The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (41 page)

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust... He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day... A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

COUNSEL: I put it to you that the Psalmist you invoke with such assurance was referring to a more spiritual safety than the physical sort you seem to be talking about. And in fact your own diagram shows (A’)’s arrow eventually getting to you at (B’) and wounding and killing you there in your human region (h). Tell me, what’s the use of being William the Conqueror at the hub of things if you are also Harold out there with an arrow in his eye? I don’t see any percentage in it.

MYSELF: Provisionally and temporarily - it’s quite true - I am that conquered one at (B’) who is wounded and dying. Primarily and permanently, however, I remain the Conqueror at (C) who is never wounded and who never dies. Death is an arrow that loses its barb before it gets to this First Person, but regains it for that third person, for slaying poor old John a-Nokes out there. But who is it, in the last resort, that polishes him off? That human enemy (A’) is powerless to do so - no effective missiles ever cross that A’-B’ gap, that Great Divide. There, all punches are pulled. There, it’s all shadow-boxing. It is I, the One I AM here, who calls the shots, who cries ‘Enough of Nokes!’ and lets fly the fatal arrow from (C) to (B’). In this sense, yes, I’m mine own executioner. Who I really, really am is the Marksman who finally guns down who I pretend to be, dispatches all perishers whatsoever. Who I really, really am is the only real Power and the only real Doer of whatever’s done; and what It does is what I do, and in the end wholly approve of. And that includes any sentence the court passes on John a-Nokes. You can do nothing to me against my ultimate will, which is the will of the One here to whom all are subject. The real decisions come from this Highest Court.

Here are some of that Court’s better-known pronouncements:

God (the One who is nearer to me than my jugular vein) gives life and puts to death.

The Koran

There is no power but of God.

St Paul

Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.

Gospel of St Matthew

Jesus, before Pilate: ‘Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.’

Gospel of St John

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.

Job

God’s holy will is the Centre from which all we do must radiate; all else is mere weariness and excitement.

Jean-Pierre Camus

The factual basis, then, of that scare story about radiation - featuring so profitably in the Witness’s magazine - amounts to something like this:

There is a unique Centre from which eternally radiates, as concentric waves from a stone thrown into a pond, the multi-ringed universe. This Centre goes by many names, such as Awareness, Essence, Reality, Being, Spirit, Atman-Brahman, the One Power, the First Person Singular that I AM. Being aware is being This, for there’s no awareness independent of or outside of This. And to be This is to be the Source of the ‘radiation’ by which It is shielded from all power and by which It exerts all power. By virtue of the first, all incoming processes and problems are reduced to Nothing, while by virtue of the second all outgoing processes and responses are produced from Nothing. This dual-purpose radiation is indeed my shield and my sword, ensuring that while Nothing’s done to Me all’s done by Me. ‘Can we make all our relations to our fellows relations which pass
through Him?’
asks the Quaker Thomas R. Kelly. I reply: Even the blasphemous fantasy that we can begin to bypass Him passes through Him.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, if you will now please refer to Diagram No. 29, you won’t merely get the picture, but be in the picture.

Diagram 29

The apparent go of the universe, including your life and mine, is circumferential - and God-denying. Its real
go
is radial - to and from God - and is the wielding of His marvellous shield and sword. Wielded from
here
(C), in the Place where, as Ananda Mayi Ma says, ‘all problems have but one universal solution.’

COUNSEL: This grand talk of supernatural weaponry and wizardry would be a lot more credible if backed up by just one miraculous deed.

MYSELF, to Counsel: Right! Here it comes! Please wave your brief at me - for the hundredth time.

COUNSEL, complying energetically: What’s miraculous about that?

MYSELF: What isn’t miraculous about it? The Wizard-King you really, really are at Centre (C) commands countless legions of familiars or angel-servitors (nowadays we call them particles, atoms, molecules and cells) to co-operate in bringing about that arm movement in your human region. Hierarchical magic, a feat of many-levelled, many-regioned organization of unimaginable complexity, instantly put into effect. It would be a marvel if it had taken centuries. And had been monitored throughout, at every level, by all the backroom boys in the world.

You haven’t the faintest idea of how you did it. But you do know
Who did it.

Don’t tell me you have the crust to credit Sir Gerald Wilberforce KC with the astounding miracle that you - yes, You! - have just performed for our benefit. That, Sir Gerald, would be blasphemy!

As I say, you haven’t a clue how you did it. But at least you realize - or should realize - that the miracle was a masterstroke of radial or up-and-down organization, not one of circumferential or on-the-level organization. Jacob dreamed a true dream:

‘Behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.’ None was so foolish as to try to take off sideways.

