The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God

by Douglas Harding

  Which brings me to the practical proof, the promised down-to-earth demonstration in everyday living of the fact that I have no mind here. It’s not that I can manage pretty well without the God-damned thing, but that I can’t manage at all with it. It, or rather the mistaken idea of it, gets in the way all the time. I assure learned Counsel that I value an ounce of practice here more than a ton of philosophizing. And so for a brief word or two about the mindless life.

  I call it alert idiocy -

  COUNSEL: Omit alert -

  MYSELF: And substitute wise? Wise naїvety. And, just in case you should confuse this naїvety with dumbness and folly, let me remind you that it’s from this position of not knowing that my Defence is being conducted. I’m absolutely serious when I tell you I’ve no idea what I’m up to. [COUNSEL: Hear, hear!] All I do is see Who I am and eagerly await developments. I listen with interest to the sounds coming from this dock. At last, having learned the lesson of countless disappointments, and having ceased to rely on the minuscule resources of that pinhead over there in my mirror, I start relying on the infinite resources of the God-head, on the Source of all resources right here; so that now I find myself knowing what has to be known, and saying what has to be said, and doing what has to be done, without any preview at all. I don’t know what I think till I hear what I say - hear the words that come from my No-mouth. From something like what the Ancient Greeks would have called my Daimon, or Good Genius.

  COUNSEL: And what your contemporaries call your demon, or evil genius.

  MYSELF, ignoring the crack: It really is so very inefficient to operate from a mind which is full of things to go wrong, and so very efficient to operate from a No-mind which is empty of all that clutter. This isn’t a dogma for believing but a working hypothesis for testing, all day and every day. It’s never too late to have a marvellous childhood. True maturity is that second childhood which I still call alert idiocy.

  COUNSEL: At least we can agree about your idiocy and God’s wisdom. Which neatly disposes of your claim to be Him. [He treats the Jury to a broad smile - I think his first so far in the Trial.]

  MYSELF: No, Sir Gerald! You’ve got it all wrong again. At this level it’s not (strange to say) that I’m a foolish old dingbat and my God is all-wise, and that if I know what’s good for me I’ll hand over my portfolio to Him. (Valuable advice, true at its own level, but not here.) Here, the deeper truth is that, on the contrary, He’s perfectly clueless, and that to be Him is to be perfectly clueless too. No institution contains a patient as empty-headed as the God-head. Yes, Your Honour, this is putting Him down with a vengeance - all the way down to the level where He underpins all. Just as the Abyss of the God-head is not alive but the Source of all life, not intelligent but the Source of all intelligence, not loving but the Source of all love, not happy but the Source of all happiness, so It isn’t practical but the Source of all practicality and know-how. You name it, God in the depths is free of it. He’s clean, as clean of mind as of all else. His lQ is zero. Biggest head, smallest wit. His world is smart, is intelligence and knowledge enough, is minded enough. He gets on with His job of Being Aware and letting all that brainy stuff come up just as needed. In short, while there’s Nothing to Him, Everything’s from Him.

  Ladies and gentlemen, in such trivial matters as what to wear for the day and eat for breakfast, all the way to such grave matters as what to say for myself now I’m on trial for my life, I’m advised to trust my Deepest Nature which is No Nature. I need to psych myself down for this ordeal, and to give Him a chance! But don’t take this from me. Don’t take it from the world’s saints and sages and seers. But now give them at least a brief hearing. And (I suggest) give what they are saying a longer testing:

  No Mind Here

  When they bring you before the magistrates, do not think beforehand what to say. The Holy Spirit will show you at the time.

  Jesus

  Not to know is profound, to know is shallow.

  Chuang-tzu

  Mine is indeed the mind of a very idiot, so dull am I.

  Tao Te Ching

  Never mind the mind. If its Source is sought, it will vanish, leaving the Self unaffected.

