The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (29 page)

MYSELF: Are you deaf as well as blind? I said it did so for the Headless One, for the unique First Person of the universe.

I ask you, and the members of the jury as well, to turn to Diagram No. 18 in the booklet, showing two versions of the religious uniform or habit you are wearing. The design is based on a T-shirt I used to wear, one given to me by a very dear friend who sees herSelf for herself and is no devotee, thank God.

Diagram No. 18

I put it to the jury: Looking out at the Witness, isn’t (A) - the
or Wrong-way-up version - the one
you
are in receipt of? And I put it to the Witness: Looking down at yourself, isn’t (B) - the World’s End or Right-way-up version - the one you are in receipt of? And isn’t this the true and God’s-eye view of you, as grounded and rooted in Him? In Him, I say! In the ONE WHO IS. Not - ghastly fate! - in the one who isn’t, in the jack-o’-lantern or will-o’-the-wisp you are looking at in the dock.

WITNESS: I hear what you say, Master, but I don’t really get what you are talking about. Perhaps one day I shall.

MYSELF, to Witness: You leave me speechless, Sister Marie-Louise... God bless you! I have no more questions. Your devotion to me is quite the nicest and neatest way of guarding against all I stand for. Please leave the box. [She goes, not a bit crestfallen. The more I tick her off, the more she loves it!]

Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, observe the fix I’m in. It’s not that the lady and her friends mount me on a pedestal so high they can’t hear a word I say. It’s much worse than that. It’s that the pedestal is just low enough for them to hear
parts
of what I say, so that somehow the message turns out to be the
opposite
of what I mean. What sort of disciples are these who, when I say ‘Look in’, look out; and when I say ‘Look down’, look up; and when I say ‘Just look’, piously close their eyes? I hate to say this, but the truth is that I have dear friends, friends, enemies, bitter enemies - and disciples. Mercifully, very few.

You’ll gather that I’m
not
one of those spiritual teachers who give their pupils the option: ‘Either see Who you are, or else surrender to me. If you aren’t ready to find the true Guru in yourself; at least find Him provisionally in me, as a first step. The second step, from me as your authority to yourself as your real Authority, may then follow.’ Those teachers include some great souls, and I’m not saying they are wrong. It’s not that this roundabout road to enlightenment via devotion to a guru is closed, but that it’s a long and difficult diversion, and few they are that emerge from it on to the main highway. I still have to meet a devotee who has come through and will tell you so. Accordingly my message, day in and day out, to anyone who has half an ear, is: What, for heaven’s sake, is wrong with the direct road to Yourself? It couldn’t be better paved and easier going and safer - and shorter. In fact, all you have to do is face the right direction, and - like a shot - you’ve arrived at the Place you never left! That 180° turn-about of attention is enough to see you right Home, instantly. But you are responsible for making it. Your attention isn’t something I can get hold of like a wrong-pointing signpost, and twist round to point the right way. It’s you who have to do that.

COUNSEL: Whatever effect your gospel has on people, whether they take it the right way or the wrong way, the responsibility for what happens to them is yours.

MYSELF: This sounds reasonable, but is really another of your choice ones. Blame me for the way the Witness - bless her silly heart! - inverts what I’m telling her, and you’ll have to blame Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for the millions of Russians Stalin liquidated. And Madame Curie for Hiroshima. And Jesus Christ for such flowerings of Christianity as the Children’s Crusade, countless pogroms against the Jews, the Thirty Years’ War and all the grisly work of the Holy Inquisition. Not to mention the Apocalyptic Church.

COUNSEL: You can’t dodge the fact that you are marketing two sorts of divinity, one inadvertently and the other by design. You are causing a few feeble-minded folk to deify you, and many evil-minded folk to deify themselves. Also a lot of bloody-minded folk to deify violence. What remains to convict you of blasphemy under the Act?

MYSELF: What, indeed? Given some adjustments of language, I guess you’re about right, for once.

COUNSEL, all excitement: Jury, do you hear that? [To the judge, triumphantly] Your Honour, this outright admission of guilt by the Accused - not the first, but for sure the clearest - raises a vital issue about the conduct of this Trial from now on. May I ask for a brief recess in which to put to Your Honour some questions of procedure?

JUDGE: Very well. The court is adjourned for half an hour.

Recess

The Judge in Camera with Counsel and Accused

COUNSEL: I submit, Your Honour, that the Accused’s clear admission of guilt, which we have just heard, must change the course of the Trial. I see no reason to call the remaining witnesses. Just two or three of them, at most, will do.

JUDGE: I take your point. Mr Nokes, what have you to say?

MYSELF: I did not admit guilt. May I remind Your Honour that Counsel’s view of what constitutes blasphemy and my view are poles apart? My plea is that
I’m
the one in court (not the only one now, I hope) who
isn’t
blaspheming. I see God seated at the Centre of everyone’s universe, regardless. Along with animals and little children and sages, I’m content to leave Him sitting comfortably there. Most adult humans are hell-bent on unseating Him and taking His place. As if they could! Now that really
is
blasphemy!

JUDGE: I understand your position perfectly. The immediate question is whether the remaining witnesses need be called. What do you say?

