The blow had repercussions far beyond the family. Jack made a great stir among the members of the sect in London and Suffolk, and beyond, by formally challenging their most treasured beliefs. And, much worse, the beliefs of all Christian people. And then there was the provocative way he did it. He could have quietly ceased to attend church services and broken by degrees with his Methodist friends, thereby cushioning the shock to his parents. Instead, he chose to circulate among church members a thesis, setting forth views which outraged them so much that the word went round that this was the worst case of` apostasy that the sect had ever known. I came by a copy of the document and wasn’t at all surprised at the shock and the pain it gave to those for whom it was intended. Why (I asked myself) had he done this thing? He was too intelligent to imagine he would convert any of these people to his opinions. The most charitable explanation was that he acted out of a desire to show off and play the enfant terrible, no matter how devastated his parents were sure to be.
COUNSEL: Do you still have a copy of the Accused’s thesis?
WITNESS: I can’t find it. I may have thrown it away in disgust.
However, I recollect some of its contents.
COUNSEL: Briefly, what were the author’s main points - in so far as they have any bearing on his Trial here, some twenty-three years later, on a charge of blasphemy?
WITNESS: I distinctly remember his saying that it was an accident that he happened to be born to parents who held such views as his did. Indeed it was by the merest chance that he had turned up in twentieth-century Europe instead of, say, ancient India or China. How could he be sure which faith, if any - among all those that have arisen throughout the world’s history - was for him the true faith and revelation of God? How could he possibly know the answer till he had (these were his words) ‘shopped around a good deal to see what was on offer’? Already, at twenty-one, after a few weeks’ reading, he claimed to have detected in the great religions a common core... This brings me to the place where I find his views so repulsive that I don’t like to soil my lips by recounting them -
COUNSEL: What was this common core as he saw it? What did those religions have to say that so appealed to him and so appalled his people?
WITNESS: He claimed they assured him that he - yes, he, personally - had never been born and consequently would never die! How could he be sure of this? Because he was himself none other than - how can I say this without being sick? - none other than the Everlasting One.
Well, you can imagine the effect on his parents! The family had been held in high esteem among the members of the sect, and not just locally. ‘Oh, the disgrace, the disgrace!' was his mother’s reaction. I fear she had been inordinately proud of the early conversion and outstanding piety of her eldest, and some of her co-religionists lost no opportunity of reminding her of his sudden fall to unprecedented depths. But it was the effect on his father that was so pitiful. I remember the poor man, whom I’d got quite attached to, weeping copiously as he handed me a copy of that blasphemous document.
It was soon after that -
COUNSEL, interrupting: Remember His Honour’s warning. Avoid giving unnecessary pain, and don’t stray into side-issues.
WITNESS: Well, it may be, of course, a chance coincidence that the parents of the Accused died, both of them, so soon after their son’s apostasy. Perhaps they didn’t die of a broken heart. But -
]UDGE, at the top of his voice: I’ll tolerate no more from this Witness. I instruct the jury to pay no attention to the last part of his evidence. Come to that, I await Counsel’s reasons for regarding any of his evidence as relevant to the case before the court. Is he thinking of the Accused’s apologia, which I thought was circulated only among members of the sect? Was it ever released for public consumption? Is it around now? If not, of what interest is it to this court?
COUNSEL: My information, Your Honour, is that it wasn’t released... Allow me to explain, however, the Prosecution’s aim in calling this Witness.
In fairness to the public, and indeed to the Accused himself, my purpose throughout this Trial is to present an overall picture of him, and his vocation in life as he understands it. If it turned out that his blasphemy is occasional or accidental or untypical of the man, that would count in his favour. But if it turned out to be consistent over the years, and thoroughly built-in and indeed quite central to his life, that would count in his disfavour. Obviously. Well, the evidence the court has just heard strongly confirms the latter picture.
