The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (28 page)

(3) The third consequence of the shift to my true Centre is that I gain access to hitherto unavailable energies. No longer do I comfortably sit back, denying responsibility for the evil and doing nothing about it. Quite the contrary. In so far as I rest in this central Perfection, I tap the will and the drive to combat, in my own peculiar one-off way, its opposite out there. True seers are workers, not drones. Or clones. Paradoxically, it’s because the war’s already won here, where we’re One and the Same and there’s Nothing to do, that we can put our whole heart into the battle out there, where we’re many and all different and there’s everything to do.

But what’s the good of
talking about
this world-transforming shift of viewpoint without
making
the shift, and going on to stay shifted? How to do just that? By cultivating the habit of
seeing
that in fact it’s no shift at all, but simply being where you were all along, at the world’s Centre. Look out now at a world from which nothing has been subtracted, and in at its Viewer from whom
everything
has been subtracted, the Viewer who has died for and died into the Viewed. Simultaneously take in that absolute fullness and this absolute emptiness, and you are healed with God’s healing. Instantly you are back where you have always been, at the Heart of things, the Heart which is open-hearted enough to embrace and transform by love the most unlovable of its objects - at the undying Heart of even the most ephemeral of creatures.

Diagram No. 17 shows you exactly what to do.

Diagram No. 17

Well, friend of my youth, your testimony has turned out to be most helpful after all. Thank you. You may stand down. [He goes, and I address the Jury.]

Listen now to the testimony of four who spoke from the Heart, for and as that Heart:

Genuine seekers of God take nothing, good or bad, from any creature, but all from God alone.

Eckhart

There is and can be but one happiness and one misery. The one misery is nature and creature left to itself, the one happiness is the Life, the Light, the Spirit of God, manifested in nature and creature.

William Law

Truly there are two worlds. One was made by God, the other by men… Leave the one that you may enjoy the other.

Traherne

When the universe is perceived apart from Brahman, that perception is false and illusory.

Ramana Maharshi

COUNSEL: A word in the ear of the Jury, at the conclusion of this conducted Nokes’s tour of the cosmos. Just how many times was it implied or stated outright, in the course of it, that the Accused wasn‘t so much our very human guide as the Divine Impresario responsible for putting on the whole show? In the last half-hour alone, we have heard enough blaspheming to convict him many times over of the crime he’s charged with.

MYSELF: Always you hear the words and miss the meaning. They might be in Pushtu or Oigob for all the sense you extract from them. The most charitable explanation I can think of is that Counsel is putting on an act, displaying his histrionic skill rather than his forensic skill. That (in other words) this isn't a bona fide trial but a Show Trial, in which his real but secret brief isn’t just to play to the gallery, but
as
the gallery at its stupidest. Actually to play the part of - and echo in Oxford English - the most dim-witted and prejudiced members of the population, to the bitter end.

Bitter end for me. For this distinguished King’s Counsellor a sweet refresher on the long and dusty road to the Woolsack -

JUDGE.: Stop it! I won’t tolerate personal abuse in this court. Apologize to Counsel.

MYSELF: What for, Your Honour? I think what I said was fair, even complimentary...

COUNSEL, suddenly all magnanimous: Oh, for God’s sake let it pass...

Prosecution Witness No. 18

THE DEVOTEE

In response to Counsel’s questioning, Witness introduces herself.

WITNESS: My name in religion is Sister Marie-Louise. I’m a founder member of a community with branches in this country and overseas. I don’t know how many of us there are, and if I did I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you. We hold all things in common. Some of us contribute by going out and earning a living in the normal way, in which case the whole of our earnings goes into the communal purse. Others of us look after the garden, do the cooking and cleaning, and so on. We all meet daily for meditation and study. As you see, we wear a distinctive habit.

COUNSEL: What do you study and meditate on? What are your beliefs?

WITNESS: We believe in the Messiah Maitreya, meditate on him, study his words, try to live according to his teachings. As subjects of his kingdom - which has already come - we do everything we can to bring that kingdom into power.

COUNSEL: Who is this Messiah Maitreya?

WITNESS: Essentially he’s a mysterious Being who defies description. His name indicates that he brings together in one person two traditional figures. As Maitreya, he’s the latest incarnation of the eternal Buddha, come to enlighten humankind at the end of the Kali Yuga, or Dark Age. As the Messiah, he’s the Risen Lord who has returned to the world unannounced at the close of the Second Millennium, to bring in the Third Millennium and the reign of love and peace. Also he’s the Great Rishi, who has for centuries been biding his time in the remotest Himalayas, and has now come forth to save the world from itself. These three, and other exalted Beings, are united in our blessed Master.

COUNSEL: What is the relationship between him and Almighty God, in your opinion?

WITNESS: No relationship. He
is
Almighty God!

COUNSEL: And the members of your community, including yourself? Are you, too, deified?

WITNESS: Oh, no! He’s absolutely unique. He’s God. We are God’s devotees, and on quite another level. The basis of our community is total surrender to him. Our aim is never to forget him, to do everything for him, to obey his every wish. It is this submission to our Master that gives us peace and joy and holds us together and gives us our reason for living.

