The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God

by Douglas Harding

  WITNESS: Well, there are all sorts of fantastic philosophical systems. I’ve forgotten (if ever I knew) most of what the so-called Perennial Philosophy teaches. Apparently it wasn’t worth remembering.

  MYSELF: Then let me remind you. It’s to be found, more or less concealed, at the heart of all the great spiritual traditions. It insists that, really and truly, I am the One Self - alias Atman-Brahman, the Buddha Nature, Tao, Spirit, Being, God, the Aware No-thing that embraces All things. And that the whole reason for living is to realize that at core I am This and This Alone.

  In that case my true dignity consists in my denial that I’m only human after all. A dignity arising out of lies isn’t anything of the sort. It’s disgraceful and shaming and due for a tumble.

  You appeal to popular opinion, that many-headed monster. Since when has philosophy subscribed to the dictum Vox populi, vox Dei? Rather it says Vox populi, pox Dei! Your common sense is nonsense, till the Perennial Philosophy brings you to your senses.

  WITNESS: Why has this soi-disant Perennial Philosophy won for itself virtually no place in the history of philosophy? Because it makes horrible jokes? There must be a good reason why it doesn’t figure in serious textbooks. I, who teach philosophy, know as much about it as I know about astrology. I suggest it’s obscure because it deserves to be obscure.

  MYSELF: In the East it has obscured all other philosophies for twenty-five centuries. Here in the West, it’s the only philosophy that has survived intact down the ages, and is now more vigorous than ever. It doesn’t date. Many a passage from the Tao Te Ching of 300 BCE reads as freshly today, and rings as true, as on the bright morning of its composition. No other body of doctrine is so free of historical and geographical discoloration, so practical no matter what the cultural constraints, so simple and self-evident and yet so deep. No other has stood half so well the test of time and of day-to-day experience. And yet no other is so wild, so daring, so madly and gloriously happy!

  WITNESS: I wonder -

  COUNSEL: Your Honour, what’s going on in this lawcourt? Is a Witness being cross-examined? Or are two old sparring partners enjoying a knockabout at the Crown’s expense?

  JUDGE: It’s all most irregular. But I think the outcome of the bout may have a bearing on the case, and that’s what matters… The Accused may proceed, provided he’s not much longer coming to the point.

  MYSELF: I’ve arrived, Your Honour. I don’t know about the Witness...

  WITNESS: The trouble with dogmatic and speculative systems like this is that there’s no way of testing them. Give me the full address with area code of this blessed deity of yours, tell me what time he’s at home, and how to plant my foot in his door and how to recognize him when I get inside - and I’ll take you and him seriously. Make this information so precise that anyone anywhere can track him down and find exactly the same blessed what’s-it, and I’m your disciple - grovelling at your lotus-feet.

  MYSELF: Done! I’ll hold you to that! So far from being speculative or vague, the Perennial Philosophy tells you precisely:

  (1) Where to find God: namely, right where you are. Which is in the witness-box of Court One, the New Bailey, Holborn, London EC4 England, Great Britain, Europe...

  (2) When to find God: namely, right now. Which is 11.37 Greenwich Mean Time.

  (3) How to find God: namely, by turning the arrow of your attention round 180° and looking inwards - looking in at what you’re looking out of. And with childlike sincerity taking what you find there.

  (4) What to look for: namely, that which has no form, features, colour or limits, but is like light or air or clear water or space. Great space, filled to capacity with what’s on show. Which is Judge and Jury and Accused and all the rest, with the sole exception of yourself. Great Space, aware of itself as thus empty and thus full.

  The Perennial Philosophy has consistently and persistently put forward a hypothesis so amazing and so delectable - one’s essential Godhood, no less - that it cries out to be tested by every available means, just in case it should turn out to be true. For good measure, as we’ve seen, it comes up with just the right tools for the job. Precisely the four tests you listed, as it happens. Precisely - in terms of feet and inches, of hours and minutes and seconds, of degrees of the compass. And to blazes with all spiritual-metaphysical waffle and cotton wool!

