The Flashes (Revised 2009 edition) | THE SEVENTEENTH FLASH | 163
(157-188)

Another of your rotten foundations is, as you say: Everything owns itself. A clear proof that nothing owns itself is this: among causes the most noble and with regard to choice the one with the most extensive will is man. But out of the most obvious acts  connected  to  mans will  like thinking,  speaking,  and  eating,  only a hundredth single, doubtful, part is subject to his will and is within his power. So how can it be said that he owns himself?

If the highest beings with the most extensive will are thus inhibited from real power  and  ownership  to  this  degree,  someone  who  says  that  the  rest  of beings, animate and inanimate, own themselves merely proves that he is more animal than the animals and more lifeless and unconscious than inanimate beings.

What pushes you to make such an error and casts you into this abyss is your one-

eyed  genius. That  is,  your extraordinary,  ill-omened  brilliance.  Due  to  that  blind genius of  yours, you have forgotten your Sustainer, who is the the Creator of all things,  you  have  attributed  His works  to  imaginary nature and  causes,  you  have divided up the Creator’s property among idols, false gods. In regard to this and in the view  of  your  genius,  every  living  creature  and  every human  being  has  to  resist innumerable enemies on his own and struggle to procure his endless needs. They are compelled to do this with the power of a  minute particle, a fine thread-like will, a fleeting flash-like consciousness, a fast  extinguishing flame-like life, a  life which passes in a minute. But the capital of those wretched animate creatures is insufficient to answer even one of the thousands of their demands. When smitten by disaster, they can await no salve for their pain other than from deaf, blind causes. They manifest the meaning of the verse:

 

For the prayer of those without faith is nothing but [futile] wandering [in the mind].(13:14)

 

Your dark genius has transformed mankinds daytime into night. And in order to warm  that  dark,  distressing,  unquiet  night,  you  have  only  illuminated  men  with deceptive, temporary lamps. Those lamps do not smile at them with joy, they rather smirk idiotically at their pitiful and lamentable state. Those lights mock and make fun of them.

In the view of your pupils, all living beings are miserable, calamity-striken, and subject to the assaults of oppressors. The world is a place of universal mourning. Issuing from it are cries and wails at death and suffering. The pupil who has absorbed your instruction  thoroughly becomes a pharaoh. But he is an abject pharaoh who worships the basest things  and holds himself to be lord over everything he reckons advantageous.

No Voice