Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses an interesting principle regarding the piggul rules. To review, a sacrifice becomes invalid when a part of the service is performed with the intention of eating or offering appropriate sacrificial portions on the altar outside of the prescribed times. However, aside from this invalidating thought, the rest of the sacrifice must be procedurally correct.

This leads to an irony. If one had an intention that causes piggul, but then did not perform the proper sacrificial procedure, though the sacrifice would be forbidden, it would not have the severity of kares if consumed. This leaves the impression that in order to cause a certain level of desecration, a higher spiritual level must be attained. This is similar to the idea that impurity comes from a vacuum of life or spiritual force. Thus, only a functional vessel, food item, developed but dead animal, or living human can hold impurity (see, for example, Mishnayos Keilim ch. 2). A gentile is also limited in how much impurity he can hold as compared to a Jewish person (for example, see Yevamos 61a; Rambam, Laws of Tumas Meis 1:13). There needs to be a sensitivity and awareness to even hold and perceive the effect of impurity. A heroin addict who develops tolerance can be unaffected by a dosage that would flat-out kill another person. (By the way, that is why sometimes an addict who seems to be successful in his recovery, can suddenly die of an overdose. In actuality, after a period of abstention, his body returned from its high tolerance, but the addict does not realize it and takes a lethal dose.) An undeveloped form is not affected by impurity in the same manner as something of higher order and receptivity.

Rav Hirsch (Vayikra 7:18) develops this idea more specifically with regard to this sacrificial principle. An impure thought or misdirection from God is always problematic, but not as toxic as when it is intermingled in an area of holiness. He explains (not a direct quote):

Apostasy from Judaism, which turns its back on the sanctuary of the law, is not the most destructive thing for the Jewish sanctuary; destruction only threatens the sanctuary when apostasy is brought into the sanctuary itself, when one pretends to remain on the ground of the sanctuary despite its transformation into its opposite, and when one wants the sanctuary itself to sanction its own opposite. This is piggul, and therefore it is only piggul when the offering is brought according to its prescribed manner, when everything else remains normal, when no other abnormality already makes the sacrifice appear flawed. This is because it is far more destructive when the spiritual’s most life-sustaining moments are contaminated while appearing sanctioned in a completely normal process.

I will add: This is similar to the idea that “thoughts of sin are worse than sin itself” (Yoma 29a). The Rambam (Moreh Nevuchim III:8) explains:

“When a person is disobedient, this is due to certain accidents connected with the corporeal element in his constitution (in Jewish medieval philosophical terms, ‘accidents’ mean non-divine physical occurrences); for man sins only by his animal nature (chomer), whereas thinking is a faculty of man connected with his form (tzurah, pure intellect, which is by necessity Godly and spiritual, since God is the source of all wisdom). Therefore, a person who thinks sinfully sins by means of the nobler portion of himself. This is comparable to one who wrongly causes a foolish slave to work; he does not sin as much as one who wrongly causes a noble and free man to do the work of a slave. For this specifically human element of Godly, spiritual intellect, with all its properties and powers, should only be employed in suitable work, in attempts to join higher beings, and not in attempts to go down and reach the lower creatures.”

A sin is “just a sin,” but corrupted thoughts and desires, and the imposition of distorted beliefs on the Torah, have far worse implications and impact.