  Ramana Maharshi

  The Zen Doctrine of No Mind

  Title of a book by D. T. Suzuki

  Only Don’t Know

  Title of a book by a recent Zen master, Seung Sahn

  Buddhahood is attained when you have no mind for the task.

  Hui-chung

  Only have no mind of any kind. This is undefiled knowledge.

  Huang-po

  God is not seen except by blindness, nor known except by ignorance, nor understood except by fools.

  Eckhart

  It is the mind that tells you that the mind is there. Don’t be deceived... It is the bland refusal to consider the convolutions and convulsions of the mind that can take you beyond it.

  Nisargadatta

  Mind There

  As he gets to be more purely and singly himself... the astronomer is ‘out there’ with the stars, rather than a separateness peering across an abyss at another separateness through a telescopic keyhole.

  Abraham H. Marlow

  The inward and the outward are become as one sky.

  Kabir

  Every thing and quality is felt in outer space.

  William James

  The soul lives in what it loves.

  St John of the Cross

  Our souls live in the surrounding world.

  Heraclitus

  Prosecution Witness No. 11

  THE OCCASIONAL BARMAID

  The Witness says that her job is teaching in her local village school. On Saturday evenings, and at other busy times, she helps in her husband’s pub, ‘The Inn at the World’s End’. She’s the mother of two young children.

  Yes, she knows the terms and the nature of the charge against me. She regards blasphemy with the utmost horror. For her it means joining forces with Satan in his rebellion against the Almighty and setting yourself up as His equal.

  And yes, she knows me by sight. And not only by sight. I have occasionally come to the pub with a few friends. There’s only one small bar, and she can’t help overhearing our conversation. No words can express her revulsion. She isn’t surprised to see me in the dock.

  COUNSEL: Leaving aside your very understandable feelings about the Accused, let us address his claim that he isn’t really a human being. The Jury would like to know what happens in your bar when it comes to his turn to buy a round of drinks. Presumably, if there are four in the party, he orders four beers, not three? Without any hesitation at all, he includes himself among the other humans round the table?

  WITNESS: Of course.

  COUNSEL, to Jury: His behaviour gives the game away. What he does shouts so loud it drowns what he says. He talks big, as big as God in heaven; and acts little, as little as the beer swiller in the dock. In the Witness’s bar he’s on home ground. He’s one of the boys. He doesn’t dream of counting himself out. But notice this carefully, ladies and gentlemen: in non-human company, he doesn’t dream of counting himself in. I understand he has three cats. Don’t tell me he’s number four, Puss in Boots, a real fat cat. I can’t see him licking his fur and dipping his whiskers into a saucer of Kittymash. He has a dog too, but doesn’t debate whether he should enter himself or the dog in Crufts. In the monkey house at the zoo he knows his place, and which side of the bars he belongs. It’s only among humans that he always demonstrates (unintentionally) that he’s sure he’s among his compeers. If I’m doing him an injustice here, we shall hear about it soon enough.

  [To the Witness] Let’s get back to your pub. Is it fair to say that not only does the Accused reveal himself as human, but (if it were possible) as more human than human? Or course he doesn’t tell you he’s the man, the likely lad at the top of the heap: he just lives it. How he looks after Number One! Number One is his darling, all his care. Number One pays only for his own round, and counts and pockets t
he change instead of putting it in the collecting box for guide dogs for the blind. Number One makes himself nice and comfortable by the fire. Number One is careful not to leave his lovely warm overcoat on the peg for customer number two or three to carry off... Am I right?

  WITNESS: Of course you are.

  COUNSEL: Have you anything to add?

  WITNESS: Only this. I once heard him say in the bar: ‘I am not Mr John a-Nokes. I’m Mr Zero. I AM, stop. I am that I AM. I AM is my first and real and permanent name: and you know Whose name that is. John and Nokes are just my temporary names, my nicknames.’ Those were his very words. I’m sure, because I secretly jotted them down at the time. I have the paper here.

  COUNSEL, to me: Do you admit this evidence?

  MYSELF: Gladly!