MYSELF: I say they must be called. Their names and abstracts of their evidence were of course given to me before the Trial, and the completion of my Defence depends on their appearing in court. I have every expectation that their evidence will, here and there, under cross-examination, turn out to support my case. I can’t afford to forgo the probability of some more Prosecution witnesses turning out to be Defence witnesses. It’s a risk that Sir Gerald must take.

COUNSEL: Surely, Your Honour, I can’t be required to play into Nokes’s hands? I must devise my own strategy, make my own decisions about a
nolle prosequi.

JUDGE: If the Accused can so shake the evidence of some of your witnesses that they become, in effect, his witnesses, then he has every right to continue to do so. In the light of events so far in this Trial, I appreciate your concern regarding the rest of it. You have your job to do; I have mine. It is to give John a-Nokes, whose life - unlike ours, remember - is at stake, every opportunity to save it. I rule that you call the remaining witnesses.

COUNSEL: In Rex v. Simpson, 1921, Court of Criminal Appeal, the Judge excused the Prosecution from calling four witnesses it had said it would call, notwithstanding the vehement objections of the Defence.

JUDGE, after briefly consulting his computer: That was a trial for rape, and the grounds for the withdrawal were very different from yours, Sir Gerald. No. My decision is final.

COUNSEL: Your Honour forces me to consider whether I shouldn’t leave the rest of the Prosecution’s case to my junior here. And explain to the Jury that I’m doing so because the proceedings from now on can only be
de minimis,
an anticlimax and irrelevance not meriting my attention - Nokes having
de facto
changed his plea to Guilty. In short, that I’m
functus officio.

JUDGE: Of course it’s up to you... But - if you’ll allow me to put a few questions –

Can you be so sure of the way the case will go? Do you consider that your withdrawal would be in the public interest, or would further the intentions of the Crown? Or would serve the cause of justice itself? Not to mention - how can I phrase this? - the effect on your own professional career... Not that Mr Atkinson would fail to do an excellent job...

COUNSEL, sighing, and shaking his head so vigorously he nearly loses his wig: It’s a question of duty, Your Honour. Personal considerations don’t come into it...

Well, Atkinson, it seems we’ve no option but to soldier on.

JUNIOR COUNSEL, suddenly rather down in the mouth: I guess so, Sir Gerald.

Prosecution Witness No. 19

THE VENERABLE BHIKKHU

Prompted by Counsel, the Witness introduces himself and describes his relationship with me.

WITNESS: I’m a Westerner - a Welshman - who, as a direct result of meeting the Accused, am now a Buddhist monk: which leaves me eternally grateful to him. I first met John a-Nokes five years ago at one of his workshop-seminars, organized by a group of philosophy and psychology students at our university. His subject was Buddhism - his very individual version of it. I was already some sort of spiritual seeker, but had no idea where to look or how to look or what to look for, and as unhappy as I was confused. Jack changed all that. He turned my attention round 180° and showed me what I needed to see - the much-feared and overlooked obvious. He initiated me into the art of looking within at the Emptiness.

This insight was enough to change the direction of my life. It got me off the mark - gave me not so much a head start as a no-head start - on my own spiritual odyssey, which is still in the early stages. Not that I seek something back of or additional to the Emptiness here. My aim is to see it ever more clearly, realize it ever more deeply, live from it ever more consistently.

COUNSEL: It was to traditional Buddhism, then, and not to the Accused’s version - or inversion or perversion - of it that you turned, for guidance on your spiritual quest?

WITNESS: That’s right. After all (I argued) that tradition has been tested over two and a half millennia. It seemed to me the ideal means of arriving at the sustained clarity and freedom I sought. The more I studied Buddhism, the more businesslike this approach to full enlightenment turned out to be. A year after meeting John a-Nokes, I became a
Samanera,
or novice monk, at the Amarāvati Monastery, where I’m now an ordained monk.

COUNSEL: Do you think the Accused has taken the wrong road?

WITNESS: It’s rather that he’s held up on the right road. The reason he’s stuck is that he imagines he’s got to the end of it. He mistakes the valuable insight he and I share for the final truth and full Enlightenment, whereas I see it as an aspect of the truth and a preview of Enlightenment. He says he’s arrived. I say we’re both on the way. There’s more to Buddhahood or Nirvana than intermittent and distant views of it. The touch, the savour and the smell of it, so to say, are essential. There’s a world of difference, and quite a few hazards, between spotting the restaurant of your choice across the wide and busy street, with occasional whiffs of the cooking, and sitting inside there, tucking away.

COUNSEL: Are you saying that the Accused is deluded, or that he’s some kind of fraud?

WITNESS: About his sincerity I’ve not the slightest doubt. It’s just that I can’t agree that he’s come anywhere near the goal.

COUNSEL: What goal? Please be more specific.

WITNESS: A fully enlightened Arahant or Buddha has freed himself from all limitations and defilements, such as desire, ill will, ignorance and pride. He’s fearless. He’s full of energy and wisdom and inspiration, and all pure and noble qualities. His compassion excludes no one and knows no bounds. In short, he’s perfect. Which means he won’t be reborn into the world. The rest of us very imperfect ones, after this life is over, will again and again return in other bodies and go on living and dying and being reborn till we, too, at last become Buddhas.