The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God

by Douglas Harding

  And, of course, all this applies to peeing as well, with its associated anatomy. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, to the whole urino-genital-excretory works. Dare you - can you - amputate or expurgate from the Body of God those members which Mrs Grundy would like to expurgate from the body of man?

  JUDGE: Surely you’ve made your point - and are now in danger of running it into the ground.

  MYSELF: My point, Your Honour, is the Ground! Let’s dare to be as grounded as God, as low. It may help us to take kindly to the facts in all their earthiness, and the necessity as well as the depth of the divine descent into their midst, if we recall how many have found hope and comfort in that descent. I’m thinking of the Christian tradition whose Deity is, to put it mildly, no toffee-nosed snob: of the faith that has for substance and centre-piece the coming-down of the King of Glory to be born in a shed reserved for beasts, and to die on a dump reserved for criminals judged lower than beasts. According to this faith, such is the world’s Top Liner that He becomes its Bottom Liner, thereby saving and sanctifying all between. What I’m saying is that, if so many have valued so highly and for so long this incomparable Comedown, the very minor part of it which is the Witness’s specialty is worthy of your sympathetic reconsideration. For you must agree that the Witness’s Convenience is a lot more convenient and respectable and salubrious than that stable in Bethlehem which (according to this great tradition) was not despised by Almighty God. Far from it: He moved right in. ‘Love,’ says William Butler Yeats, ‘has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement.’ Here is the God of St Paul, who has ‘chosen... [the] base things of the world, and things which are despised.’ Here is indeed the Highest who looks down on no creature. However low that creature, He’s lower, He’s lower.

  I find it touching and beautiful that Who I really, really am should be great enough and humble enough to play the part of one of the Witness’s regulars, and witty and humorous enough to be his one Irregular. He’s nearer to a man than his jocular vein.

  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and God a dull God. It’s not Him but the world of men in general (and of Counsel in particular) which takes itself so seriously, and gets down to things with furrowed brow. But at the Earth’s centre, where gravity’s zero, all ways out are ways up. So also at the Centre of the universe (which is where you are Who you really are), at its lowest point, gravity bottoms out and levity takes its rise. Here, God has great fun getting up to things, and forging the link between spirituality and humour. It’s no accident that the holy has its comic side, and the comic its holy side: the connection’s built-in from the start. The Creator’s marvellously lacking in gravitas. He’s Light - Light fantastic. P. G. Wodehouse is unlikely to be canonized just yet; but, as the future St Plum might put it, the shot’s on the board.

  It’s not only the banana-skin type of humour which up-ends things. ‘The whole of human life,’ as Plato observed, ‘is turned upside-down.’ This is where the divine comes in. ‘In the way of search for God,’ Rumi tells us, ‘everything is reversed.’

  Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I call the great Robert Browning, who will both sum up and light up (if not clean up) my response to the Crown Prosecutor and his somewhat tacky Witness:

  I but open my eyes, - and perfection, no more and no less,

  In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God

  In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

  And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew

  (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)

  The submission of man’s nothing-perfect to God’s all-complete,

  As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.

  Prosecution Witness No. 5

  THE PASSENGER

  Counsel begins by reminding the Witness that, though she is in court sub poena, she is on oath. The Prosecution requires her to outline the circumstance and the extent of her knowledge of me.

  She replies that we first met two years ago. She and I were members of a party of four who toured Europe by car for a month, so we got to know each other pretty well. Since then we have met occasionally and more or less by accident.

  COUNSEL: Is it a fact that the Accused did most of the driving, about which he made strange claims? If so, what were those claims? And did you find that his performance at the wheel of the car justified them?

  WITNESS: We went about four hundred miles, and he did all the driving. This was because he liked driving, and it was his car – a Rover – which he handled very well. Yes, he was a smooth driver, who knew instinctively how much faster than the speed limit he could drive and get away with it. Also, just when to overtake, and so on. As for his claims to be a very special sort of driver, one with an extraordinary secret, I never quite understood them or took them too seriously. If they help him to improve his performance, so much the better, say I. They’re his business, not mine or anybody else’s, and I think it’s outrageous that this court –

  His Honour and Counsel simultaneously intervene to warn the Witness of the consequence of questioning the authority of the court. She is advised to continue her evidence more circumspectly, confining it to what’s called for.

  In response to Counsel’s further questioning, Witness agrees, reluctantly, there was nothing special about my driving; and further, that nothing happened during the trip to suggest that one of the foursome was unique, or wielded superhuman powers of any kind, at the wheel or away from it. The car did, in fact, break down once, and the party lost its way more than once, and these difficulties were overcome by quite normal means.

  WITNESS adds: All the same, my impression is that Jack’s efficiency at the wheel, and his liveliness and sense of humour, had something to do with his strange views about himself. So, I say good luck to him and them. What works that well can’t be altogether off-beam.

  COUNSEL: That’s enough of your opinions. To come back to the facts: is it true that nothing happened during that tour, or has happened since, to convince you that the Accused exercises divine powers, let alone that he is himself a divine Being? Is that right?

