Since it is God's word that creates the world, the process begins with an utterance that has to be projected through all four worlds, Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Action.
Above us, then, are creatures far beyond our comprehension.
We cannot imagine the nature of these upper worlds and all the created forces they contain, like angels, seraphs, and the like.
The descent of the same letter or word proceeds in a series of contractions of light until it creates the lowest level of the stones and dust.
The difference is not only of essence, between the holy and that which is not conscious; it is also between that which can rise in consciousness and that which can never lift itself up.
There is, in this respect, a level even lower than stones and dust; it is the level of a man who does not wish to rise.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From “Creation is Always New,” in The Sustaining Utterance by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz