When I explained this to him, he acknowledged this principle, which exposes the falsity of these people’s views. Once this was established, I explained to him that sound reason rules out the existence in external reality of a universal, absolute existence stipulated as absolute, and that universals, stipulated as absolute or universal, exist only in minds, not in external reality. He was familiar with these disciplines. I also explained to him how their statements entail numerous combinations of mutually contradictory propositions, whose impossibility is known through the self-evident principles of reason. When someone claims to have apprehended something of this kind through unveiling, direct witnessing, and spiritual experience, it is known to be false imaginings and unsound spiritual experiences.

This is because one of two things must be the case. Either he has witnessed something that exists in the mind and believed it to exist in external reality, as happens to many people—and it is well known that witnessing something is distinct from knowing whether it exists within oneself or externally. These people may experience mere witnessing without distinguishing between what exists within themselves and what exists externally. Satan often misleads them through imaginings that have no reality outside the mind. Or he has witnessed something that exists in external reality and supposed it to be the Creator, whereas it is only a created being and is not