anything). He also said:

You deem existence to be one—and you are that;
Upon you lies nothing extra, for nothing is there but you.

I said to one of their most sharp-witted followers:

“Grant, for the sake of argument, that this absolute existence is something real outside the mind and that it is identical with the phenomena we observe. On what basis do you claim that this is the Lord of all worlds, the One who created the heavens, the earth, and everything in them?”

He conceded the point and replied, “There is no way around this.”

Now, whether the sensation be inward or outward, if it is not accompanied by the intellect that differentiates between what is sensed and what is not, errors will creep in—errors of the very sort that overtake a sleeping person, someone deranged by a bilious disorder, someone delirious with pleurisy, and others who judge by mere sensation with no reason to guide it.

In fact, livestock may be better guided than such people, as the Exalted says:

“We have certainly created for Hell many of the jinn and humankind. They have hearts with which they do not understand, eyes with which they do not see, and ears with which they do not hear. They are like cattle; indeed, they are even further astray. Such are the heedless.” [al-Aʿrāf: 179]