The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (11 page)

Not another lecture, for God in Heaven’s sake. Brief but clear answers, if you please.

JUDGE: Yes, indeed.

The jury perks up — feeling (I imagine) that I’ve been caught out this time. I’m inclined to share that feeling. However, I listen to my reply.

MYSELF: God has been credited with (and accused of) making man in His image. And if in the making He indulges in a spot of kindly humour, isn’t that what we’re learning to count on from Him? In any case it’s to be expected of all heads — animal, human, divine — that they should have enough in common to justify their common name. No great surprise, then, to find that, in my huge and airy divine Head here, can be detected some curious correspondences with my stuffy little human head over there in the mirror. Most appropriate and most encouraging I find them, such as they are. I regard them as the ideal base from which to explore the immense contrasts between man’s topknot there and God’s Topknot (or, rather, Bottomknot) here.

COUNSEL: There you are, members of the Jury! No explanations, more blasphemy! And more pathology, let me add. Acephalitis is surely one of the more serious degenerative conditions.

MYSELF: And you’ll get a whole bunch of physicians to agree with you, Sir Gerald! According to one long-established and fairly respectable medical system (currently patronized by some royals) the experience of having no head on your shoulders is indeed a well-recognized disease. Consulting
Clinical Homeopathy,
by Dr Anton Jayasuriya, we find that the remedy is
Asarum europaeum!
Other pilules — to cure you of the feeling that your head is empty, or much enlarged, or loose — are prescribed by Dr J. T. Kent in his
Repertory of Homoeopathic Materia Medica!
[Laughter and catcalls in the court. Unable to keep a straight face himself, His Honour lets them pass... ] Let me assure the Jury that I’m not pulling their legs! Those are standard handbooks by world-famous authorities! I shall not, however, allow them to divert me from my argument.

The final and crucial question is:
which of my two heads — the one on that side of the glass, or the one on this side — is the real one?

The criteria for settling this question beyond all doubt are eight. They will serve to sum up my Defence against this Witness’s testimony and the Prosecution’s handling — or mishandling — of it.

(1) My real Head is the one that’s right here and right now, plumb in the Centre of my universe.

(2) It’s the one which sees, hears, tastes and smells.

(3) It’s the one that’s big enough to contain the other head, with an infinity of room to spare. Or let’s say: it’s the one that’s right up to itself and therefore infinite — the way everything is when it’s viewed from no distance, and therefore
full size.

(4) It’s the one that faces outwards, that’s turned towards the world and not away from it.

(5) It’s the one that sports a pair of ‘noses’, one on the far left of the scene and the other on the far right,
both touchable
though transparent, and only occasionally opaque. (Believe it or not, Boericke’s
Materia Medita with Repertory
prescribes
Merc. per.
for treating patients who complain they are two-nosed!)

(6) It’s this incredibly well-stocked head, this Great Universal Store that carries all the goods in the world, arranged in the most attractive, uncrowded, easy-to-find fashion imaginable. Not that tiny lump-of-a-head which is just one of the items on its shelves.

(7) It’s the unframed and unboxed one, in contrast to that picture-framed fellow, poor old Jack in the box - in the glass-fronted box he can’t spring out of.

(8) Finally, it’s this rough one I make sure of by fingering it all over, and not the smooth one that’s inaccessible behind its glass barrier.
Not the human head — not that recognizable Noke’s head — which I never laid hands on in all my life.
If touching (and not seeing) is believing, that head is as dubious as a mirage in the desert, while this Head is as certain as the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

Please note, Jury, my preference in the end for touch as against sight,
pace
the Witness’s testimony to the contrary.

And please note that on all eight counts my God-head is my real and unique Head — the Sun of which my man-head is a mere satellite. As we’ve just seen, that man-head is not only off-Centre, but unconscious, exclusive, inward-facing, and un-get-at-able. What a surprise, what a joke — what a master key to my true Identity — is this elaborate debunking and decentralizing of John a-Nokes, once I get around to noticing it! Immeasurably more real than the glazed man-head I’m forever out of touch with is the unglazed and naked God-head I’m forever in touch with. Praise be to the One Who will go to such lengths — playing the Lone Rough Beast to my Smoothie — to save me from myself by uniting me with Him Who is Myself!

All the same, I have to admit that, of the two, smooth Jack has this advantage: it’s a lot easier to do justice to him in a drawing. As you will see from Diagram No. 7 — an unfinished and dubious effort, which I’m half inclined to withdraw from our exhibition of self-portraits.

‘This travelling hat may look small, but when I put it on it covers the universe,’ said Zen master Huang-po. If he hadn’t been a Buddhist, he might have added that it’s
God
Who puts it on, and it’s nice and furry, and it suits Him perfectly!

Finally, let me throw in this verse from ‘The Derby Ram’, an English nursery rhyme which gives the general idea:

The space between the horns, sir,

Was as far as man could reach.

And there they built a pulpit,

But no one in it preached.

Diagram No. 7

Prosecution Witness No. 8

THE NEUROSURGEON

Witness explains that he’s a not-so-near neighbor of mine and little more than a casual acquaintance. No, he has no reason to regard me as antisocial or mad or perverted in any way. He minds his own business and knows little about mine. Certainly he has heard rumours (who hasn’t?) but pays no attention. Yes, of course he knows that I’m up before this court on a charge of blasphemy.

