The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God

by Douglas Harding

  Diagram 29

  The apparent go of the universe, including your life and mine, is circumferential - and God-denying. Its real go is radial - to and from God - and is the wielding of His marvellous shield and sword. Wielded from here (C), in the Place where, as Ananda Mayi Ma says, ‘all problems have but one universal solution.’

  COUNSEL: This grand talk of supernatural weaponry and wizardry would be a lot more credible if backed up by just one miraculous deed.

  MYSELF, to Counsel: Right! Here it comes! Please wave your brief at me - for the hundredth time.

  COUNSEL, complying energetically: What’s miraculous about that?

  MYSELF: What isn’t miraculous about it? The Wizard-King you really, really are at Centre (C) commands countless legions of familiars or angel-servitors (nowadays we call them particles, atoms, molecules and cells) to co-operate in bringing about that arm movement in your human region. Hierarchical magic, a feat of many-levelled, many-regioned organization of unimaginable complexity, instantly put into effect. It would be a marvel if it had taken centuries. And had been monitored throughout, at every level, by all the backroom boys in the world.

  You haven’t the faintest idea of how you did it. But you do know Who did it.

  Don’t tell me you have the crust to credit Sir Gerald Wilberforce KC with the astounding miracle that you - yes, You! - have just performed for our benefit. That, Sir Gerald, would be blasphemy!

  As I say, you haven’t a clue how you did it. But at least you realize - or should realize - that the miracle was a masterstroke of radial or up-and-down organization, not one of circumferential or on-the-level organization. Jacob dreamed a true dream:

  ‘Behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.’ None was so foolish as to try to take off sideways.

  Prosecution Witness No. 26:

  THE COUNSELLOR

  COUNSEL: Please tell the court about your work.

  WITNESS: I’ve been practising as a counsellor for something like thirty years, first on the staff of a large industrial concern and latterly on my own. People come to see me with all sorts of problems - fears, frustrations, anxieties, doubts, difficulties of every kind. They come to me knowing that I’m an attentive listener and talking with me has a good chance of helping them to find their own solution to their problem. The fact that I’m a woman is more of an advantage here than otherwise, I suspect.

  COUNSEL: What is your connection with the Accused?

  WITNESS: An indirect one. Two of my clients were followers of his. Like so many of us, they were in trouble because they wouldn’t admit to their darker side. They persuaded themselves it didn’t exist. They turned a blind eye to their anger, for example. The psychosomatic effects were quite serious. In the case of these two, their trouble had been compounded by the Accused’s insistence that they were really and truly perfect. Divine, he said. So, of course, to feel angry or scared or miserable was just not on. And the more these negative feelings were denied expression, the more they demanded expression. Great was the relief of these clients when they allowed themselves to drop their impossible self-image, to forget about any sort of perfection (let alone divine perfection) and accept their human limitations.

  COUNSEL: What have you to say about the religious aspect of these pretensions? About the notion of deification itself, aside from the psychological harm you refer to?

  WITNESS: I’m no theologian, and these terms mean next to nothing to me. All I’m sure of is that the idea of deification didn’t work out at all, at least in the cases known to me. I’ll go so far as to say that, in my experience, of all the illusions people entertain about themselves, the illusion of attainable and mandatory perfection – of divinity, if you like - is the most damaging.

  COUNSEL, to Jury: John a-Nokes, so far as the Prosecution understands him, rests his case on the proposition that he really is the Divinity he professes to be. And he adds that this Divinity is the great Healer. Healer, mark you! The Witness’s testimony, I think you will agree, blows these claims sky-high. She has exposed the Accused as an all-too-human human being who - at least in some instances - makes other humans sick, and by no means a Divine Being who makes them whole.

  This may not be the aspect of his behaviour which excites breaches of the peace, but it does a good deal to excuse them. Or rather, to account for the instinct behind them.