JUDGE: The Blasphemy Act of 2002, as I read it, is not retrospective. Neither in law nor in common sense nor in common justice can a man be charged with an offence committed before it became an offence.
COUNSEL: Of course I respectfully concur, Your Honour. Nevertheless the Prosecution points out that, following the passing of the Act, the Accused has done nothing to tone down - much less withdraw - his teaching or his claims. On the contrary, he has been at pains publicly to endorse and extend his original views as outlined in that lost document. In short, it’s he who has brought forward his prior-to-the-Act blaspheming past into his post-Act blaspheming present, so that it is all of a piece. And is properly taken to be so by the Prosecution.
JUDGE: While I follow your reasoning, I direct the Jury to pay no attention to the Witness’s opinions about what young Nokes had to do to break free of that religious sect. And absolutely no attention whatever to his opinions about the effect of the breakaway on the young man’s parents.
The Witness stands down, shaking his head. Some boos and clapping in the public gallery...
Defence: Time Out
MYSELF: Let me get two things, arising from the Witness’s testimony (if that’s the right word for it), out of the way and done with.
Alas, the Judge’s direction to the Jury can do nothing to expunge from their minds the idea that I’m responsible for my parents’ deaths before their time. What’s said can’t be unsaid.
Therefore, I can hardly pass over this insinuation without comment. It is indeed conceivable that my heresy did shorten my father’s life. Not my mother’s - she was already sick at the time.
Certainly it did much to spoil what remained of his life. He loved me so much, and had placed so much store on my following in his godly footsteps - moreover my heresy was (as he saw it) so devilish and so certain to send me to hell forever - that there’s no doubt the shock of it did make him ill. Increasingly I have felt a great sadness that I had to do this thing to him. But never guilt. He would have died in defence of his convictions and his right to proclaim them, and I’m sufficiently his son that I’m prepared, if necessary, to die in defence of my very different convictions. I like to think that on some plane he will not be ashamed of me in the end, whatever the verdict of this court and of posterity. Just let me add that I have always loved and respected him more than any man I have known, and trust that (as I say, in some dimension or on some plane or other) he’s aware of the fact. Perhaps this tribute to him will do something to counter the Witness’s atrocious insinuation that I’m not just a dyed-in-the-wool blasphemer, but a hideously callous one into the bargain.
The other comment I want to make on his testimony is even more important. Neither in that original paper of mine, resigning from the Primitive Methodists, nor at any time since have I made the ridiculous claim that John a-Nokes wasn’t born and won’t die. Still less have I identified him with the Eternal One. In fact, a large part of my mission in life is to combat all attempts (and how popular and many and varied and persistent they are!) to attribute immortality to men and women as such. All flesh is as grass. Humans happen, then unhappen. Like the goods in the shop run by a previous Witness, they have a limited shelf-life.
John a-Nokes qua John a-Nokes is biodegradable, and before long I shall be excused from being him, for ever. Enough is enough of Jack (say I), and the universe agrees. There’s an ephemeral creature for you! There’s a perisher all right!
But why should I worry? Here’s a very different story. Right
here, a yard or two nearer to me than that almost-goner, shines the Eternal One. Here is His home for ever.
Your Honour, and members of the Jury, will you please turn to Diagram No. 25 in your booklet, and to yet another variation on the Defence’s schema. It will help you to follow what I’m about to get up to.
Diagram No. 25
In my right hand I hold this mirror, in my left this copy of my birth certificate. For me to read the certificate it must be a foot or so away, where I also find, staring fixedly at me through his oval window, the person the certificate refers to. There they are, goods and label, in the region where the Great Universal Store displays that perishable Nokes package - with its distinctive label indicating brand name, serial number and approximate shelf-life. It will presently be withdrawn from the human display stand, and disposed of.
JUDGE: In plain terms, you’ll die one day, and be buried or cremated. Is that what you mean?