COUNSEL: Are you aware that the Accused prides and preens himself on being headless, which surely means brainless? And claims that his considerable handicap, instead of leaving him subhuman by a long chalk, leaves him superhuman, even divine?

WITNESS: I’ve heard he’s got this thing about his head. I don’t understand it at all.

COUNSEL: You aren’t alone. With the forlorn hope of enlightening you and the court, let me read out something from a published book of his:

Provisionally and common-sensibly, he [the scientist] put a head here on my shoulders, but it was soon ousted by the universe. The common-sense or unparadoxical view of myself as ‘an ordinary man with a head’ doesn’t work at all; as soon as I examine it with any care, it turns out to be nonsense.

And yet (I tell myself) it seems to work out well enough for all everyday, practical purposes. I carry on just as if there actually were, suspended here, plumb in the middle of my universe, a solid eight-inch ball. And I’m inclined to add that, in the uninquisitive and truly hard-headed world we all inhabit, this manifest absurdity can’t be avoided: it is surely a fiction so convenient that it might as well be the plain truth.

In fact, it is always a lie, and often an inconvenient lie at that.

WITNESS, asked for his comments: Well, I must say that the Accused appears to me to be a perfectly ordinary man, with a perfectly ordinary head to him. And the whole of my professional experience tells me that in that ordinary head is an ordinary brain, and that in that ordinary brain are millions of ordinary neurons. About the brain’s condition, whether it’s diseased or somewhat disordered or functioning normally or functioning brilliantly, I can’t tell you now for sure. But it’s there in position all right. If it isn’t, he’s the sensation of the century and the eighth wonder of the modern world. And I’ll resign my job and take up pisciculture. At least
fish
have brains.

COUNSEL: Would you tell the court something about the brain’s importance, its function in the life of the Accused, its central role in all our lives?

WITNESS: A large subject. You can look at it from two angles. On the one hand you can regard the brain as the indispensable seat of
consciousness;
and – as such – determining the level of the mind’s functioning, its scope and its quality. Thus a rabbit, with its comparatively small and unconvoluted brain, experiences a somewhat smaller and less convoluted world than that of a King’s Counsellor. Thus a rabbit or a King’s Counsellor who suffers from a brain tumour or a brain injury experiences a distorted rabbit world or KC world. On the other hand one can view the function of the brain more objectively. This way, the brain – the nervous system as a whole – is seen as a mechanism for processing incoming information so that it issues in appropriate outgoing behavior, somewhat as the alimentary system processes incoming foodstuffs to fuel that same outgoing behavior. That’s the view my work inclines me to take. I perceive the brain as a telephone exchange-cum-computer, co-ordinating the functioning of the organism as a whole and of its parts. However, both ways of regarding the brain make that organ quite crucial in the body’s economy and in every respect central in our lives.

COUNSEL: You hear that, members of the Jury? Central in our lives. [He turns to the Witness.] So, when the Accused says he’s brainless (is ‘decorticated’ the word I want?) is he lying like the deuce, or off his trolley, or plain ignorant?

WITNESS: Just pulling our legs, I’d say. Playing at being Winnie the Pooh with little or no brain at all. Ingenious mischievous, fun-poking, a latter-day Till Eulenspiegel, a taker-off on intellectual or poetic flights of the imagination – I don’t know what – but in any case not altogether serious. He’s no more mad than I am. Just more fanciful than I can afford to be. To put it in the vernacular and frankly, I get the impression that, so far from being brainless, he’s every bit as brainy as most of you around here.

JUDGE: Just answer the Counsel’s questions.

COUNSEL: At this juncture I must remind the Jury that the Accused isn’t on trial for his private beliefs – no matter how fantastical, how elaborately absurd or how ingeniously offensive they may be. He’s here on account of his pubic blaspheming and the civil disturbances it has given rise to. The only reason why his opinions are very much the concern of this court is his tireless and much-publicized contention that they are true, so true and so fundamental and so revolutionary that the blasphemies they come out with aren’t blasphemies at all, but sober statements of fact. Accordingly, one of the aims of the Prosecution is to tear that claim apart. [He turns to the Witness.] Are you proposing to the court that the Accused’s story – this fantasy that he’s empty-headed, or no-headed, or divine-headed (whatever his latest variation on the theme may be) – is just a contemporary upsurging of nonsensical British humour? New-style jabberwocky, featuring a reincarnated Queen of Hearts still screaming, ‘Off with their heads!’? Good old British whimsicality run into the ground, surely? Pushed so far and so hard that already it lands the humorist in that dock, on trial for his life? And may well land him, like Till Eulenspiegel, in an early grave?

WITNESS: I guess I am, except that I don’t take it all so dead seriously. Besides –

COUNSEL: And that the theological skyscraper – high-rising to I don’t know what heavens of self-deification – which he erects on these comical quicksands is no more solid and well-founded than they are?

WITNESS: Well, you said it.

COUNSEL: The court insists on a straight answer.

WITNESS: Honestly, I don’t know. I’m no theologian.

COUNSEL: But you do know that the Accused’s claim to be unique, to be vastly different up top from us common folk, is (to say the least) over the top?

WITNESS: Well, yes -

COUNSEL: Thank you. That will do.

Defence:
The Brain of God

MYSELF, to Witness: You and I are agreed about what a human brain is, and its importance for human life. Our only difference is about
where
the thing is. But that difference makes all the difference.