MYSELF: I stand corrected, Your Honour. In any event my message to the Jury all along is: Don’t believe ‘authorities’. Test what they say, and become your own authority. On this sure foundation my whole case rests.
Omnipresence
Distance is a phantasy.
Blake
God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
Medieval Saying
And then our Lord opened my spiritual eye and showed me my soul in the midst of my heart. I saw the Soul so large as it were an endless world, and as it were a blissful kingdom... In the midst of that City sitteth our Lord.
Julian of Norwich
Omniscience
When the Self is seen, heard, thought of, known, everything is known.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Supreme enlightenment is none other than all-knowledge... It does not mean that the Buddha knows every individual thing, but that he has grasped the fundamental principle of existence and that he has penetrated deep down into the centre of his own being.
D. T. Suzuki
If I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures.
Eckhart
Omnipotence
The Father that dwells in me, He does the works.
Jesus
It is God who works in you both to do and to will his good pleasure.
St Paul
A world of which you are the only source and ground is fully within your power to change. What is created can always be un-created and re-created. All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it.
Nisargadatta
General
Shiva, the Highest Lord, is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Since I have these attributes, I am He.
Vijnanabhairava
Prosecution Witness No. 15
THE NEW APOCALYPTIC
A new week and a new day. Two days and three nights have gone by since the court was last in session. Long enough for Sir Gerald to be on his feet again, displaying all his old zing and panache.
He introduces his fifteenth Witness.
COUNSEL: You call yourself a New Apocalyptic. Please explain to the court what that means.
WITNESS: Apocalypsis is a Greek word meaning a revelation or uncovering. I’m an elder and spokesman of the Church of that name, whose members take as their infallible guide God’s Holy Word and the gospel it proclaims. We stand four-square for Christ, for Jesus Christ as the only Son of God and Saviour from sin, and the imminence of his Second Coming. To be followed by the Day of Judgement. We do battle with all who deny his absolute uniqueness as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and who question the efficacy of his precious blood shed for sinners. Specially are we the enemies of those limbs of Satan who, not content with having apostatized from the saving truth, lead others (I’m thinking of the impressionable young) to perdition and the eternal flames of Hell. Oh, yes, it’s a holy war we wage against all Antichrists and blasphemers. And when one of them goes so far as to set himself up in the place of the Lord he dishonours, why, we’ll do anything to bring him down. Anything.
COUNSEL: Is it a fact that certain members of your Church, before the passing of the Blasphemy Act under which the Accused is being tried, did indeed take the law into their own hands? That they captured some of those apostates (I’m using your language), tried them, condemned them to death and actually executed them?
WITNESS: My church doesn’t deny that it carries out its God-given duties where and as it can.
COUNSEL: May I take it that, now that the official law against blasphemy has been given teeth and written into the Statute Book, the attitude of your Church has changed?
WITNESS: We are hopeful that the Act will see justice done in the worst cases, but we are by no means certain. We shall see. In any case we have our work to do. Work for Christ against all Antichrists.
COUNSEL: Antichrists? Please explain. Yes, you may read from the bible you took your oath on.
WITNESS, bible in one hand and chopping vigorously with the other: They are the ones St John speaks of here, in his First Epistle: ‘Many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist.’ And St Paul speaks of ‘that man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.’
COUNSEL: Looking around now, do you find any such Antichrist in this court? One to whom both these texts apply?
WITNESS, now in something of a frenzy: I do! Look! There he stands in the dock!
Shouting and much commotion in the public gallery. A banner is unfurled. It reads ‘DEATH TO THE BLASPHEMER’...
After some minutes, during which the offenders and their banner are removed and order is restored, Witness goes on.
WITNESS: My fellow workers and I have monitored the written and spoken words of this man of sin, and consider him guilty of every sort of blasphemy. Among contemporary Antichrists he is the chief. Plain beheading is too easy an exit for him. I’m thinking of what they did to another blasphemer, the early Quaker James Nayler, in 1656. He was severely whipped, branded with the letter B (for blasphemy) on his forehead, and had his tongue bored through with a red-hot iron.
COUNSEL: You shouldn’t worry. Christendom has come on a long way since those crude old days. Thanks to science, we know how to give the Naylers of the world a really hard time, don’t we?
WITNESS, all irony lost on him: Still far less than they deserve!
COUNSEL, after a long pause, as if for once he really were tongue-tied: Well, Jury, there you have it... Let me remind you that the charge of blasphemy levelled against the Accused doesn’t deny his right peaceably to hold opinions which excite the sort of sentiments we’ve just been treated to. No - it’s his persistent and blatant airing of these opinions, giving rise to offence and outrage and disturbances of public order, which is the crime he’s charged with. I feel sure you’ll agree that the Witness’s testimony - to say nothing of the appalling behaviour of his friends in the gallery - goes a long way towards proving John a-Nokes guilty of this sort of provocation. Leaving aside all questions of compassion and common decency, and of who has the truth and who hasn’t, it can’t be denied that these people are scandalized to the point of hysteria by what they see as the Accused’s war on all they hold sacred. Why, even in this courtroom he incites people to violence!
