The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (3 page)

OFFICER: Well, I don’t know... I wasn’t concerned with giving impressions, one way or another, but just answering Counsel’s questions. I didn’t say you
were
wild and aggressive. Only that you talked that way.

MYSELF: Thank you. No more questions from me. [The Witness stands down.]

Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, let me tell you about a very significant thing that happened in that prison. After the Officer had satisfied himself that I would give no trouble, he took my handcuffs off - as you’ve just heard. Also, at my request, he gave me drawing materials. I wanted to verify how impossible it was to make a sketch of myself from
inside
that cell.

If you will please turn to Diagram No. 1 in the pamphlet which the Defence has supplied each of you with, you’ll find a copy of my sketch.

The ‘cell’ wasn’t a
cell
(the rear wall was missing) and I wasn’t in what there was of it. All I found of myself was the odd arm and leg thrust in from outside. I was no more held in that cell than in that cracked basin while washing my hands. The truth is that I peek and prod into rooms, advancing a tentative feeler or two, but never O never - like other people - venture inside. You’ll not catch
me
in one of your mantraps! Not nowadays you won’t!

What happened to me was this. Having been told from an early age that the word ‘cell’ - or room, or compartment, or chamber, or courtroom - means a space closed in on
all
sides, I tailored my experience to the language. I hallucinated to order. And was everywhere a jailbird. But one day - O happy day! - I noticed that the poet Lovelace, writing from jail, said truly:

Stone walls do not a prison make

Nor iron bars a cage.

I came to my senses, and saw my way back to freedom. Not just figuratively but literally, saw my way back to freedom...

The business of this court is to go by the evidence that is clearly presented within its four walls. Correction:
three
walls. All I ask of you members of the Jury is to look at what’s being displayed at this moment, what’s clearly on show - not what’s imagined, believed, thought up, cooked up, faked up, but actually seen. Namely,
three
walls - at most. Another glance at my picture may help you to see the
given
shape of the shapes around you.

Diagram No. 1

Look! Ahead of you is the now-empty witness-box, with its telescreen for long-distance witnesses, and you see that it has for background an approximately
rectangular
wall. On your right, His Honour the Judge sitting there on his bench, and below him the Clerk to the Court, have a
wedge-shaped
wall background; and the thick end of the wedge - your end - is fuzzy. It fades out, On your left, the dock - with me in it - has a second wedge-shaped wall for background, fading out as before. Now can you honestly tell me that, on present evidence, these two wedges join up to make a fourth wall? Or that
you
have any background at all? Come on! Have you ever, even in the Underground during the rush hour, found yourself hemmed in
all
round? Aren’t you always,
for yourself,
wide open at the rear, unconfined, at large, deeper than deep, immense? In this direction the risk, if there were any, would surely be agoraphobia and not claustrophobia.

COUNSEL: I must protest, Your Honour! Is this a Trial for blasphemy? Or a seminar on perspective? Or - heaven help us! - a game for four-year-olds? The Accused is wasting the court’s time.

JUDGE: I think he may be coming to the point.

MYSELF: I’m right there, Your Honour.

If you and the Jury will please turn to Diagram No. 2 in the booklet, it may help to bring out my meaning.

Diagram No. 2

When overlooked and avoided, this Missing Wall or Rear Gap or Absence reads as useless and boring, the shadow of a shadow, a dead loss. Or worse: as more terrifying than any ghost or devil. When taken in and taken on, however, it becomes the Presence that is my treasure. This despised No-thing at my back turns out to be far more real than any of the things in front of me. This neglected Place is a truer one than any on the map for, in contrast to them, it’s infinitely wide and deep, uniformly itself through and through, all on show at once, always accessible, unchanging and - ah! - my Native Land. The Big Country. the Country of Everlasting Clearness. This is what I see it is, not what I imagine it is. Above all, it’s vividly
aware
of itself as all this, and free from every limitation. Described negatively, it’s my way out of the tightest spot, my escape route from the most secure of prisons. Described positively, it’s my way in to the absolute Liberty that I am. It didn’t forsake me when the Officer thought he had me cooped up in his cell. It doesn’t forsake me now in this sombre courtroom, of which it is the fourth side - the bright side which is God’s side.

Yes! Every room - every place I am ever supposed to be ‘in’ - has its God’s side. Which is my side. My let-out from the world, and my let-in to its Source. Here’s the silver lining to the darkest cloud that ever gathered.

For thousands of years the wise have been siding with God and taking this way Home; and recommending, with all the eloquence at their command, this royal road from human bondage back to divine freedom. Now, at last, instead of being told about it by experts, we are being shown it. We are invited to see our own way through to God’s own country. The Clear Country we’re coming from and returning to.