  WITNESS: Yes, but surely it’s his -

  COUNSEL: No buts. Yes, or no?

  WITNESS: Yes and no.

  JUDGE: The court requires a straight answer.

  WITNESS: All right then. Yes.

  MYSELF, to the Witness: I have no questions for you at the moment, so please leave the box. But stay in court. I may have some for you presently.

  Defence: The Car Driver and the World Driver

  MYSELF: While I accept that the Witness’s account of the trip was sincere, I have to tell the court that mine, though equally sincere, could hardly be more different.

  I say we never exceeded the speed limit, and never came near it. I say we never got lost, and never broke down, and never drove four miles all told — let alone four thousand. I say we got many, many times more power out of a litre of petrol than any other car on the road. I say —

  JUDGE, angrily: Did you or didn’t you go on the same tour as the Witness? And please do not waste any more of the court’s time with fantasies or riddle-me-rees.

  MYSELF: Well, it was and it wasn’t the same tour. And what I just told the court happens to be a model of understatement: all gospel truth, but pitching the driver’s claim to extraordinary powers as low as possible, and couching it in the soberest language. Apparently the Witness didn’t share my breathtaking experience. I understand that. Everything depends, you see, on Who is driving.

  Yes, Your Honour, I did the driving. But Who was this I? That’s the big question, the question sub judice.

  Look: I’ll tell you what I did, you tell me Who did it. I’ll describe the astounding things that happened on that trip, if you’ll explain Who’s capable of such things — a human being, or a superhuman being, or the Divine Being. I can’t speak fairer than that, can I?

  My story is of a driver that you would swear was in no condition, leg
ally or medically, to be in charge of a push-bike. There he was, slouched in the driving seat, upside down and literally off his rocker. Dangerous driving at its most lethal, you would think, made worse by the unroadworthy state of his car, with most of the rear missing. As it turned out, however, none of this mattered very much, for the car was as handicapped as the driver. In fact, it was paralytic and incapable of moving an inch. Incapable even of coasting downhill in neutral with brakes off and three pushing.

  But neither my strangely dilapidated condition nor my car’s presented any difficulty, so far as transport was concerned. The countryside took care of that, and did all the moving necessary. And much, much more. The whole world was in turmoil, convulsed by quakes infinitely beyond the Richter scale. It was as if some giant troll were stirring the cosmos like a maniac, before gobbling it all up for his dinner.

  COUNSEL, sotto voce: The maniac who’s now in the dock?

  MYSELF: Let’s put it differently, and do belated justice to that inverted and abbreviated Driver. He was, in fact, so fit, so skiIful, so powerful, so unhandicapped, and — yes! — so unhuman that, instead of driving a car, he drove the world, without himself budging an inch!

  COUNSEL: Jurors have too much common sense to be taken in by this sophistry, this midsummer madness. The certainty that you and I move around in the world — and not vice versa — is so universal, so practical, so indispensable to life and thought that it can’t be false. Here, in fact, we have just one more example of the famous Nokes Law: Everyone’s out of step, except me! You can’t prove him wrong. But you can order him to fall out and go back to where he came from. To the glass-house. Or is it to the nut-house?

  MYSELF: If I’m out of step, it’s because I’m marching to God’s almighty drum. Let me see if I can confound Sergeant Wilberforce by getting another recruit to hear and march to it...

  Will the Witness please go back into the box. [She does so.] Please tell the court what I’m doing...

  WITNESS: Turning round, and round, and round in the dock.

  MYSELF: Just me? Is the dock, is anything else besides me on the move?

  WITNESS: No. Just you.

  MYSELF: Now it’s your turn to do what I did. [She complies, gathering speed ...] Tell the court whether you are moving, or the court. Go by what’s given right now.

  WITNESS: I’m quite still!... The court’s whizzing round! Wow!

  MYSELF: Please slow it down... [She stops turning. Somewhat reluctantly, it seems…]

  COUNSEL: Be sensible now! Enough of Nokes’s credo-quia-impossibile nonsense. You don’t believe you set the court in motion. Be honest.

  WITNESS: Why not? I was being sensible, just as you say. Coming to my senses. I understood enough of Einstein and relativity to know I’m not talking nonsense, either.

  MYSELF: Thank you very much. No more questions...

  What Counsel said about common sense, and the practical necessity of imagining oneself moving around in a still world, is true enough of course — so far as it goes. Which isn’t half far enough. It doesn’t go back to the beginning or on to the end. Let me complete it by telling the whole three-part story of his experience of movement:

  (1) As an infant he was still and his world was all commotion. When his dad took little Gerald for a drive, he loved watching the lampposts and trees and buildings go sailing by. When his dad tossed little Gerald up in the air and swung him around, it was fun and he wasn’t a bit scared. Why? Because everything in the room was rushing about like crazy — everything except him.

  (2) As an adult he’s all commotion and his world has ground to a halt. And he’s scared. Taking on all that turmoil has ousted his inner peace and left him jittery and twitchy, disturbed through and through. As you can see.