MYSELF: Of course, Your Honour. But also - and more particularly - I’m speaking of dying today. Tomorrow’s too late to bite the dust. Please look! Watch me carefully. Simultaneously I bring goods and label up to my Eye, noting how they merge... blur... become indecipherable and unrecognizable - and are altogether obliterated just before contact. Here, certificate and certified are no more. But I remain. The lesson is that the One I really, really am is absolutely unaffected by this summary disposal of that John a-Nokes package.
In fact, I can find no way of taking that package and bringing it here without losing it en route. It doesn’t belong here. This place just won’t take it. Here, no perishables are admitted, and Death is forever held at bay. To St Paul’s somewhat rhetorical questions - ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?’ - my mundane reply is: ‘Not many millimetres off, Paul dear, but quite far enough to draw its sting, and turn its victory into defeat. Right here, that mortal does, as you say, put on immortality. Right here, I’m forever grounded in the Timeless.'
COUNSEL: Am I allowed to butt in here and put a question?
MYSELF: Try me.
COUNSEL: How long have you been in court this session, following the luncheon recess?
MYSELF: About an hour.
COUNSEL: Members of the Jury, we have been patiently watching the Accused amuse himself with a piece of glass and a scrap of paper. The purpose of this child’s game was to prove he’s timeless. Well, it was all an absurd waste of time. He has just told us that he – this self-styled timeless one - has been in court for about an hour!
MYSELF: And I meant what I said, because – naturally and out of politeness – I was going by your Greenwich time out there, and not by my Paradise time right here. Am I being difficult? I can best explain by asking His Honour and the Jury to join me in another little test (it’s beneath the dignity of a King’s Counsellor, of course); the least of all our experiments, leading – if only we’re simple enough - to the greatest of all our discoveries in the course of this Trial.
You are wearing wrist-watches. Look and see what the time is now by them... Somewhen around 4 p.m., I think.
Time varies with place. Evidently the time now on the Jury benches is around 4 p.m. I see it’s the same here in the dock. Telephone calls would reveal that the time in New York is around 11 a.m. and in Los Angeles around 8 a.m. And so on. Along with space, time’s essentially zoned. That’s why, when you travel to different places, you check what the local time is by referring to the local clocks. It’s important, whenever you are, to keep abreast of and go by the time there. But there’s just one place in the universe where it’s a matter of life and death to tell the right time – if any. And that’s its Centre.
So the big question is: what’s the time right where you are, at the very mid-point of all those zones? Unfortunately, it’s a place that’s not on the phone and where they don’t have any local timepieces, so you’ll have to go along and take your own timepiece with you. And keep an open mind, and see for yourself.
Which you do now by slowly, slowly bringing together your watch and your eye, attending throughout to what’s on show, what’s actually given...
Go on now. Don’t be shy, and don’t look at me but at your watch, bringing it right up till it will come no nearer...
Right... What happened? Didn’t those hands and figures blur and fade and finally vanish? In fact, didn’t the timepiece itself (and all pieces are timepieces) vanish too, in the Place where there are no bits and pieces at all?
So the Place you’re at is timeless, absolutely and always free of time and of the things of time. Here at Home, you’re not troubled by so much as a shadow or a sniff of time. In fact, you never were anywhere else than in Eternity, where it’s always 0 o’clock. Your ordinary wrist-watch, which tells you the time out there, has just been re-engineered into God’s extraordinary wrist-watch which tells You the no-time here, for ever and for ever. The former has a price tag, is never quite accurate, can be lost or stolen, requires periodical renewal. Not so the latter. God’s no-timepiece is infinitely superior to anything that even the Swiss can turn out. Praise be to the Holiest for His total victory over time and death, for the unspeakably sure safety of His presence, and for this unspeakably vivid and handy unveiling of it! Dear Lord, help us smart alicks to your artlessness! O Sancta simplicitas!
COUNSEL: Really, Your Honour! For the umpteenth time, this is a court of law, not a kindergarten. Do the Jury have to play this infantile game?