  COUNSEL: There you are, Jury! The Witness recorded those words and he confirms them! They are just about the most blasphemous words that ever soiled human ears. Don’t let the Accused’s shenanigans - with which he will now seek to complicate and confuse the simple issue - erase these words from your memory for a moment.

  Defence: Back to Square Nought

  MYSELF, to Witness: In view of your deep concern about the state of my soul, may I ask you when you last attended church? Since you got married, I mean. When did you last pray? Or read your Bible? Or any of the world’s scriptures? Out of school, I mean.

  JUDGE: You don’t have to answer those questions.

  MYSELF: Your Honour, surely I have the right to challenge the credibility of a Witness whose theological opinions the Prosecution has been at pains to elicit? But let it pass... [I turn to the Witness.] My next question isn’t about your part-time job as assistant publican but your full-time job as deputy head-teacher. Perhaps I should remind you that you are on oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  Around what age do children - your own and the others at the school - stop leaving themselves out when they are counting those present, and begin counting themselves in? I take it that you notice things like that - if not out of interest, at least because you remember your Piaget from training college days.

  WITNESS to Judge: Do I have to... ?

  JUDGE: This time you do have to answer him. Truthfully and fully.

  WITNESS: Oh... Well, the age varies. I’ve known a kid of eight, when we were playing a round-the-table game in which she had to count the players, leave herself out. She was quite puzzled when I pointed out her mistake, and the others (mostly younger kids) laughed at her. The funny thing is she’s quite a bright girl. And then there are other less bright kids who, as early as four or five, don’t make this mistake. It doesn’t seem to be a question of intelligence... But I don’t see what –

  MYSELF: Thank you. Let’s be quite clear about this. Before that critical age (whether as late as eight or as early as four) the child habitually leaves herself out; after it, habitually counts herself in. Before that age, the child’s wordlessly telling humans, ‘I’m not one of you.’ After that age, ‘I am one of you.’ Have I got it right?

  WITNESS: Um...

  MYSELF: We didn’t hear you.

  WITNESS: I suppose so.

  MYSELF: Thank you again. No more questions. Please leave the box. [I address the Jury.] The Prosecution says I have always and naturally counted myself in among any humans that happen to be present. Not so, says the Prosecution Witness, when pressed. She’s the one that’s right, of course. Let’s go into this further.

  My life, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, falls into three parts. First, the early years when I neither needed to nor could count myself in; then the middle years when I could, and very much needed to do so, when I had no choice; and finally, these later years when I do have a choice. For me now, all depends on the level I’m looking at and operating from, on the context. In my human capacity, as the fellow you’re now looking at and I checked up on earlier today in the glass, why of course I count him in. I cheerfully pay for his round of drinks; not so cheerfully I include him in the number of residents in my house for super-poll-tax purposes (how can I deny he has a super-poll on top?); and I miserably consent to his making a fourth at bridge; and so on and on. But of course! What do you take me for? When and where a man, say I, do as man does, be a man and not a mouse or a monster or anything less than a 100 per cent died-in-the-wool Number One human.

  But right here all is different. For the life of me I can find nothing here to count, let alone a human thing. To add in this nothing along with things would be like adding in the date with the bill. It would be like shopping for vegetables with £100 in my purse and spending £200, in the belief that my purse is £100 and legal tender. It would be like counting those Jury benches as Jury person thirteen, or this hand as finger six. It would be asking for certification and institutional care. But enough of this foolery. I go by what I see. What is this Third Stage of my life, after all, but reverting to the truthfulness of the First Stage, but now with clear awareness of myself as Zero, as Capacity for numbers but myself number-free, as the uncountable Counter? What is this but humility in the face of the evidence, the humility that can find no one here to be humble? What is this but coming to my senses at long last after the senselessness of common sense (so called), the wilful nonsense of Stage Two? What is this but becoming natural again after that phoney interlude, with all the stresses and anxieties that go with self-deception and playing a hard game hard?