COUNSEL: I come now to the big question. Is this deity a real person, living and visible, incarnate in this world as you and I are? Or is he a spiritual presence, an ideal, real in your eyes but not in mine and the Jury’s?

WITNESS: That’s the wonderful thing! We are immensely privileged to be living at this moment. He has chosen this time in history to descend into our world to save us all, and for that purpose has taken on mortal flesh and blood.

COUNSEL: So this Messiah Maitreya of yours, this God who reveals himself in human form, is living somewhere on Earth at this moment, doing the things that people do - eating and drinking, walking and talking, sleeping and waking, living and dying - but doing so incognito? Unrecognized by us, recognized by you?

WITNESS: Exactly.

COUNSEL: Do you happen to know where he is for sure, right now?

WITNESS, almost inaudibly: Indeed I do! [A long pause...]

COUNSEL, very slowly: I must ask you to tell the court exactly where he is.

WITNESS, leaning far forward, clutching the rail of the box and pointing a trembling finger, whispers:
There! In the dock!

The storm breaks. The court has been holding its breath in anticipation of this - a shock all the more shocking because it has been half expected... A fight starts in the public gallery. Counsel collapses on to his bench, as if he hadn’t all along known what was coming. The Jury starts whispering excitedly. The judge bangs away with his hammer, shouting for order…

Failing, he adjourns the court for twenty minutes...

An uneasy calm restored, the court is in session again. But the atmosphere is very quiet and very different. As if the New Bailey, suddenly cut off from the outside world, had drifted into a new dimension of space-time.

COUNSEL, with a frog in his throat, resumes his examination of the Witness: God is omnipotent. The personage in the dock is - to say the least - somewhat hamstrung at the moment. Doesn’t the fact that your Master is a prisoner, on trial for his life, shake your confidence in him a little?

WITNESS: Not at all! If he wished, he could vanish from your midst instantly. Or even destroy you, all by calling fire down from heaven. He has his reasons for letting you sit in judgement on him.

COUNSEL: And if he’s found guilty, and condemned to death?

WITNESS: The world has no power over him that doesn’t come from him. If he were to allow evil men to take his life, that wouldn’t be for the first time. Nor would his dying be all it appeared to be. You can’t put to death the Author of life and death.

COUNSEL: How do you know all this? Please explain your connection with the Accused, the circumstances in which you first met him, and how you have related to him since then.

WITNESS: I have never spoken to him, though I’ve attended dozens of his meetings. He has written to me three times in answer to my letters. I have many pictures of him, audio and video tapes, and copies of all his books, of course... But - how can I explain? - I’ve never felt I could approach him in person, never felt
worthy
-

COUNSEL: One last question. How does your community get on with the public?

WITNESS: Since our foundation four years ago, we’ve been able to interest a few inquirers in the teaching of our Master, and to recruit the occasional new member. On the other hand, there have been serious attempts to burn our house down, and a small bomb did go off. There was some damage, but no one was hurt. We always have to be on our guard against enemies who will stop at nothing. They’ve forced us to take protective measures.

COUNSEL: I turn to you, members of the Jury. From the evidence of other witnesses and from his own mouth, you are familiar with the Accused’s pretensions, and how he goes about justifying them. Now you are discovering something rather different, another side of him. You have just been treated to a sample of the effect he has on his disciples and devotees. Whether or not you feel this effect to be appalling in human terms is beside the point. What is very much to the point is how it endorses the height and the depth and the seriousness of his pretensions to divinity.

All that was needed to complete the picture - turning it into bas-relief - was the band of disciples represented here today by Sister Marie-Louise. To whom the Prosecution is obliged.

Defence:
The Pedestal So High

MYSELF, to Witness: Well, we meet at last, Sister Marie-Louise, in strange circumstances. Do you remember what I said in my letters to you?

WITNESS: Yes, Master, very well.

MYSELF: Don’t call me Master. I told you then and I tell you now that I’m nobody’s master or guru. I tell you that your trouble - along with that of the rest of your community and indeed most of the human race - is
intimidation,
blind subservience to authority, religious and secular. I begged you to dare to be your own authority on what only you can know and what matters most - namely, Who you are in your own experience. Again and again I stressed that no second or third person is in a position to tell you What you are as First Person. I implored you to look for yourself. I told you that John a-Nokes is no more for reverencing than any other outsider is. That his business is to point away from himself to you the Insider, to the One who is nearer to you than you are, and Who alone is worthy of your adoration. Have you forgotten all this?

WITNESS: Oh, no, Master! I read those letters every day. I could recite them word for word. They are wonderful!

MYSELF: And you - you who they are all about - are
not
wonderful?

WITNESS: Maybe one day, Master, I shall myself be able to see and to live from these great truths you teach. Meantime I’m just a spiritual aspirant, a seeker, a beginner. It’s enough that I bask in your light.

You are the world-honoured One. Why, Master, it was you who told us that the setting sun rolls out his red carpet across the sea for you alone, for the VIP of the universe. Never for the likes of us.