Read Online The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God by Douglas Harding - Free Book Online
Authors: Douglas Harding
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and church steeples) don’t keel over as they slide past Him. They stay firmly upright. And — how curious and significant, and how overlooked — upright means radial to His Centre! When next you kindly take the universe for a spin, see how all fans out from its Owner. Actually, you’ve only to glance round the court right now to observe how all its vertical lines converge on — well, on Whom? That’s the question this Trial is all about.
Members of the Jury, you don’t look the sort that habitually has one —or two—or three for the road. But what, after all, is drunken driving? If it’s being so blotto that, suffering from a severe bout of delirium tremens (so to say), you see moving things as stuck, and stuck things as moving, and converging lines as parallel, then I have to accuse you of this offence. What’s worse, accuse you of having committed it countless times. In fact, I doubt whether you know what sober driving means! But there’s a remedy. The only safe and sober Driver stands ready to take charge. Hand over the wheel to your Divine Chauffeur!
I seem to remember Bertie Wooster tottering down the Mall, after a cheerful evening at the Drones. Or was the Mall tottering down him? Anyway, says Wodehouse, he ‘aimed a kick at a passing lamppost’. He saw what he saw, for once. But there’s a cheaper and safer method of sobering up than the in-vino-veritas way, a much better way of seeing what you see than going on a blinder. It is to look, just LOOK, and see what’s moving. And see WHO isn’t. And BE the One that never budged by a billionth of an inch!
COUNSEL, bursting at last under the strain: Oh no you’re not getting away with this! Members of the Jury, Nokes makes a great show of spiritual depth. He figures he’s the profound one, in contrast to us shallow types. I say he’s a master of superficiality. He trivializes the great issues and problems of our life, reducing them to such matters of moment as the curious behaviour of telegraph poles. He’s been playing this funny-man, happy-go-lucky, soft-headed, Mickey Mouse game from the start of this Trial. It’s one which serious and responsible adults, coats off and sleeves rolled up, engaged in the world’s work, decline to play.
MYSELF: And the reason why you hard-headed spoilsports are stressed to the limit is that, instead of playing God’s game, you play God. Stop arrogating to Sir Gerald and Co. His work of world-moving. Give yourselves a break and let Him get on with it, for a change. Look how marvellous He is at the job! Do you imagine that He who quite casually moves the Sun and the other stars can’t shift the picayune obstructions that stand in your path? Can’t the One who stirs the cosmos more effortlessly than you stir your porridge - can’t He also shift your blinkers or blinders, so that you discover simultaneously that magnificent Storm and the Stillness at the Eye of it? His Tempest there, His Peace right where you are?
Tell me, how can you sidestep, how can you trivialize, that deepest Peace, which is yours for the seeing?
Only when we see everything else as moving can we truly sing ‘We shall not be moved’. In their different ways, the following Defence witnesses encourage us, by placing motion and Stillness, to enjoy both:
‘Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad... ‘The poetry of motion... Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped... Oh bliss! Oh poop poop! Oh my! Oh my!’
Kenneth Grahame
The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs... Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord.
Psalms
At the Centre where no one abides, this light is quenched in a still stronger Light... For this Ground is the impartible Stillness, motionless in itself, and by this Immobility all things are moved.
Eckhart
The Tao is ever still, yet there is nothing it does not do.
Tao Te Ching
There is nothing that stands fast, nothing fixed, nothing free from change among the things that come into being,
Members of the Jury, you don’t look the sort that habitually has one —or two—or three for the road. But what, after all, is drunken driving? If it’s being so blotto that, suffering from a severe bout of delirium tremens (so to say), you see moving things as stuck, and stuck things as moving, and converging lines as parallel, then I have to accuse you of this offence. What’s worse, accuse you of having committed it countless times. In fact, I doubt whether you know what sober driving means! But there’s a remedy. The only safe and sober Driver stands ready to take charge. Hand over the wheel to your Divine Chauffeur!
I seem to remember Bertie Wooster tottering down the Mall, after a cheerful evening at the Drones. Or was the Mall tottering down him? Anyway, says Wodehouse, he ‘aimed a kick at a passing lamppost’. He saw what he saw, for once. But there’s a cheaper and safer method of sobering up than the in-vino-veritas way, a much better way of seeing what you see than going on a blinder. It is to look, just LOOK, and see what’s moving. And see WHO isn’t. And BE the One that never budged by a billionth of an inch!
COUNSEL, bursting at last under the strain: Oh no you’re not getting away with this! Members of the Jury, Nokes makes a great show of spiritual depth. He figures he’s the profound one, in contrast to us shallow types. I say he’s a master of superficiality. He trivializes the great issues and problems of our life, reducing them to such matters of moment as the curious behaviour of telegraph poles. He’s been playing this funny-man, happy-go-lucky, soft-headed, Mickey Mouse game from the start of this Trial. It’s one which serious and responsible adults, coats off and sleeves rolled up, engaged in the world’s work, decline to play.
MYSELF: And the reason why you hard-headed spoilsports are stressed to the limit is that, instead of playing God’s game, you play God. Stop arrogating to Sir Gerald and Co. His work of world-moving. Give yourselves a break and let Him get on with it, for a change. Look how marvellous He is at the job! Do you imagine that He who quite casually moves the Sun and the other stars can’t shift the picayune obstructions that stand in your path? Can’t the One who stirs the cosmos more effortlessly than you stir your porridge - can’t He also shift your blinkers or blinders, so that you discover simultaneously that magnificent Storm and the Stillness at the Eye of it? His Tempest there, His Peace right where you are?
Tell me, how can you sidestep, how can you trivialize, that deepest Peace, which is yours for the seeing?
Only when we see everything else as moving can we truly sing ‘We shall not be moved’. In their different ways, the following Defence witnesses encourage us, by placing motion and Stillness, to enjoy both:
‘Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad... ‘The poetry of motion... Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped... Oh bliss! Oh poop poop! Oh my! Oh my!’
Kenneth Grahame
The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs... Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord.
Psalms
At the Centre where no one abides, this light is quenched in a still stronger Light... For this Ground is the impartible Stillness, motionless in itself, and by this Immobility all things are moved.
Eckhart
The Tao is ever still, yet there is nothing it does not do.
Tao Te Ching
There is nothing that stands fast, nothing fixed, nothing free from change among the things that come into being,
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