Rabbi Chaim Vital, the great student of the Arizal, revealed something extraordinary about what happens in the upper worlds when we study Torah. Study Torah with genuine intention, with love and awe of God, and your words ascend into the ten sefirot (ספירות), the divine emanations where the actual light of the Ein Sof (אין סוף) dwells. Study Torah without intention, and your words still ascend, but only to the outer halls of the heavenly palaces, where they create angels in the world of Yetzirah (the World of Formation).
But study Torah for selfish reasons, for glory or prestige, and the words do not ascend at all. They remain trapped in this lowest world, the domain of the kelipot (קליפות), the husks of impurity.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains the logic. The Torah and God are completely one. So why would Torah words need intention to reach the divine realms? Because although God fills all worlds equally, the worlds themselves are not equal. Higher worlds receive an infinitely greater radiance with fewer concealing screens. This material world receives the most contracted, filtered, diminished light of all.
When the animal soul speaks words of Torah without kavanah (כוונה), intention, those words are holy letters. But the kelipat nogah (קליפת נוגה), the translucent shell that animates the body, has not been overcome. The holiness in the words and the impurity in the speaker are locked in a stalemate, and the words cannot rise.
Add love and fear of God, and the stalemate breaks. The light of the letters overpowers the kelipah (a shell of impurity), lifts the words beyond this world, and carries them into the presence of the Infinite. This is why the Talmud says, "Happy is he who comes to the next world with his Torah in his hand" (Pesachim 50a). Good intentions do not merely improve your Torah study. They determine whether your Torah reaches heaven at all.