JUDGE: The question hardly arises, I think, since the conscientious jury members have already done so. Myself also. With what result? That’s the question.
MYSELF: I’m grateful to Your Honour. It was St Paul, again, who said that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. And medieval theologians who went on to say that only God can be perfectly known because only God is perfectly simple.
To help us now to be as unsophisticated as God, let’s turn to Diagram No. 26. Self-explanatory, it displays at a glance our Endings, so far, about time’s whereabouts and whenabouts.
Diagram No. 26
Every way I look at it, these findings about the timeless First Person, superficially so strange, in practice make wonderfully good sense. Thus:
(1) What I find here - and what others find when they come here to see whether I'm telling the truth - is no thing at all. And where there’s no thing, there’s no change, and where there’s no change, there’s no way to register time, and where there’s no way to register time, there’s no time to register. QED.
(2) Here I don’t feel a second older than when I was brought up into the court from my cell in the basement, or when this Trial started. Or, for that matter, when as a small child I used to look in the mirror and find a staring stranger there. My world there - including him - has aged a lot, but not the No-stranger here who is in receipt of it and him. No, not by a split second. In fact, I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel my age (as they say), or any age, right here. An old Emptiness, a decrepit Void, a hoary No-head - what sort of monstrosity is that?
(3) This Awareness which I am here has no awareness of beginning - whether at John a-Nokes’s awaking this morning, or at his recovery from anaesthesia in hospital, or at his birth, or at his conception, or whenever. Awareness never catches itself popping up out of unawareness, or suffering interruption, or popping back in again. Since here is the only place it’s ever found in, there's no appeal to another place against what’s found here, no higher court to take it to. Accordingly it announces itself as timeproof, with all the assurance of silence announcing itself as soundproof, and stillness as shockproof.
(4) As First Person here, I find myself to be in all respects the diametric opposite of what I appear to be there, as third person. Always it’s asymmetry, total contrast. No face here facing that face there, no colour here facing those colours there, transparency here facing opacity there, stillness here facing motion there, simplicity here facing complexity there - and, by the same token, eternity here facing time there. Of course.
(5) W
hen I cease letting language hoodwink me, all comes clear. I make the momentous discovery that to switch the subject of a sentence from second or third person to First Person is to reverse the predicate. Thus when he dances he dances while the world - miserable wallflower - sits it out; whereas when I dance it’s the world that dances with abandon while I take a nice rest. Thus when he eats he eats, and I watch apple pie with Devonshire cream going tasteless and cold into that toothed slot in a face; whereas when I eat I fast, and watch apple pie with Devonshire cream vanish into thin air, on its way to this place where, instead of a toothed slot in a face, there arises this warm apple-pie-and-cream-type deliciousness. Thus when he’s born he's born; whereas when I'm born it’s not I but my world that’s born. Thus when he dies he dies; whereas when I die it’s not I but my world that dies. Time dies. No flowers, by request.
(6) What does it mean in practice - consciously to live from the Deathless? From the Timeless Moment at the Centre of the Time-world, out into that world? It means never being at a loss about how to pass the time, seeing there’s none to pass. It means finding your limbs dancing in time with the music of the God in whose bosom you lie forever. Well may Pere de Caussade promise that, provided you live where you must live anyhow - in the Now - you can trust it to come up with ‘all your heart could desire’. It’s not a case of returning again and again to your Source till you settle down there and reap these benefits, but of seeing that you can’t escape it by a split second, try as you may. Consciousness Eternal, which is what you are, is nowhere and nowhen else.
When these six evidences of the First Person - as the One who’s forever clean of time and all time’s dust and debris - are totted up, the result is surely enough to convince any reasonable juryperson that here is the sober truth. And that to say ‘Here I’m this timeless One' is no more blasphemous than saying ‘There I’m that time-ridden one.’ In fact the latter implies the former. Only the Timeless is awake to the passage of time.
The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God Page 26