The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (23 page)

Nor is this double life, this divine union of weakness and strength, a lovey-dovey milk-and-water acceptance of the world’s evils, a creeping-Jesus-meek-and-mild cop-out and evasion of responsibility, in the name of detachment and unworldliness. On the contrary, those saints who say the loudest Yes! to God’s good will say the loudest No! to man’s bad will, and undertake astonishing labours for His suffering world. St Catherine of Genoa is, for me, the outstanding example. Her ‘My Me is God’, and her recurrent theme that Hell is self-will, go along with her toughness and superhuman energy and efficiency in the founding and running of a huge hospital in her native city. She, along with her namesake of Siena, and many, many other God-filled ones, made and are making a vast difference in the world - overground for all to see, and even more powerfully underground, where none can see. Without them I don’t like to think what the world -

JUNIOR COUNSEL, bobbing up and down and positively incandescent with excitement: Well, you certainly find yourself in congenial company. Just like you, quite the most infamous character of the last century described the world as inside-out, with himself at its centre, and the stars painted on the inside of the firmament. And, like you, claimed omnipotence. A claim debunked conclusively - in a bunker, oddly enough.

MYSELF: Extremes converge. Satan was the top angel. The unusual wickedness of Hitler had something in common with the unusual goodness of the most saintly of his victims. Who I really am is -

JUNIOR COUNSEL, again cutting me short, splutters: This is hard to believe! Are you - words fail me! - do you have the effrontery to stand there, seriously claiming to be a saint? A
great
saint?

MYSELF: Don’t be absurd! Quite apart from the fact that every saint is sure he’s a louse, the truth is that to be human and to be good are contraries. Only God is good. (You’ll remember who said that.) A saint is one who sees his bad humanhood off to the place where it should be and sees his good Godhood in to the place where it must be, the place it never left -
and goes on to live this disposition.
But to see it at all is at least to have made a start on the God-filled life -

JUDGE: I think you have gone on quite long enough in your response to the psychiatrist’s testimony.

MYSELF: All right, Your Honour. Just let me sum up.

Along with Catherine, I say my real Me is God. I’ve proved it in triplicate. Three Omnies are enough for Him and should be enough for you or me. This is not blasphemy. It is not a delusion of grandeur. It is not a fantasy. It is not one of life’s optional extras. It is not a highly-desirable but rare ornament of grace, or a bright three-ringed halo reserved for a few great souls. It is not an attainment of the pious that you and I can get along very nicely without, thank you very much.

No. It’s a must. It’s the only sensible lifestyle, the only one (I repeat) that works, that’s practical. Again and again the saints have demonstrated as much. But it doesn’t take all that time and attention and practice for us ordinary folk to prove on our pulses how right they were.

However, the ultimate reason why this is the only satisfactory way of life isn’t that it’s the only
satisfying
one, but that it’s the only one. The only way life can be lived, in any case. It’s not for attaining but for submitting to. It’s not for thinking or feeling or realizing one day. It’s for seeing now.

I have sorted my Witnesses into three companies, each testifying to one of our Three Omnies -

JUDGE: Just a moment. You keep on referring to these dead folk as witnesses. It was agreed from the start that they are nothing of the sort. They aren’t under oath, and can’t be examined or cross-examined. Nor can their reported sayings be relied on absolutely. At best they illustrate your case, clarifying it without proving it.

MYSELF: I stand corrected, Your Honour. In any event my message to the Jury all along is: Don’t believe ‘authorities’. Test what they say,
and become your own authority.
On this sure foundation my whole case rests.

Omnipresence

Distance is a phantasy.

Blake

God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

Medieval Saying

And then our Lord opened my spiritual eye and showed me my soul in the midst of my heart. I saw the Soul so large as it were an endless world, and as it were a blissful kingdom... In the midst of that City sitteth our Lord.

Julian of Norwich

Omniscience

When the Self is seen, heard, thought of, known, everything is known.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Supreme enlightenment is none other than all-knowledge... It does not mean that the Buddha knows every individual thing, but that he has grasped the fundamental principle of existence and that he has penetrated deep down into the centre of his own being.

D. T. Suzuki

If I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures.

Eckhart

Omnipotence

The Father that dwells in me, He does the works.

Jesus

It is God who works in you both to do and to will his good pleasure.

St Paul

A world of which you are the only source and ground is fully within your power to change. What is created can always be un-created and re-created. All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it.

Nisargadatta

General

Shiva, the Highest Lord, is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Since I have these attributes, I am He.

Vijnanabhairava

Prosecution Witness No. 15

THE NEW APOCALYPTIC

A new week and a new day. Two days and three nights have gone by since the court was last in session. Long enough for Sir Gerald to be on his feet again, displaying all his old zing and panache.

He introduces his fifteenth Witness.

COUNSEL: You call yourself a New Apocalyptic. Please explain to the court what that means.

WITNESS:
Apocalypsis
is a Greek word meaning a revelation or uncovering. I’m an elder and spokesman of the Church of that name, whose members take as their infallible guide God’s Holy Word and the gospel it proclaims. We stand four-square for Christ, for Jesus Christ as the only Son of God and Saviour from sin, and the imminence of his Second Coming. To be followed by the Day of Judgement. We do battle with all who deny his absolute uniqueness as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and who question the efficacy of his precious blood shed for sinners. Specially are we the enemies of those limbs of Satan who, not content with having apostatized from the saving truth, lead others (I’m thinking of the impressionable young) to perdition and the eternal flames of Hell. Oh, yes, it’s a holy war we wage against all Antichrists and blasphemers. And when one of them goes so far as to set himself up in the place of the Lord he dishonours, why, we’ll do anything to bring him down. Anything.