COUNSEL, slicing the air with his brief: Did you hear what he said, members of the Jury? Graciously, Mr John a-Nokes takes God’s side! Not, as you might think, out of need or reverence, but because of Who he thinks he is, because it’s naturally his side. This, you’ll agree, is blasphemy without qualms, the laid-back sort. And stupid: to find all four walls at once, he has only to mount a pair of steps and look down from the ceiling.

MYSELF: And then the room is ceilingless. There, on high this time, is his let-out from man’s world into God’s. In drawing plans of four-walled rooms open to the sky, the architect sides with the Architect of the Universe.

For God’s sake let’s come to our senses and give ourselves a break. We’re all in business, the difficult business of living. What’s the use of being upfront if our rear’s in disarray, if our pants are down? Our success, our very survival depends ultimately on the Backup our enterprise draws on. Is it some mushroom corporation, with a confidence-inspiring logo and title and address in the City, sprung up overnight in the financial jungle? Or a half-hardy perennial like our High Street Barclays? Truly there’s only one Bank I can always bank on, only one Firm that stays firm through all crises, only one Underwriter that never comes out from under, only one Resource that’s infinitely resourceful. That’s the one I have for backing, right now. I can count on this Thing because it isn’t a thing at all, but the Origin and Receptacle of all things, the Source of all resources. Itself free from everything, its ability to come up with the things that are needed (including this description of itself right now) is astounding. It has a knack. My God, what a knack!

Call It what you like. The Void, Essence, Spirit, Awareness, Reality, the Treasury of the Kingdom of Heaven: or the true Banco di Santo Spirito. Only don’t go on overlooking It. Look back without looking round. There’s Nothing to It, It’s that easy to appeal to and draw upon. And Everything’s from It, It’s that generous. Here’s a Pocket infinitely deep and well-lined and perfect for picking. Our Source isn’t playing hard to get. It’s begging to be noticed and taken advantage of and cashed in on, positively tearing the courtroom apart in the effort. Tell me now, what more could It do to announce Itself?

COUNSEL, with a sneer: And these huge advances are quite interest-free to the great Mr Nokes, the divine bank customer, no doubt.

MYSELF: Certainly not. Backing like this invariably costs something. Interest has to be disbursed, attention has to be paid. I draw on the Bank’s unlimited reserves to the extent that I’m awake to Its presence, and to the central position It occupies in my life. To be genuinely intrigued, to stick with It because I want to and not because I’m told to do so, is to cash in on It, to tap Its power, to be It. And just now It’s revealing Itself as the Gap between the wedge-shaped walls of this courtroom. How vast and deep this Rear Gap is, how clean, how appreciative of Itself! Wonder-struck and delighted, I would say. The Gap is
agape!

There are two pronunciations and two meanings of this word - the adjective ‘agape’ and the noun ‘agapë’, or love-feast - and both apply here. This wide-open-mouthed Appetite for the world is what I AM right here and right now, and It is infinitely mysterious. Truly I can’t say
what
It is but only
that
It is. Here is not a case of
I am this or that or the other,
but plain I AM. And, back of the I AM, the I AM NOT from which It arises without reason and without stint. A case of Being, without being someone or something. By contrast and with respect, I’ve only to glance across at Counsel to see what it’s like being someone - an object which isn’t backed by the Source of the world, or even by the world, but by a tiny bit of it. A man-shaped patch of courtroom.

What a relief to be backed by the One whose name is I AM, the name that precedes and introduces every other name! What a relief to merge into and be upheld by the Unlimited. In that police cell, in the dock of this court, in the condemned cell if you send me there, I find at my back only the Everlasting Freedom and the Incomparable Safety. For I am in none of those dim and poky places. They are in me who am Brightness itself, and I can take them.

God is my let-out.

My let-out into what place? My witnesses speak for me:

Into what place? Into the Place where place itself finds no admittance, where nothing exists save the lightning-flash of the Moon of Allah. It is far beyond all conception and imagination. It is the Light of light of light of light of light of light.

Rumi

True places are not found on maps.

Herman Melville

The lover has no back... He receives everything clean from Him.

Rumi

Let us be backed with God.

Shakespeare:
Henry VI, Part 3

Bodhisattvas have their minds set to working without anything behind them... The Bodhisattva floats like a cloud in the sky without anything at its back.

D. T. Suzuki

The Sage all the time sees and hears no more than a young child sees and hears.

Tao Te Ching

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

Jesus

Prosecution Witness No. 2