The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (47 page)

The Prosecution asserts that a malady which everybody suffers from is one which nobody suffers from. Not so. The history of disappearing species abounds with examples of creatures that were sick not as individuals but en masse - the most quoted example being the dinosaurs, whose gigantic size and fantastic and crippling armour is supposed to have sealed their fate. No doubt their size and armament had been advantageous up to a point and in moderation; beyond that point they became handicaps that contributed to (if they didn’t cause) the extinction of these Tertiary reptiles. Not altogether different is the case of
Homo sapiens,
the creature that developed another sort of crippling armour. I’m referring to the illusion that he is for himself at Centre the thing that he
looks like
to others out there, the lethal fiction of First-Person versus second/third-person symmetry and confrontation. This fiction or myth is precisely what made him human, and for ages it was a tolerably good myth that was productive of nearly all he holds valuable. But now, more and more, it’s proving counter-productive, a bad myth that’s increasingly destructive of all he holds valuable, including humanness, including himself! He may well follow the dinosaurs into Life’s packed charnel-house.

I don’t know what will happen. But I’m guardedly hopeful, inasmuch as what’s required of
Homo sapiens
(if that prize misnomer is to become a nomer) is no big deal. It’s not to
do
something difficult and tricky but to
stop doing
something difficult and tricky. Namely, to stop muddling things. It’s to let things be themselves in their proper places. It’s to let God be God at the Centre of things, and man be man off-Centre - a metre or so away - keeping a respectful distance from that Presence. The arrival and survival of
Homo sapiens
depend on its perception of itself as a blaspheming species, followed by its ceasing to blaspheme and becoming a reverent species. One that substitutes
God’s in, I’m out
for the present disastrous
I’m in, God’s out.

God, the Alone, is right here. Man, one of many, is over there. Which brings me to the Prosecution’s supercilious dismissal of John a-Nokes as a case of naïve subjectivism. A severe attack of solipsism - a term which has more than a whiff of the snake-pit about it - is what the poor fellow is suffering from! Well, I say it isn’t Nokes but the Prosecution that’s pathetically naïve here, simplistic to a degree.

I have news for Counsel. There’s not one but two sorts of solipsism - man’s and God’s - and they lie poles apart. The former, in so far as it’s at all possible, is insane. ‘I, Jack, have access to my own awareness only; that of others is speculative, dubious and probably non-existent.’ This is solipsism by
exclusion,
the denial of love, loneliness at its most lonesome. And it’s nonsense because - to tell the truth - Jack as Jack-by-himself, as that peripheral third person, isn’t aware at all: he’s a picture, a glossy and paper-thin appearance, all object and no subject. He’s aware only as the First Person who is Awareness itself; the Awareness in all beings, the whole of it at their Centre. He’s aware only as the infinitely deep and substantial One who says with an engaging grin, ‘Here I AM! It’s ME
and not a picture!’
He’s aware only as the One whose Aloneness is absolutely real, blissful, loving - because it’s solipsism by
inclusion.
He’s aware only as the Universal Subject who is the sole Healer of my loneliness and all loneliness.

In short, the only kind of solipsism that Counsel can reasonably accuse me of is God’s. Which means that he’s accusing me of being Who I say I really, really am - this truly Singular First Person. Which I find rather funny.

Let me translate this into here-and-now language. Looking in right now at what I’m looking out of - at the Aware Capacity or Solitary Consciousness that I find here - I realize that this is what unites me with your consciousness and all consciousness. There’s nothing to mark it out as the property of John a-Nokes, everything to mark it out as common property. The property of the Court Usher over there by the door, for instance, and the Clerk to the Court, and all the rest of us here. This Aloneness is the remedy - the sole remedy - for loneliness. Here I am you, whoever you are. If this is that dreaded solipsism, it is also the perfect antidote for solipsism. Hurray for the Solitude which at last overcomes solitariness!

Or put it like this: because the word ‘I’ has two contrary meanings, so has the solipsism which says ‘I alone exist!’ The solipsism of delusion and bitter loneliness is saying ‘I, Jack, alone exist!’ The solipsism of enlightenment and love is saying ‘I, the One Consciousness or First Person in all beings, alone exist.’ I think Counsel is accusing me of the first kind because he has never heard of the second, let alone enjoyed it.

Now for the regression - a nasty word, made nastier by calling it infantile - which is the other aberration he accuses me of. (How invaluable these pejorative terms can be, as substitutes for honest thinking and observation!) If for
regression
I substitute
return to my roots,
and for
infantile
I substitute
as a little child
- and if, in addition, I consult once more our diagram - why then what a different picture is conjured up! ‘Until you become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Until you revert to the time when you didn’t hallucinate a wad of stuff bunging up the mid-point of your universe, until you revert to the time when you didn’t superimpose on your featureless Original Face that acquired mirror-face, until you revert to the time when you weren’t eccentric to yourself by one angstrom (let alone by one metre) and permanently out to lunch - until then you will be sick. Not, it’s true, a case of infantile regression, but of that dehumanizing and degenerative disease which you could call infantile-regression-phobia: a case of adulthood cutting itself out not only from its own childhood, but from its sole Supplier and Resource.