  Opting out of that game, what do I find? Where do I find numbers?

  I count one, two, three windows up there in the courtroom. I count one, two, three, four, five - many faces out there in the court. I count two foreshortened legs down there in the dock. And below them, one foreshortened trunk. Always numbers are presented there in my world, to me here.

  Here, I count nothing. I find nothing to enumerate. In this place the reckoning is always Zero - zero men, zero dogs, zero cats, zero mice, zero trees, zero what-have-you. Name anything you like, it’s conspicuous here by its absence. I’m just as innocent here of human characteristics as of any others, and I am as much no-man as I am no-dog, no-cat, no-mouse, no-tree... I’m perfectly neutral, a member of no group or class or set. I’m No-one, One minus one, a Cipher, the Cipher.

  But I notice that from this Cipher all series originate, to it all numbers belong, by it they are counted. Therefore, in this place of seeming disadvantage and total lack, I have the advantage. I initiate every series in the universe. Zero is truly a commanding station.

  I look around the court. I listen. Just as those forms are seen from this Void, and heard from this Silence of mine, so they are reckoned from this Zero. Here they come back, not to square one but to square Nought, where all reckoning starts. This is my Home Ground.

  JUDGE: But what about Counsel’s point that you are more at home with people than with other orders of being? That your attitude to them gives the lie to what you say about yourself, and shows that in your bones you know you’re only human after all?

  MYSELF: The Prosecution is quite wrong, Your Honour, about how I feel. My boxer Ludwig is perfect company after a day spent with noisy and demanding humans. I’m apt to feel more comfortable in the quiet and congenial society of the stars - as the Sky in which they shine - than in the blaring city street. More comfortable, it may well be, than in the Witness’s bar parlour, for that matter. In the friendly hills, among companionable trees and streams and flowers, at sea or in mid-desert, I don’t want for company, I’m no trespasser, no stranger in a foreign land. Everything fits this No-thing. It’s not that I belong to all categories, all orders and genera and species, but that they belong to me. I include the most exclusive. Here I hold court. Here is the forum, the meeting place, the open heart of the universe, where I’m always at home to all comers because there’s No-body at home to get in their way or pick and choose among them. As Edwin Markham wrote of one who shut him out,

  Love and I had the wit to win:

  We drew a circle that took him in.

  Such, members of the
Jury, is life at this Third Stage, when I stop pretending to be here what I look like to you over there, and I’m content to be this all-comprehensive circle which is Zero.

  Let’s suppose I’m in a room with four friends. As a young child, automatically taking myself at Centre to be Zero, I count four people present. As an adult, setting up my human self at Centre as number one, I count five. As a Seer, consciously seeing myself at Centre to be Zero, I count four again. Diagram No. 11 shows these Three Stages at a glance.

  Innocent Counting

  Young Child

  Blashphemous Counting

  Grown-up

  Enlightened Counting

  Seer

  Diagram No. 11

  When at Stage Two I count this Zero in along with those people, it’s like counting the basket in with the eggs - and proceeding to scramble and eat it. Which is unhealthy. And - what’s more to the point - blasphemous.

  I come back, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, to the definition of blasphemy on which my Defence rests. It is to sit oneself as man Number One on God’s throne at the centre of one’s world, and sit tight. It’s to stay stuck at the second of our Three Stages, the stage that we all have to go through, but should go through speedily. What a black joke it is, Your Honour, what irony, that I’m the one that‘s standing here in the dock charged with this truly heinous crime! I, who insist on the inviolate holiness of the Holy of Holies, where the Godhead dwells at the Centre of all things in solitary and number-free splendour, and where no man can ever, ever intrude! What irony that my accusers, who do their damnedest to force their way into that shrine and set up man there - do their damnedest to deify man - what irony that they should charge me with the crime they are guilty of every second of their waking lives! What a sick joke! I say – they should charge me with the crime they are guilty of every second of their waking lives! What a sick joke! I say –