Prosecution Witness No. 26:

THE COUNSELLOR

COUNSEL: Please tell the court about your work.

WITNESS: I’ve been practising as a counsellor for something like thirty years, first on the staff of a large industrial concern and latterly on my own. People come to see me with all sorts of problems - fears, frustrations, anxieties, doubts, difficulties of every kind. They come to me knowing that I’m an attentive listener and talking with me has a good chance of helping them to find their own solution to their problem. The fact that I’m a woman is more of an advantage here than otherwise, I suspect.

COUNSEL: What is your connection with the Accused?

WITNESS: An indirect one. Two of my clients were followers of his. Like so many of us, they were in trouble because they wouldn’t admit to their darker side. They persuaded themselves it didn’t exist. They turned a blind eye to their anger, for example. The psychosomatic effects were quite serious. In the case of these two, their trouble had been compounded by the Accused’s insistence that they were really and truly perfect. Divine, he said. So, of course, to feel angry or scared or miserable was just not on. And the more these negative feelings were denied expression, the more they demanded expression. Great was the relief of these clients when they allowed themselves to drop their impossible self-image, to forget about any sort of perfection (let alone divine perfection) and accept their human limitations.

COUNSEL: What have you to say about the religious aspect of these pretensions? About the notion of deification itself, aside from the psychological harm you refer to?

WITNESS: I’m no theologian, and these terms mean next to nothing to me. All I’m sure of is that the idea of deification didn’t work out at all, at least in the cases known to me. I’ll go so far as to say that, in my experience, of all the illusions people entertain about themselves, the illusion of attainable and mandatory perfection – of divinity, if you like - is the most damaging.

COUNSEL, to Jury: John a-Nokes, so far as the Prosecution understands him, rests his case on the proposition that he really is the Divinity he professes to be. And he adds that this Divinity is the great Healer. Healer, mark you! The Witness’s testimony, I think you will agree, blows these claims sky-high. She has exposed the Accused as an all-too-human human being who - at least in some instances - makes other humans sick, and by no means a Divine Being who makes them whole.

This may not be the aspect of his behaviour which excites breaches of the peace, but it does a good deal to excuse them. Or rather, to account for the instinct behind them.

Defence:
The Reversal of Values

MYSELF, cross-examining the Witness: Let’s go a little further into this self-esteem business. If some squiffy stranger at a party very confidentially informs you that your face reminds him of his darling Pekingese, and you happen to be the current beauty queen of the Western World, you’ll hardly be devastated. More probably your reaction would be hoots of laughter. Or if he said, ‘I’m sorry to have to say it, but you don’t speak so good,’ and you happen to be the Poet Laureate, you’ll hardly let the remark prey on your mind for long, or suppress all memory of it. On the contrary, you’ll welcome a few more stories like that to dine out on. Am I right?

WITNESS: Surely.

MYSELF: Well now, as a general rule it seems that people are cheerfully relaxed about their peripheral defects - whether alleged or real - if they are confident about their all-rightness at core. Secure in their self-esteem, they have no need to deny or pretend anything. They can afford to be honest. Agreed?

WITNESS: Well, yes. But the question is: Who has that degree of inner confidence? Or is inner self-satisfaction the expression I want?

MYSELF: Who indeed? We shall see. All of us are hooked on perfection. The great question is:
where
does it hang out? Nearly all of us are looking for it in the wrong place (in the peripheral region of our humanness) instead of the right place (in the central region of our divineness). It hangs in. Perfection lies at the heart of all. Indeed you could say it is the heart of the heart of every being, no matter how lowly and deficient its manifest embodiment. In the case of human beings, the contrast between their central perfection and their peripheral imperfection is very fraught and dramatic and many-sided. And very, very important to recognize.

Utopia (the Greek word means
no place)
is forever unrealizable in any of those places out there, and forever realized in this No-place right here. Will the members of the Jury please refer to Diagram No. 30. I can’t remind you too often how this diagram - which is the master plan of my Defence - brings out the fundamental differences between yourself as second/third person (picked up by others and their cameras, and by your mirror out there) and yourself as First Person (picked up by yourself directly at Centre); how it highlights the contrast between that human physique of yours (normal-way-up, headed, two-eyed and short-armed) and this divine physique of yours (upside down, headless, single-eyed, magnificently wide-armed). Now you would think (wouldn’t you?) that’s contrast enough for one simple diagram - more like a lightning sketch - to take care of. But no, more’s to come. A lot more. And vital stuff, at that.