  Defence: The Reversal of Values

  MYSELF, cross-examining the Witness: Let’s go a little further into this self-esteem business. If some squiffy stranger at a party very confidentially informs you that your face reminds him of his darling Pekingese, and you happen to be the current beauty queen of the Western World, you’ll hardly be devastated. More probably your reaction would be hoots of laughter. Or if he said, ‘I’m sorry to have to say it, but you don’t speak so good,’ and you happen to be the Poet Laureate, you’ll hardly let the remark prey on your mind for long, or suppress all memory of it. On the contrary, you’ll welcome a few more stories like that to dine out on. Am I right?

  WITNESS: Surely.

  MYSELF: Well now, as a general rule it seems that people are cheerfully relaxed about their peripheral defects - whether alleged or real - if they are confident about their all-rightness at core. Secure in their self-esteem, they have no need to deny or pretend anything. They can afford to be honest. Agreed?

  WITNESS: Well, yes. But the question is: Who has that degree of inner confidence? Or is inner self-satisfaction the expression I want?

  MYSELF: Who indeed? We shall see. All of us are hooked on perfection. The great question is: where does it hang out? Nearly all of us are looking for it in the wrong place (in the peripheral region of our humanness) instead of the right place (in the central region of our divineness). It hangs in. Perfection lies at the heart of all. Indeed you could say it is the heart of the heart of every being, no matter how lowly and deficient its manifest embodiment. In the case of human beings, the contrast between their central perfection and their peripheral imperfection is very fraught and dramatic and many-sided. And very, very important to recognize.

  Utopia (the Greek word means no place) is forever unrealizable in any of those places out there, and forever realized in this No-place right here. Will the members of the Jury please refer to Diagram No. 30. I can’t remind you too often how this diagram - which is the master plan of my Defence - brings out the fundamental differences between yourself as second/third person (picked up by others and their cameras, and by your mirror out there) and yourself as First Person (picked up by yourself directly at Centre); how it highlights the contrast between that human physique of yours (normal-way-up, headed, two-eyed and short-armed) and this divine physique of yours (upside down, headless, single-eyed, magnificently wide-armed). Now you would think (wouldn’t you?) that’s contrast enough for one simple diagram - more like a lightning sketch - to take care of. But no, more’s to come. A lot more. And vital stuff, at that.

  Diagram No. 30

  At right angle to this vertical revolution, there’s a horizontal revolution. The right hand of that little one there in the mirror corresponds to the left hand of this Big One, your own left hand. Similarly, his left hand corresponds to your right hand. Now if taking your cue from tradition and from language itself, you envisage the left, or sinister, hand as holding sinister or negative values, and the right, or dexter, hand as holding right or positive values, then at a glance you get the message that your identity-shift from that second/third person to this First Person involves an equally drastic value-shift. Actually, not so much a shift as a complete turn-around. Your values as First Person reverse your values as second/third person. And the hallmark of the former is a perfection of which the latter falls infinitely short.

  It’s rather as if the photographic negative of the third person’s world were the photographic positive of the First Person’s world, black and white changing places. And as if the picture were being vie
wed upside down and back to front. All making for an interesting life, you could say. But tricky, none too easy.

  COUNSEL: These unsupported ex cathedra pronouncements are of little interest to the court, and in any case their connection with the Witness’s testimony about your two unfortunate disciples is far from clear... May she leave the box, or have you further questions to put to her?

  MYSELF: I’ve only one more. It’s this: did those two clients of yours give the impression that they had gone deeply into my teaching? Were they clear or were they vague and confused about it?

  WITNESS: I’m pretty sure they weren’t aware of the contrasts you’re now talking about. Of these turn-arounds.

  MYSELF: Which means they didn’t get my message at all. (People often don’t, you know.) It follows that their psychological problems can’t in fairness be laid at my door, and are irrelevant to this Trial... I’ve no further questions. Thank you. You may stand down...