Defence: Antichrist and Pro-Christ
MYSELF: There would be no point in cross-examining this frankest of witnesses. The heretic at the stake doesn’t start an interesting conversation with the fellow who’s approaching with a lighted taper. So you may leave the witness-box.
As for Counsel’s last remark about my causing folk to commit breaches of the peace, outside and now inside this court, I ask the Jury to look at this principle - at the precedent it sets, and the nightmare world it opens out before us. It shifts the blame from the muggers to the old lady they mug. It makes the molested child responsible for her molestation, the bank for the bank robbery, the tax inspector for the tax fraud. Well, there it is. You the Jury are stuck with this Blasphemy Act, and the way it unblushingly penalizes the victim and not the perpetrator of violence. There’s nothing you can do about it... No, that’s not quite true.
You know what happens when a case is being tried under a law that’s come to be seen as unjust, or outdated, or simply unworkable from the start. Juries are reluctant to bring in a guilty verdict, judges to inflict any but the very minimum sentence. Later on, ladies and gentlemen, I shall no doubt have occasion to remind you of this -
JUDGE, furiously: No, you won’t! Stop it! Any more of this and I’ll hold you in contempt of court. This is a blatant invitation t
o the Jury to violate their duty. They must ignore it. As for you the Accused, I solemnly warn you not to repeat what you’ve just said, or anything like it.
After abject apologies (containing, however, no promises) I’m allowed to resume.
MYSELF: Let’s get back to the Witness and his evidence. He talks about the Antichrist. The word carries two meanings. Anti implies both opposition to and substitution for. An Antichrist, accordingly, may seek to downgrade the Deity or else to upgrade himself at the Deity’s expense, or very likely both at once. Indeed, if the Witness is saying anything meaningful about me, it’s that I’m not just hell-bent on dragging God down to my level, but also on thrusting myself up there in His place.
Well, it should come as no surprise to the court that I plead Not Guilty on both counts. So far from dishonouring and degrading Him, I assure you that God as God is the love and the lodestone of my life, my passion, my raison d’être, before Whom I bow the deepest of bows. Not a God diluted to my taste or trimmed to my design, but an eternal astonishment and splendour, awesome, shocking, devastating. So far from seeking to substitute the creature John a-Nokes for Him, just about the chief concern of my adult life has been to put and keep that little chap in his place out there, and frustrate his ever-renewed efforts to break free and make for the Centre of things. If my Defence so far in this Trial hasn’t quite persuaded you, ladies and gentlemen, that this is my aim, I’m counting on the rest of it to do so.
The Witness, of course, won’t ever be persuaded. Not if I were to call the nine choirs of angels to testify on my behalf. He and his kind are, with perfect sincerity, able to brand me Antichrist only because they block their ears to my message. They make certain they don’t hear a word of what I’m saying. And with good reason. If they listened it might dawn on them that it’s not I but they who are the blasphemers par excellence. Instead of the God who is love and peace at the world’s Centre, they put unregenerate man there - always an absurdity and a disaster. But they go much further. They put there the man who’s as mad as he’s cruel, a blown-up conflation of Torquemada and Stalin and Big Brother. An unholy trinity if ever there was one, Antichrist if ever he existed. This isn’t religious conviction but total lack of it. It’s witch-hunting fanaticism, ever growing to match and hide the ever-growing mass of doubts and contradictions and lies it masks. It’s paranoia at its ugliest and sickest. It’s the ultimate obscenity. And, alas, it’s endemic. In 1490, Gennadius of Novgorod, a prominent ecclesiastic, wrote in all seriousness: ‘A church council is needed not for debates on the faith, but in order that heretics may be judged, hanged, and burned.’
The irony of it all is that the cure of this foul disease is so very simple and ready-to-hand and effectual. It’s to see that the whole wretched business isn’t just a game but an illusory game, and that no one can begin to unseat the Almighty. It’s to see that His Majesty is quite safe from all pretenders to His throne. It’s to have the courtesy and good sense to let God be God at the Centre and man be man off-Centre. Then God is Godlike and humans are humane.
The Witness and his unquiet supporters up there in the gallery can’t hear me, I know. I hope the Jury can, and that I'm getting across what I deeply feel about the absolute distinction between God and man, no less than their absolute inseparability.
COUNSEL: May I point out that the court couldn’t care less about your deep feelings - so long as they stay deep? It’s your disinterring and displaying them without regard for others’ feelings which finds you in the dock today. In fact I’d go so far as to say that no one’s objecting to your wearing your feelings on your coat-sleeve, but only to your taking your coat off and flinging it in the public eye - a most delicate organ. With serious consequences for public order. A small indication of which this court has just witnessed.
MYSELF, with some heat: Your Honour, I must complain that Counsel is abusing his position to mislead the Jury about my lifestyle. I fling nothing at the public. Who was ever forced to read my books or turn up at my meetings? What’s more, I swear I’ve never, myself, set up any workshop or seminar or lecture or broadcast, but have simply responded to invitations. I’ve never pushed anything at anybody, and please God I never will. And when - as on that plane to Vancouver - I do find myself holding forth, I always say ‘Don’t believe anything I tell you. Try it out. Look for yourself.’
