The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God
Read The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God Online
Authors: Douglas Harding
Tags: #Douglas Harding, #Headless Way, #Shollond Trust, #Science-3, #Science-1, #enlightenment
D .E .Harding
The Trial of the Man Who Said He was God
Published by The Shollond Trust
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England
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The Shollond Trust is a UK charity reg. no 1059551
Copyright © The Shollond Trust 2013
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ISBN 978-0-9568877-8-8
To Chris and Annie Harper, with love.
Contents
The Prosecution Witnesses and the Defence Rebuttal
The Judge in Camera with Counsel and Accused
Judge’s Directions to the Jury
Prologue
M
y name is John a-Nokes, Jack to my friends.
The year is 2003 CE. Or, as I prefer to put it, 2003 AD.
I’m writing this in a prison cell, while I await the outcome of my Trial for the capital offence of BEING WHO I AM. OF BEING MYSELF, instead of what people tell me I am.
Of course that’s not the official name of the crime I was charged with. Far from it! No, I was charged with blasphemy under the Blasphemy Act of 2002. Blasphemy, if you please! In fact, all I did was stop pretending I was someone else. I dared to start all over again and look at myself for myself - at what it’s like being me. And to enthuse about my altogether unexpected findings - findings that (as you will presently see) were at least as sobering as they were exalting, sometimes hilarious, often beautiful and always practical. And not so hard to live by as you might think.
If that’s blasphemy, I’ll be damned! If that’s blasphemy, God help us all!
This cell isn’t the ideal writer’s study, but it will do. The chair I’m sitting on is chair-shaped; the numbing effect no doubt arises from the fact that it’s made of and upholstered with case-hardened cast iron. The table I’m sitting at is sufficiently supplied with mole-grey recycled writing-paper and ball-point pens that write as if they too have been recycled. The view from here is of an interestingly crazed WC pan and a cracked wash-basin set against shining grey graffiti-proof tile walls. High in the wall ahead is a window more heavily barred than it need be, seeing that only a ten-foot prisoner could possibly reach it; and certainly smaller than it should be, seeing that the light it admits seems to have been filtered through grey flannel underwear. The smell, which is of that underwear repeatedly but insufficiently dosed with disinfectant, leaves me gasping occasionally like a stranded but resigned trout.
I’m filling in the time by writing up this account of the Trial, based on the notes I made in the course of it and my present recollection of what happened. Though I shall be doing my best to be truthful, and in particular to be fair to the case for the Prosecution, I can’t pretend to perfect impartiality. How could I? Heretics take a dim view of their inquisitors. In any event, this is not going to be a verbatim account of the proceedings, but (let’s say) a fairly detailed record of my impressions - a layman’s impressions, because I’m no lawyer. Much of the inconsequential to-and-fro between the parties will be left out. It’s possible, of course, that there were things of substance said that I don’t remember because I wish to forget them.
What I can promise you, my Reader (I’ve reason to hope that these pages will be got out of here and find their way to those they are meant for), is that you will get a clear picture of what I’m up to and why, and will be well able to decide for yourself whether or not I’m guilty as charged. In fact, I hereby warn you that my aim is conspiratorial: it isn’t so much to defend myself (it’s a bit late for that) as to involve you in the criminal adventure which led to my arrest and trial. If I can win you over to my side in this affair, I shall be satisfied. And all the more so if, less rash and vociferous than I am, you’re able to keep your nose fairly clean - I mean, stay sufficiently quiet about your discoveries - and so avoid arrest and prosecution, with the risk of a death sentence
Yes, you do run a certain risk in reading this book. If this worries you, read no more, but pass it on to a friend who doesn’t mind living dangerously. Living dangerously (I should add) for the sake of the Ultimate Safety.
Before getting down to the Trial itself you will need to be reminded of its historical background, of what led up to it.
The history of the social upheavals that gave rise to the passing of the Blasphemy Act of 2002 CE is too complicated to go into at all thoroughly here; to summarize will do. They began with the death sentence pronounced on Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah, and the notorious outcome of that international scandal. They built up to the Fundamentalist Disturbances of 1999-2000, when a newspaper cartoonist, a popular comedian and a modernist bishop were kidnapped and burned at the stake for ridiculing the Second Coming of Christ promised (as millions believed) for 1 January 2000. They culminated in the widespread communal riots of the year 2001 in which hundreds died in Great Britain alone - many of them subjected to the farce of trial by kangaroo courts set up by sects claiming to represent the heart and soul of one or another of the great Western religions, and dedicated to rooting out blasphemy whatever the cost. After which, Parliament decided that the lesser evil would be to institute special courts to try charges of blasphemy in accordance with the law of the land. And so the old common law was updated and made statute law and given teeth. Teeth - following the reintroduction of the death penalty at the turn of the century - that could kill.
The new anti-blasphemy legislation of the year 2002 has been widely condemned as servile surrender to bigotry and superstition, and as a very serious curtailment of human rights. Many have talked of a revival of the Holy Inquisition. But at least it has, so far and touch wood, done something to calm the more excitable zealots and dissuade them from taking the law into their own hands. The large and growing ‘conscience drain’ (dubbed the ‘blasphemy sewer’ by certain fundamentalists) from the West to the Far East - where the concept of blasphemy is little understood - is reckoned a small price to pay for ending what had begun to look like civil war.
Why (you may well ask) this upsurge of religious fanaticism, throughout the Western world, at the very time when political fanaticism seems to be abating? Is it that people must have a scapegoat to vent their guilt on, or a bête noire to vent their anger on, no matter how unjustified by the facts? A plausible explanation, but not one that’s easy to test. And not one to give any satisfaction or guidance to a government desperate to contain and reduce fundamentalist violence.
And certainly not one to give any comfort to me, at the receiving end of the violence.
As for the provisions of the Blasphemy Act - a long-winded document drafted in standard legal jargon - a note of some of the main points will be enough for our purpose here.
The Act is directed against anyone who disturbs public order by giving offence to religious communities, no matter what medium is used. It may be by means of the printed word or in public meetings or TV and radio broadcasts, or simply by going around and buttonholing strangers and stirring them up. Privately held opinions, expressed in the family and among friends and in peaceable meetings of scholars or like-minded persons, don’t come under the Act. Nor does the occasional and accidental outburst: the offence must be sustained. Blasphemy is defined as the use in public of insulting words and behaviour aimed at any Being or Person or Object whatsoever that’s held to be sacred by an appreciable number of the population. Notably it includes claiming to be one or another of the sacred Entities, but just about any behaviour that gravely upsets their devotees and worshippers is treated as criminal. In fact, it’s difficult to see how anyone who isn’t spiritually moribund could remain, all through his or her life, perfectly innocent of this offence. There’s a good deal of agreement that the Act, as a result of having been drafted in haste and passed in panic, is exceptionally vague and hard to implement. And, what’s much worse, that it’s a bad case of the very disease it aims to treat - the disease of heresy-hunting carried to the point of terrorism. You, my Reader, will soon be well placed for checking how far these criticisms are justified.
Four or five much-publicized arrests have been made, and preparations for the trials of the alleged offenders have reached various stages. My own case is the first to be heard under the Act - which makes it the test case, calculated to bring to light (if doing little to solve) the problems of what promises to be a new and deplorable chapter in the history of jurisprudence. For this reason - and perhaps also because I conducted my own Defence in a way unheard of in the courts - it has become known to the press as the Great Blasphemy Trial. Ignorance of how to behave myself wasn’t bliss, and I’m not sure how it went down with the Jury, but it helped me to extract what entertainment I could from all that pomp and circumstance.