  As for those ex cathedra pronouncements of mine on the reversal or transvaluation of values - here comes the support that Counsel asks for. It has more legs to stand on than a centipede. Let’s just take a small sample of them:

  (1) Love, for a start. The love of that little one is conditional. It makes demands, seeks some return, is in part a trade-off. Also, it’s nothing if not choosy. There just isn’t enough of the stuff to spread around. If it happens to alight on two or three people equally and at the same time, expect trouble. In any case expect variableness. The course of human love never did and never will run smooth. Never, never... In contrast, the divine love of this Big One is unconditional. It makes no demands, looks for no return, is equally bestowed on all, doesn’t vary in the slightest, always runs smooth. Why? Because the Big One lies at the Source of all, and to be here is to love all beings as Oneself, regardless of how lovable or unlovable they may seem.

  (2) That little one, always seeking power over others, turns out to be powerless... By contrast, this Big One, altogether non-interfering, turns out to be the Only Power, not operating from outside on creatures but from inside as them.

  (3) That little one, poor fellow, has to live with two conflicting pieces of knowledge - the deep conviction that all the world is his in reality, and the superficial certainty that almost none of it is his in practice. Result: greed. He’s driven to amass around himself all manner of possessions - tokens of his infinite wealth - regardless of how trivial and superfluous and plain cock-eyed they may be. (Example - I’m not making this up - a machine for slicing the top off a boiled egg; no breakfast table is complete without our new electrified model. And no kitchen table without our five-speed egg-whisk.) Regardless of the fact that these possessions, taken together, make such demands on him that they come to possess him. Regardless of the fact that only the moment of getting is pleasure: before that is the pain of not having, after that the pain of having... The Big One is relieved of both pains. He’s so Big there’s nothing left to get and have. He doesn’t own a thing. You name it, he is it. As No-thing whatever he’s capacious of all things, and is satisfied. In fact, to own so much as a wooden nickel is to wound the world to the marrow, cleaving it asunder into an owning bit and an owned bit. Conversely, to own absolutely Nothing is to be the Master Physician who heals that wound.

  (4) The little one’s knowledge is the ending of wonder. The Big One’s knowledge is the beginning of wonder. The little one is heady and knowing and smart. He’ll buy knowledge at the expense of mystery every time, and sooner or later it gives him a splitting headache. The Big One buys mystery at the expense of knowledge till all that’s left is the Mystery itself, the Perfectly-known-as-unknowable Source that is the cure of all the headaches it gives rise to.

  (5) The little one prizes success at others’ expense, and fails. The Big One doesn’t, and wins. His is the success story of all time, the story of the One who has the useful knack of Being, of Self-origination, without any help and without the slightest idea how he comes by that knack.

  (6) For the little one, humiliation is hell. Life keeps putting him down, and he keeps bouncing back again by every possible means, till the irreversible put-down of Death stops play. For the Big One, humiliation is the key to heaven. It opens the trapdoor to the stable and well-founded Self-esteem of the Deathless.

  (7) For the little one, birth is a happy event, death a tragic event. For the Big One, it’s the other way round: ‘Man is born into sorrow, as the sparks fly upward’ and ‘Blessed are they who die in the Lord.’ My birth is the forgetting of Myself, my death (now rather than in the future) is the remembering of Myself.

  (8) As for hate, anger, fear and craving in all their fifty-seven varieties, what sense they seem to make out there in that little one, and what nonsense they really make here in this Big One! Candidly, but with some tenderness and amusement, the First Person perceives the third person as warped and screwy, his values as twisted. No wonder that, traditionally, the satanic reverses the divine - recites the Lord’s Prayer backwards, for example. No wonder that, when the previous Witness, Sister Marie-Louise, looks in her mirror, what she sees is something like Diagram No. 31 of your booklet. This derangement should be (but alas isn’t) a warning to her to go by and trust what’s her side of the glass, the Big One, the Great Untwisted.