  Tennyson said that God’s nearer than my hands and my feet and my breathing, Muhammad that He’s nearer than my jugular vein. Well then, let me see if they knew what they were talking about. Following those four guidelines we are agreed on: (1) I point, with both forefingers, at this nearest of places, the place I’m looking out of; (2) I do so now; (3) I do so in the spirit of a little child who takes what he gets; and (4) I notice whether what I’m pointing at is face-like or space-like, human or non-human, a thing or no-thing, small and bounded or limitless, dead to itself or alive - alive to Itself, in all Its blazing obviousness and uniqueness and - yes! - power. It looks as if Eckhart got it right: ‘When the soul enters into her Ground, into the innermost regions of her Being, divine power suddenly pours into her.’

  COUNSEL: First, members of the Jury, we were regaled with the spectacle of a fairly friendly punch-up. Now we have the winner positively exploding with admiration at himself - at the divine power he wields. But of course! He worships the ground he walks on- all the way to the dock today for sure. All the way to the scaffold tomorrow, it may be.

  MYSELF: I appeal to His Honour and to each member of the Jury to ignore Counsel’s blatant attempt to whip up prejudice against me and to test with an open mind what I’m saying. Just to watch and listen to me carrying out this crucial experiment would be worse than useless. What have you and I to fear from the truth? I beg you to follow my example, point right now - repeat, right now - to the Spot that’s nearer than your breathing, and see for yourself what I’m going on about. Don’t be nervous! Even if your mother (like mine) told you it was rude to point at anyone, I tell you it’s all right to point at this One. He loves it! O how He loves it!

  What is it like right where you are? What, on present evidence, are you looking out of? Who lives at the Centre of your universe? Only you are in a position to see and to say.

  Till you have addressed - let alone settled - the question of your own identity, how can you settle mine? Wouldn’t it be absurd and unjust to condemn me for claiming to be Someone, without looking to see whether you are that very same Someone? That incredible Someone?

  I ask you: looking in now at what your two forefingers are pointing at, isn’t it Aware Capacity for them and for the scene that lies between - namely, those little feet and those foreshortened legs, and those thighs, and the lower part of your trunk? Doesn’t Diagram No. 3 (which I ask you to turn to) give a fair representation of what you’re experiencing?

  Diagram No. 3

  Just what name do you propose to give to this Immensity that’s nearer to you than your hands and your feet and your breathing, to the Radiance here that is the Light and all It lights up? To call It Mary Smith or William Brown or Gerald Wilberforce or John a-Nokes would be as perverse as to call it Little Green Apples. It’s precisely the opposite and the absence of those persons. Here is the one place in my world that’s clean of John a-Nokes, where I’m let off being that little fellow, so opaque and unluminous. Here, at my Centre, is the one place where there shines the Light that lights up the light. This is the Light which, according to Dante, ‘makes visible the Creator Himself to His creature, who finds his peace in seeing Him’.

  To put Jack here at the Centre of his world isn’t just diabolical pride and blasphemy: it’s being horrible to myself. It’s playing Bottom the Weaver, and mounting a jackass’s head on these shoulders. It’s unbelievably stupid. The third person’s not for divinizing, the First Person’s not for humanizing. True humanism there is true divinism here. The very best I can do for Jack is to keep seeing him off, and God in.

  In so far as I am, I am Him. As Rumi explains:

  ‘I am G
od’ is an expression of great humility. The man who says ‘I am the slave of God’ affirms two existences, his own and God’s, but he that says ‘I am God’ has made himself non-existent and has given himself up... He says ‘I am naught, He is all: there is no being but God’s.’ This is extreme humility and abasement.

  Out of the scores of further witnesses I have lined up, these are the ones I have chosen:

  In appearance a man, in reality God.

  Chuang-tzu

  Jesus said: What I now seem to be, that am I not... And so speak I, separating off the manhood.

  Acts of John

  They saw the body, and supposed he was a man.