  (3) My wish for him is that one day (it could be as a result of this Trial) he will come to his senses and complete his life story. Then he will no longer be agitated and in a dither. He will regain his inner tranquillity by giving back to the universe the turmoil that never was his anyway. He will be an unflappable Seer of Who-he-is, enjoying the sight of a world that has sprung to life again in a dance whose corps de ballet ranges from lampposts and city blocks to the stars. God’s Bolshoi, putting on His Nutcracker Suite. What a philistine, what a bunkered ass, what a nutcase he’d been, to rubbish that superb spectacle! But now, arrived at the third stage, instead of driving his car he drives his world. And, for good measure, is less accident-prone. Driving about in a still world is driving without due care and attention. It’s dangerous driving. In the end, it’s fatal.

  Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, Your Honour and everyone else in this courtroom, I ask you, I put it to you with the utmost seriousness: Conceding that it’s the world that’s being driven, can you, dare you, put any creature in the driving seat, anyone except the Creator of the world? If you can and you dare, it’s not I but you who are guilty of blasphemy. God, Aristotle taught, is the Unmoved Mover of the world. When He condescends to take the wheel of my 1991 Rover, and set all His world a-roving for the price of a driblet of six-star Supershell, Jack can’t and Jack won’t try to shoulder Him out and take over. When he sets the Jungfrau waltzing with the Finsteraarhorn, Jack can’t and Jack won’t halt them in their tracks. That would make a jackass of him.

  When you next drive your car, why not let the lampposts and the trees and the buildings and the hills en route tell you Who’s driving? They are all raring to enlighten you. If you go on reading them as fixtures in a stable world, then for sure it’s a human driving — without due care and attention. But please God there will come a day when you’re sensible and humble enough to look and to stop hallucinating like mad. Then you will enjoy the superb spectacle of the World-Mover at work, and you will know that He is Who you really, really, really are. And then, maybe, you will bitterly regret having brought in a verdict of Guilty against me. Or rather, against Him! Think of that: against Him!

  Diagram No. 6

  Diagram No.6 gives a crude impression of the World-Driver on the job. But it does bring out the fact that upright things (like telegraph poles and church steeples) don’t keel over as they slide past Him. They stay firmly upright. And — how curious and significant, and how overlooked — upright means radial to His Centre! When next you kindly take the universe for a spin, see how all fans out from its Owner. Actually, you’ve only to glance round the court right now to observe how all its vertical lines converge on — well, on Whom? That’s the question this Trial is all about.

  Members of the Jury, you don’t look the sort that habitually has one —or two—or three for the road. But what, after all, is drunken driving? If it’s being so blotto that, suffering from a severe bout of delirium tremens (so to say), you see moving things as stuck, and stuck things as moving, and converging lines as parallel, then I have to accuse you of this offence. What’s worse, accuse you of having committed it countless times. In fact, I doubt whether you know what sober driving means! But there’s a remedy. The only safe and sober Driver stands ready to take charge. Hand over the wheel to your Divine Chauffeur!

  I seem to remember Bertie Wooster tottering down the Mall, after a cheerful evening at the Drones. Or was the Mall tottering down him? Anyway, says Wodehouse, he ‘aimed a kick at a passing lamppost’. He saw what he saw, for once. But there’s a cheaper and safer method of sobering up than the in-vino-veritas way, a much better way of seeing what you see than going on a blinder. It is to look, just LOOK, and see what’s moving. And see WHO isn’t. And BE the One that never budged by a billionth of an inch!

  COUNSEL, bursting at last under the strain: Oh no you’re not getting away with this! Members of the Jury, Nokes makes a great show of spiritual depth. He figures he’s the profound one, in contrast to us shallow types. I say he’s a master of superficiality. He trivializes the great issues and problems of our life, reducing them to such matters of moment as the curious behaviour of telegraph poles. He’s been playing this funny-man, happy-go-lucky, soft-headed, Mickey Mouse game from t
he start of this Trial. It’s one which serious and responsible adults, coats off and sleeves rolled up, engaged in the world’s work, decline to play.

  MYSELF: And the reason why you hard-headed spoilsports are stressed to the limit is that, instead of playing God’s game, you play God. Stop arrogating to Sir Gerald and Co. His work of world-moving. Give yourselves a break and let Him get on with it, for a change. Look how marvellous He is at the job! Do you imagine that He who quite casually moves the Sun and the other stars can’t shift the picayune obstructions that stand in your path? Can’t the One who stirs the cosmos more effortlessly than you stir your porridge - can’t He also shift your blinkers or blinders, so that you discover simultaneously that magnificent Storm and the Stillness at the Eye of it? His Tempest there, His Peace right where you are?

  Tell me, how can you sidestep, how can you trivialize, that deepest Peace, which is yours for the seeing?

  Only when we see everything else as moving can we truly sing ‘We shall not be moved’. In their different ways, the following Defence witnesses encourage us, by placing motion and Stillness, to enjoy both:

  ‘Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad... ‘The poetry of motion... Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped... Oh bliss! Oh poop poop! Oh my! Oh my!’

  Kenneth Grahame

  The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs... Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord.