pure creation, then, is always an encounter, and as we have learned - it has an order.