  Rumi

  Man is not, he becomes: he is neither limited being nor unlimited, but the passage of limited being into unlimited; a search for his own perfection, which lies beyond him and is not himself but God... The stirring of religion is the feeling that my only true self is God.

  A. C Bradley

  No matter how often he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas, if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like one of the million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing being God.

  Erich Fromm

  God is alive and well - and living guess where.

  Graffito in a lavatory

  Prosecution Witness No. 3

  THE SCHOOLGIRL

  COUNSEL: Your Honour, in the public gallery there’s a class of schoolchildren aged between ten and twelve. They are here as part of their education in citizenship. I’m told by their teacher that any one of them whom the Accused may choose is willing to take the stand and give evidence. Provided, of course, Your Honour and the Accused agree.

  The peculiar nature of the offence, and the informality of these proceedings, encourage me to make this proposal. The reason for making it is that the Accused, in books and lectures and now here in court, insists that the children are on his side, and that if only we become like them we shall see eye to eye with him. Well, the Prosecution wishes to co-operate with the Defence to arrive at the truth. Let it not be said that the Crown is unfair. Have I Your Honour’s permission to take the evidence of one of these children?

  JUDGE: You do. Provided the Accused is willing —

  MYSELF: I am, Your Honour.

  JUDGE: — and provided the child hasn’t been biased by parents or teachers against the Accused. Or, too strongly, for him.

  COUNSEL: I’m assured that what little prejudice there may be is in favour of the Accused.

  JUDGE addressing me: So you agree that the Prosecution goes ahead?

  MYSELF: Certainly, Your Honour. As for which child testifies, let’s say the youngest...

  The teacher brings one of the children down from the gallery, and takes her to a chair placed in front of the witness-box.

  COUNSEL, to Witness: Will you please tell us your name and how old you are.

  WITNESS: I’m Mary. I’m ten.

  COUNSEL: Mary, what do you know about Mr John a-Nokes there in the dock?

  WITNESS: Our teacher told us he asks funny questions about himself. Like, is he really Mr Nokes?

  COUNSEL: What do you say about that, Mary?

  WITNESS: I think he’s being silly. All he’s got to do is look in the mirror.

  COUNSEL: Will you please repeat that a little louder for the benefit of the Jury?

  WITNESS: I feel sorry for him. All he’s got to do is look in the mirror.

  COUNSEL: Thank you, Mary. Now, Mr Nokes will ask you some questions.

  MYSELF: Mary, do you have any brothers and sisters?

  WITNESS: I’ve got a brother. His name is Dick. He’s eighteen months old.

  MYSELF: How does he react to what he sees in the mirror?

  WITNESS: When he was very little he didn’t take any notice. Now he’s started making noises at the baby behind the glass and playing with him. Of course he’s too young to realise it’s himself. He’s like a robin I saw who started pecking at his own reflection in a window-pane.

  MYSELF: Mary, I know a little girl called Madge. She made up her face with her mother’s lipstick - applying it to the bathroom mirror.

  WITNESS: That’s silly! She’ll soon grow up.

  MYSELF: That’s all, Mary. Thank you for being so helpful and answering our questions. Please go back to your class now.

  COUNSEL, to Jury: In the course of his Defence against the previous Witness - the Humanist, you’ll remember - the Accused said two things that I want to draw your attention to now: first, that to see the truth about himself he must become childlike; and second, that when he does so he loses his human face and takes on a divine one. Or words to that effect.

  Well, I should be surprised if Mary’s testimony hasn’t shaken his monolithic complacency somewhat.

  We shall see what this asker of silly questions (I’m using Mary’s language) has to say for himself.

  Defence: The Tenfold Unmasking

  MYSELF: Every important discovery began by asking a silly question. Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I don’t feel quite as chastened as Counsel thinks I should. Not at all. Mary’s testimony provides the perfect introduction to the story I have to tell.

  Like all convincing stories, it comes in three parts. She supplied and illustrated the first two. It will be up to an adult - a truly grown-up grown-up - to supply the third.

