1 These are the things before me.
2 For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth.
3 I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others.
4 They will follow me and I shall lead them to my fortress.
5 And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time.
6 For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers.
7 I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me.
8 And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey.
9 Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way.
10 And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me.
11 I understood why the best in me had been my sins and my transgressions; and why I had never felt guilt in my sins.
12 Then here, on this mountaintop, with the world below me and nothing above me but the sun, I shall live my own truth.
13 I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I" could give it up and not know what they lost.
14 I shall call to me all the men and the women whose spirit has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of their brothers.
15 The Saint of the pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter what name they gave to their cause and their truth.
16 Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild the achievements of the past, and open the way to carry them further, the achievements which are open to me, but closed forever to my brothers, for their minds are shackled to the weakest and dullest ones among them.