COUNSEL: All the same, people do come and hear you, and buy your books and read them and are convinced. Your message gets around and you can’t wash your hands of that. And the message that this Witness gets and spreads around is that you publicly deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and this denial brands you as Antichrist.
MYSELF: This is barefaced libel, members of the Jury. So far from denying that Christ has come in the flesh, I treasure that truth beyond all others - as will become clearer than clear before this Trial ends. If I’ve said little so far, publicly, of God incarnate in Christ, it’s not out of indifference. On the contrary. It’s because he’s too precious and near my heart to talk about when there’s no occasion to do so. How can I convince the court of this, and so bring my Defence against this Witness and his terrorist gang - these odd disciples of Him who is the embodiment of loving-kindness - to a fitting conclusion? I confess I’m baffled. Anyway, let me try.
I believe that the noblest and truest, the deepest and most daring of all insights, is that the Majesty back of the universe is none other than self-giving Love. That He is the one whose tenderness is such that He deliberately takes on no less than all the joy and the sparkle and the incredible richness of His world, every tear and groan, all its dreadful privation and darkness and guilt - thereby gaining for it the joy that has no shadow, the peace that can be won no other way, and no less expensively. Not that I can prove this formally. No amount of argument, I don’t care how penetrating or silver-tongued, can persuade anyone of the truth of the Incarnation. As a dogma it may well seem altogether absurd, to fly in the face of all the evidence. No - the proof is in the seeing of it and the living of it, in one’s most intimate involvement in the saving process. One’s Christing - no less. There’s no other way. St Paul was merely being realistic when he exclaimed, ‘Not I, but Christ that liveth in me!’ Paul was out, Christ was in, and this put paid to his blasphemy. Nothing could be less anti-Christ, or more pro-Christ. The Apostle had his way of saying it. I have my way of drawing it, as you will see from Diagram No. 15.
Diagram No. 15
My Defence against the accusation of being Antichrist could run to tens of thousands of words. But still it wouldn’t say as much as this eight-word Self-portrait.
When I read that third person over there behind the glass as the old self-centred man, or Adam, and the First Person here in front of it as the new God-centred man, or Christ, the words of St Paul (grown so tired and hackneyed) at once spring to a new life that blows my top and bowls me over:
As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all [all!] be made alive.
The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.
[That body] is sown in dishonour; [this body] is raised in glory. [That body] is sown in weakness; [this body] is raised in power. [That] is sown a natural body; [this] is raised a spiritual body.
Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.
If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
In him [Christ] dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him.
Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you?
When my seeing and my living deny these words of St Paul, I am anti-Christ. When they proclaim them I’m not just pro-Christ: I am complete in him. I’m Christed.
‘The Infinite Goodness has such wide arms,’ says Dante, ‘that it takes in whatever turns to it.’ I have a choice. Shall I embrace the little world of that little one, or the immense world of this Immense One? Can I not see that I’m incarnate in the wide-armed One here, and not in the narrow-armed one over there? Have I, or haven’
t I, blown my top and been bowled clean over - heels-over-no-head - by him and as him?
JUDGE: Are you telling us that, after all that backing and filling, you are a true Christian? That after all your theological toing and froing, after all that fancy East-West footwork, you line up in the end with the good old Christian creed? If so, you could have saved the court and the Prosecution a lot of time and trouble by saying so in the first place.
MYSELF: Jung says somewhere, Your Honour, that the Church is the custodian of mysteries it doesn’t understand. Well, I don’t flatter myself that I understand them either. Comprehension is the booby prize, anyway. Their meaning - praise the Lord! - is inexhaustible. What I do find, however, is that I have only to LOOK to see what perfect sense these basic doctrines make.
And now, just looking to see, I don’t have to mouth a single article of faith, much less subscribe to all sorts of manifest claptrap and moonshine, in order to benefit from the underlying mysteries. Now their wonderful therapeutic power flows, unobstructed by surface doubts and reservations, and by the deep self-reproach that comes of deluding myself for the sake of the promised therapy of body and mind and spirit. The real medicine isn’t to be bought at the price of double-think, or self-deceiving compromise, or any sort of humbug. Or bought at any price. It’s scot-free to seers.
Of these great mysteries which are for seeing and for living rather than comprehending, I say unequivocally with Coventry Patmore:
The one secret, the greatest of all, is the doctrine of the Incarnation, regarded not as an historical event which occurred two thousand years ago, but as an event that is renewed in the body of everyone who is in the way to the fulfilment of his original destiny.
And, still more boldly, with Meister Eckhart:
People think God has become a human being only there - in His historical Incarnation - but that is not so. For God is here, in this very place, just as much incarnate as in a human being long ago. And this is why He has become a human being: that He might give birth to you as His only-begotten Son, and as no less.
The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God Page 16