  Diagram No. 31

  (9) As the Defence Map won’t let us forget, the little one is the arch-escapist who, not content with framing and glazing his front against an intrusive world, turns his back on it. His motto ‘I’m all right, Jack’ ensures all goes wrong. Intent on self-preservation, he’ll soon be a goner - the world will see to that. Meanwhile he has the glassy look and feel of the opt-outer and almost-goner. How unlike the Big One who, tender and stark naked to the world he faces, taking it in and taking it on, is wholly involved and wholly vulnerable! Giving place to all, he’s as he was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. He is the world without end, amen.

  COUNSEL, with a deep sigh: And, it goes without saying, You are this Jackpot of jackpots! Amen!

  MYSELF: Why, of course! So are you. So are we all, at Centre. When St John of the Cross says ‘The Centre of the soul is God’, he makes no exceptions. And each of us is furnished, off-Centre, with an all-too-human little one. Ever distinct and in every way contrasting, this Big One and that little one comprise unequal halves of a whole, a keen edge and a coarse whetstone - as distinguishable as up from down and left from right, and as inseparable. Together they set up the dynamic, the polarity, the unceasing interplay between the Divinity and the humanity that together make up our life. Blasphemy, I say, is claiming to be one and not the other - either claiming to be a man who can do very nicely without God, thank you very much, or else claiming to be the God who can do very nicely without man, good riddance. In either case the medicine for blasphemy is consciously to embrace both - each in its proper place - and the ceaseless two-way traffic that plies between them.

  COUNSEL: Without concrete illustration - let alone hard evidence - this is so much wordplay and no Defence at all.

  MYSELF: At the risk of some embarrassment, let me take an example from my own personal life. Counsel will probably suggest to the court that I’ve cooked it up specially for this occasion. So, by way of confirmation, I’ll throw in afterwards a couple of observations by men who are widely recognized as sages - as people who have got the balance right, the balance between their humanness and their divineness.

  I’m deeply committed to and quietly in love with a woman, just one. Occasionally I fall for another, but not deeply or for long. We fight with remarkable regularity, and get hurt. One explanation is that I’m too dashed preoccupied with my own plans and ideas, which I impose on the lady without respite. No doubt there’s something in this, though I suspect the deeper cause is less specific, and more like a need on both sides to disturb creeping complacency and bring drama into our lives, a vigorous ding-dong. Anyway, that’s all speculation and little-one stuff... Beneath the sometimes choppy surface, the Big One’s love goes on all
the while, steady and unchanging as the deepest ocean. As the Big One, I love the lady absolutely, for she is the Self of myself. Let those winds blow and waves rage as they please, they are God’s winds and waves. His weather - at the level where He keeps His weather.

  Some three centuries before Christ, the Chinese Taoist Chuang-tzu wrote: ‘It’s not that the sage lacks bad feelings, but that he doesn’t let them inside where they will do him harm.’ He doesn’t wash his hands of those very human susceptibilities. He deals with them skilfully. Accepting full responsibility for them, he’s careful to place them where they belong. Ramana Maharshi, Indian sage of the twentieth century, said: ‘The ego of the sage arises again and again. But he recognizes it for what it is, therefore it’s not dangerous.’ Firmly assured of his central perfection as Being-Consciousness-Bliss, he can afford to accept undismayed the inexhaustible variety and messiness of the imperfections It comes up with.

  Coming back to my own case, I don’t deny or deplore my all-too-human humanness. On the contrary, I lay claim to and insist on it out there, every bit as much as I lay claim to and insist on my divineness right here. My admission of - no, my emphasis on - this essential bipolarity should clear me, surely, of the crime I’m charged with.

  COUNSEL, like a shot: It does nothing of the sort! Either you make out you are the Almighty or you don’t. Yes or no? It’s no excuse that you have a mood or an aspect or an alter ego which is a lot less ambitious. So what? If you claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne of Great Britain, and were caught plotting to usurp that throne, it would be no defence at your trial for high treason that you were an assistant garbage collector. Rather the reverse.

  MYSELF: But it might do my defence a power of good if I sincerely claimed that all the assistant and master garbage collectors in the world were rightful heirs along with me.