Read Online The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God by Douglas Harding - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Douglas Harding
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he forgets what he’s done. He takes his de-natured universe for Nature, his fabrication for God’s Fabric. Such is the playing-God variety of blasphemy.
Going on at the same time is the being-God variety. The blasphemer puts himself, the human, in the driving seat of the restructured vehicle. He replaces God at the Centre of God’s universe.
For too much of my life I’ve been as guilty of both varieties of blasphemy as any of you. But no longer. I’ve come to my senses. Now I see that to be honest to God and to Jack is to be Him here and Jack there, and never the twain shall meet.
Nowhere is it easier to come to my senses and stop blaspheming — nowhere is it clearer to me where God’s home is and where man’s home is, and how far apart they lie, and how different their design is — than in the Witness’s hairdressing establishment. All is revealed to that begowned customer (or rather, half-customer) in the adjustable chair, facing that plate-glass mirror — if only he will look, and dare to take seriously what he finds. Here, on display with illusion-shattering brilliance, is the one truth which he desperately needs to acknowledge. Obviously, to be a man at all, he must have eyes for eyeing people with, a mouth for feeding himself with, a scalp for growing hair on, and so forth; and, what’s more, he must have a unique version of these features, distinguishing him from all other specimens. And obviously all that stuff belongs where he finds it and keeps it, on the far side of that glass. What’s right here, on the near side of the glass, is in every sense the opposite of all that. If there’s a Face here at all it’s one that has no features at all, let alone human ones, let alone distinctive ones. It is absolutely Blank. But — ah! — how keenly awake to itself as Blank: as the speckless Clarity and Awareness that’s taking in that man-head in the mirror, and the other customers, and the hairdressing saloon, and all that happens to be on show! Knowing Itself as the solitary Knower, This is none other than the God-head whose home is at the Centre of His world, at the Mid-point of all those peripheral things — including that blockhead (no mock modesty this, just a fact) behind the glass, having his head of hair tousled and trimmed. This is the One Head, the One No-head, the One truly Unblocked Head of all. Me, not a picture.
To see that blockhead off to its place behind glass, leaving the clear-headed God-head here in front of it — this is natural piety.
It’s sober realism. It’s humility before the evidence. It’s waking and coming to one’s senses after a long and bad dream. It’s godly. It’s the sovereign remedy for all ungodliness, and in particular for the fatal disease of self-deification. It puts paid to blasphemy. And it’s all so ridiculously obvious!
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the sight I was enjoying in that hairdressing saloon, my description of which puzzled and intrigued the hairdresser. This is the sight I’m enjoying right now in this courtroom. And it’s precisely what my accusers, along with the majority of humankind, are determined to turn a blind eye to, are hell-bent on not enjoying.
It’s you lot who are the blasphemers!
Commotion in court. The Jury go into excited huddles. Counsel’s on his feet, gesticulating like a semaphore gone haywire. The Judge bangs away with his gavel as if he’s bashing me on the head. He threatens to suspend my right to defend myself till I can do so properly, and cease straying from the point to deliver a lecture to the court — a contemptuous and abusive dressing-down, at that.
Apologizing, I promise to try to put my case in more parliamentary language. However, I insist that every word of it so far has been relevant to the crime I’m charged with, and central to my Defence against the charge.
COUNSEL, the semaphore suddenly under control: There’s something I’ve been itching to say to the Jury for what seems an age. This
Going on at the same time is the being-God variety. The blasphemer puts himself, the human, in the driving seat of the restructured vehicle. He replaces God at the Centre of God’s universe.
For too much of my life I’ve been as guilty of both varieties of blasphemy as any of you. But no longer. I’ve come to my senses. Now I see that to be honest to God and to Jack is to be Him here and Jack there, and never the twain shall meet.
Nowhere is it easier to come to my senses and stop blaspheming — nowhere is it clearer to me where God’s home is and where man’s home is, and how far apart they lie, and how different their design is — than in the Witness’s hairdressing establishment. All is revealed to that begowned customer (or rather, half-customer) in the adjustable chair, facing that plate-glass mirror — if only he will look, and dare to take seriously what he finds. Here, on display with illusion-shattering brilliance, is the one truth which he desperately needs to acknowledge. Obviously, to be a man at all, he must have eyes for eyeing people with, a mouth for feeding himself with, a scalp for growing hair on, and so forth; and, what’s more, he must have a unique version of these features, distinguishing him from all other specimens. And obviously all that stuff belongs where he finds it and keeps it, on the far side of that glass. What’s right here, on the near side of the glass, is in every sense the opposite of all that. If there’s a Face here at all it’s one that has no features at all, let alone human ones, let alone distinctive ones. It is absolutely Blank. But — ah! — how keenly awake to itself as Blank: as the speckless Clarity and Awareness that’s taking in that man-head in the mirror, and the other customers, and the hairdressing saloon, and all that happens to be on show! Knowing Itself as the solitary Knower, This is none other than the God-head whose home is at the Centre of His world, at the Mid-point of all those peripheral things — including that blockhead (no mock modesty this, just a fact) behind the glass, having his head of hair tousled and trimmed. This is the One Head, the One No-head, the One truly Unblocked Head of all. Me, not a picture.
To see that blockhead off to its place behind glass, leaving the clear-headed God-head here in front of it — this is natural piety.
It’s sober realism. It’s humility before the evidence. It’s waking and coming to one’s senses after a long and bad dream. It’s godly. It’s the sovereign remedy for all ungodliness, and in particular for the fatal disease of self-deification. It puts paid to blasphemy. And it’s all so ridiculously obvious!
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the sight I was enjoying in that hairdressing saloon, my description of which puzzled and intrigued the hairdresser. This is the sight I’m enjoying right now in this courtroom. And it’s precisely what my accusers, along with the majority of humankind, are determined to turn a blind eye to, are hell-bent on not enjoying.
It’s you lot who are the blasphemers!
Commotion in court. The Jury go into excited huddles. Counsel’s on his feet, gesticulating like a semaphore gone haywire. The Judge bangs away with his gavel as if he’s bashing me on the head. He threatens to suspend my right to defend myself till I can do so properly, and cease straying from the point to deliver a lecture to the court — a contemptuous and abusive dressing-down, at that.
Apologizing, I promise to try to put my case in more parliamentary language. However, I insist that every word of it so far has been relevant to the crime I’m charged with, and central to my Defence against the charge.
COUNSEL, the semaphore suddenly under control: There’s something I’ve been itching to say to the Jury for what seems an age. This
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