In working out and giving vent to all these matters, over the past fifteen years or so, I have - yes - given some offence to pious folk, and much offence to fanatics. About this I have two things to say:

The first is that I never intended to give offence to anybody. None of my work has been deliberately belligerent. Rather the other way round. In fact, it belongs to the pattern of things as I see them that all faiths, creeds, religious systems and religious practices proceed from the one Centre which is the true First Person that I AM. In the last resort, accordingly, I’m responsible for the lot - not excluding the most bizarre and intolerant and aggressive, and the cruel injustices and violence and civil commotion they lead to. In this sense I’m pleading Guilty to much more than I’m charged with. On the other hand it remains true that to say anything of importance in the field of religion is to infuriate somebody. If it’s worth saying and not just pious waffle (of which there’s plenty, forsooth), it’s bound to spark off accusations of heresy, if not blasphemy. I take it that the Act isn’t, for this reason, intended to silence absolutely all God-talk.

The second thing I have to say here is much more important. You may well feel, as I do, that this Act is potentially and in the long run more evil than the evil it’s designed to combat. Instead of ensuring that religious individuals and bodies shall be free to teach and to preach according to their lights, without interference by those of contrary persuasion, it ensures that the most vociferous and intolerant and unscrupulous of sectarians shall dictate how far the rest are allowed to teach and to preach, if at all. The Act uses the law to set these fanatics above the law. It goes one worse than saying that overt might is right: it says that the most insidious and despicable might - the might of the pogrom and the Klan and the suitcase bomber - is right. The law it upholds is the law of clout. Clout overt and bloody-brutal as well as clout underhand and dirty-brutal. If this iniquitous Act is allowed to go unrepealed, this is a bad time for our land and our species. The lights are going out all over the planet. Civilization is well on the way to high-tech savagery. The
Homo
that could have become
sapiens
has become not so much
Homo stultus
as
Homo diabolus.

Don’t tell me there’s no alternative to this barbarous Act or something very like it, and that if people can’t propose feasible ways of liberalizing it they had better keep their big mouths shut. I say that the only real alternative to this so-called Anti-Blasphemy Law (which, seeing it puts man at man’s Centre, is in fact pro-blasphemy) is the insight which sends man packing to his proper place. And don’t tell me it’s an unworkable alternative, a vision hidden from all but a handful of gifted seers. No, the most vividly lit scene in the whole world - once you bother to look - is that headed third person over there behind glass, and this headless First Person here in front of it, and the total contrast between them.
God’s in, Jack’s out
is plainer than daylight, once I rouse myself from my long dream and raise an eyelid.

Not content with going on and on about the obviousness of this waking scene, my friends and I have devised over the years a whole range of alarm clocks (so to speak), devices for alerting us to the scene and for keeping us alert - devices (I have to say this) which are incomparably more immediate, certain and foolproof than any that have gone before. A few of you here - those who, like His Honour, have actually carried out with me the little experiments I begged you to do - will be able to judge from that small sample the workability of our devices and techniques for waking us to our Divine Nature. The advent of these experiments - plus humanity’s ever more desperate need to discover that Nature and so avoid genocide, plus humanity’s ever more efficient means of communication, plus a generous helping of what you might call luck and what I would certainly call grace - add up to a fairly encouraging total. Who’s to say that
Homo
hasn’t a fighting chance to make it to
sapiens?
I take heart from the reflection that this very offbeat species of ours has somehow muddled and staggered and crept through Ice Ages and Ages of Stagnation and Ages of Decline and Dark Ages, and is still going strong. Strongly for Hell, it may be. But need not be. I have a vision which can save my people. I’ve shared it with you. It is the Christing of humanity, no less. Where there’s no vision the people perish.

A few million years ago proto-man made the ‘impossible’ leap from animal un-self-consciousness to human self-consciousness. Was this his last and only leap? Fiction (the pretence that one is what one looks like) turned animals into men; facts (say a distinguished company of seers, sparsely but very widely scattered throughout the world for the past three millennia) can now turn man into God. Some of them say that this second leap - from human self-consciousness to divine Self-consciousness - is hard, others say that it’s easy. I say that it’s easier than winking. Eckhart says, ‘Put on your jumping shoes and jump into God!’ I say: Look! See how small and effortless a jump it is to put yourself in God’s Adidas trainers on this side of the glass, instead of man’s
trainers on that side. This truly Olympic event is no high-jump or long-jump, but a low and short standing-jump, the Instantaneous 180° Twist-jump. Make-sure you carry away the Gold!

Of course I hasten to add that it’s not at all easy, having jumped, to stay jumped, to stand your ground which is Home Ground. Inevitably you revert. But at least you now know that you can make that leap, and you know exactly how to go about it, and you know that every new leap comes more naturally than the last. And sooner or later you know from experience that, exacting and often difficult though this new life as First Person certainly is, it’s far less punishing than the third-person life.
God’s in, Jack’s out
isn’t only as plain as daylight. It’s as laid-on and good for working in as broad daylight is. It’s when Jack ousts God that thick darkness descends and he turns himself into a benighted Jackass. Which makes it a very unpractical thing for Jack to do.

And so I come - as Counsel predicted - to that all-important word in the Act and in his initial summary of it, to that one word which gives this wretched piece of legislation such saving grace as it has. That word is
falsely.