  COUNSEL, oozing irony, to the Jury: And we all know who that is, don’t we?

  MYSELF: The whole tale runs like this:

  (1) The animal and the infant, in their direct experience of themselves, are faceless. Unconsciously they are living from Who they really, really are - from the Clear-faced One at the Centre of their universe. None is so deluded (and so blasphemous) as to superimpose on this central Clarity or No-thing any features of their own. Every one of them, from Mary’s little brother in his play-pen down to the barely visible insect on the nursery window, and beyond, is for itself as immense and wide open as the cloudless sky. I think we should all go down on our knees to beg forgiveness for having despised these humble but majestic ones who - unlike all us humans - have never for a moment been guilty of blasphemy. And go on to recite Blake’s lines:

  Seest thou the little winged fly, smaller than a grain of sand?...

  Withinside wondrous and expansive: its gates are not clos’d:

  I hope thine are not.

  (2) But the infant grows into the child. Mary pays her literally immense subscription to the human club - namely, her Mary-free wide-openness - and gets in acknowledgement and exchange her card of identity and membership, her Mary-face. Finding herself in the mirror, she shrinks almost overnight from boundless Capacity for all things to just that one thing. No discredit to Mary. It’s a stage we all have to go through.

  (3) But now let’s look forward to the day - that rebirthday – when Mary decides that her subscription to the human club is far too high. Accordingly she withholds it, secretly cancelling her standing order, yet without ceasing to enjoy the club's innumerable amenities. She reclaims her true Face, absolutely clear and immense and non-human, but is careful to hang on to her club membership card with its picture of that little human face – keeping it in that glass-fronted showcase over there. She again takes on her Original Face, and makes sure that acquired face stays where it belongs, a yard or so away. Now she looks in that showcase – which is her mirror – to see what she isn't like! She's herSelf again.

  Your Honour and members of the Jury, you will have noticed the mirror stuck on the front of the booklet of diagrams that each of you has been given. Will you please now look in that mirror, as if for the first time, and without prejudgement take what you find, where you find it. No – don't look at me. Look steadily into your mirror – to see, for a change, not yourself but a close friend. Close, but not too close. A friend, but not too friendly.

  COUNSEL: This is farcical! John a-Nokes, I see y
ou’ve got one of those mirror-covered booklets of yours. I challenge you to look in that glass right now and tell the court in all seriousness that it’s not your face that you see.

  MYSELF, complying carefully with Counsel’s request: No! that’s not my face!

  COUNSEL: Then for heaven’s sake whose face is it?

  MYSELF: Good question! I can truthfully tell you it doesn’t belong to me

  COUNSEL: I can’t believe my ears! Just give me one reason why that face you’re looking at isn’t yours.

  MYSELF: I’ll give you ten!

  COUNSEL: Funny man!

  MYSELF: Your Honour and members of the Jury, let’s address this very funny and very serious matter together, very carefully. And very humbly, prepared to follow whithersoever the facts lead us. I’m asking you not to look at me when I go through these ten reasons, but look in your mirror and check up whether what I’m saying about me is true also of you.

  That face is not my face, because:

  (1) It’s the wrong way round — faces inwards instead of outwards.

  (2) It’s the wrong size — a miserable three inches across.

  (3) It’s in the wrong place — off-centre by upwards of ten inches.

  (4) It’s all over the shop — liable to come at me from any angle, incapable of getting its act together.

  (5) Appropriately, it haunts crazy rooms, where clocks go anti- clockwise and printing reads back to front.

  (6) It’s locked in one direction, unable to glance up or down or sideways.

  (7) It’s intangible.

  (8) In these and all other respects it’s the opposite of what I find on these shoulders, and therefore not my face but someone else’s.

  (9) A conclusion I check by slowly bringing the mirror right up to me. On the way here, I try to catch hold of that face, turn it round, enlarge it to full size, and plant it on these shoulders — thereby setting John a-Nokes up at the centre of my world . . . I can’t. This place won’t take it. Anyway, it vanishes without trace just before arrival.