COUNSEL: Is it a fact that certain members of your Church, before the passing of the Blasphemy Act under which the Accused is being tried, did indeed take the law into their own hands? That they captured some of those apostates (I’m using your language), tried them, condemned them to death and actually executed them?

WITNESS: My church doesn’t deny that it carries out its God-given duties where and as it can.

COUNSEL: May I take it that, now that the official law against blasphemy has been given teeth and written into the Statute Book, the attitude of your Church has changed?

WITNESS: We are hopeful that the Act will see justice done in the worst cases, but we are by no means certain. We shall see. In any case we have our work to do. Work for Christ against all Antichrists.

COUNSEL: Antichrists? Please explain. Yes, you may read from the bible you took your oath on.

WITNESS, bible in one hand and chopping vigorously with the other: They are the ones St John speaks of here, in his First Epistle: ‘Many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist.’ And St Paul speaks of ‘that man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.’

COUNSEL: Looking around now, do you find any such Antichrist in this court? One to whom both these texts apply?

WITNESS, now in something of a frenzy: I do! Look! There he stands in the dock!

Shouting and much commotion in the public gallery. A banner is unfurled. It reads ‘DEATH TO THE BLASPHEMER’...

After some minutes, during which the offenders and their banner are removed and order is restored, Witness goes on.

WITNESS: My fellow workers and I have monitored the written and spoken words of this man of sin, and consider him guilty of every sort of blasphemy. Among contemporary Antichrists he is the chief. Plain beheading is too easy an exit for him. I’m thinking of what they did to another blasphemer, the early Quaker James Nayler, in 1656. He was severely whipped, branded with the letter B (for blasphemy) on his forehead, and had his tongue bored through with a red-hot iron.

COUNSEL: You shouldn’t worry. Christendom has come on a long way since those crude old days. Thanks to science, we know how to give the Naylers of the world a
really
hard time, don’t we?

WITNESS, all irony lost on him: Still far less than they deserve!

COUNSEL, after a long pause, as if for once he really were tongue-tied: Well, Jury, there you have it... Let me remind you that the charge of blasphemy levelled against the Accused doesn’t deny his right peaceably to hold opinions which excite the sort of sentiments we’ve just been treated to. No - it’s his persistent and blatant airing of these opinions, giving rise to offence and outrage and disturbances of public order, which is the crime he’s charged with. I feel sure you’ll agree that the Witness’s testimony - to say nothing of the appalling behaviour of his friends in the gallery - goes a long way towards proving John a-Nokes guilty of this sort of provocation. Leaving aside all questions of compassion and common decency, and of who has the truth and who hasn’t, it can’t be denied that these people are scandalized to the point of hysteria by what they see as the Accused’s war on all they hold sacred. Why, even in this courtroom he incites people to violence!

Defence:
Antichrist and Pro-Christ

MYSELF: There would be no point in cross-examining this frankest of witnesses. The heretic at the stake doesn’t start an interesting conversation with the fellow who’s approaching with a lighted taper. So you may leave the witness-box.

As for Counsel’s last remark about my causing folk to commit breaches of the peace, outside and now inside this court, I ask the Jury to look at this principle - at the precedent it sets, and the nightmare world it opens out before us. It shifts the blame from the muggers to the old lady they mug. It makes the molested child responsible for her molestation, the bank for the bank robbery, the tax inspector for the tax fraud. Well, there it is. You the Jury are stuck with this Blasphemy Act, and the way it unblushingly penalizes the victim and not the perpetrator of violence. There’s nothing you can do about it... No, that’s not quite true.

You know what happens when a case is being tried under a law that’s come to be seen as unjust, or outdated, or simply unworkable from the start. Juries are reluctant to bring in a guilty verdict, judges to inflict any but the very minimum sentence. Later on, ladies and gentlemen, I shall no doubt have occasion to remind you of this -

JUDGE, furiously: No, you won’t! Stop it! Any more of this and I’ll hold you in contempt of court. This is a blatant invitation to the Jury to violate their duty. They must ignore it. As for you the Accused, I solemnly warn you not to repeat what you’ve just said, or anything like it.

After abject apologies (containing, however, no promises) I’m allowed to resume.

MYSELF: Let’s get back to the Witness and his evidence. He talks about the Antichrist. The word carries two meanings. Anti implies both opposition to and substitution for. An Antichrist, accordingly, may seek to downgrade the Deity or else to upgrade himself at the Deity’s expense, or very likely both at once. Indeed, if the Witness is saying anything meaningful about me, it’s that I’m not just hell-bent on dragging God down to my level, but also on thrusting myself up there in His place.

Well, it should come as no surprise to the court that I plead Not Guilty on both counts. So far from dishonouring and degrading Him, I assure you that God as God is the love and the lodestone of my life, my passion, my raison d’être, before Whom I bow the deepest of bows. Not a God diluted to my taste or trimmed to my design, but an eternal astonishment and splendour, awesome, shocking, devastating. So far from seeking to substitute the creature John a-Nokes for Him, just about the chief concern of my adult life has been to put and keep that little chap in his place out there, and frustrate his ever-renewed efforts to break free and make for the Centre of things. If my Defence so far in this Trial hasn’t quite persuaded you, ladies and gentlemen, that this is my aim, I’m counting on the rest of it to do so.