The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God by Douglas Harding Read Free Book Online

stir up devout people of all sects and persuasions. Members of the Jury, don’t let his sophistry — of which you are, I’m sure, about to be served another large helping — obscure these perfectly obvious facts, these disgustingly obvious facts.
    MYSELF: This is rich! This is too much! Who broached this now-so-filthy subject by calling the Lavatory Attendant, confident that his testimony would demolish my case? It was the gentleman over there in fancy dress, the one who, now the facts turn out to support my case, suddenly finds the whole business ‘unbelievable’ in its nastiness! Nokes is wicked: when attacked he defends himself! Nokes is disgusting: when shat on he returns the compliment, and has the last laugh! Nokes says: nasty be to him who nasty thinks.
    God is no more prim and proper than a child of four. His truth is funnier than our fiction. He’s arranged that waking to our Identity with Him is wonderfully light-hearted. Now I call that really decent of Him. Here’s the Almighty, intent on Self-discovery and Self-revelation and Self-giving-with-a-smile, leaning over backwards to demonstrate that everyone who says ‘I’ is none other than Himself. Leaning over backwards is right. If you don’t get it, look at Diagram No. 4. If you do get it, look at Diagram No. 4, and join in the divine merriment!
    Members of the Jury, the court will presently go into recess. You will then have the opportunity to test what I’m telling you: to check whether, in the lavatories of this court, a wonderful kind of peeing is going on. Not the common sort which obeys the Law of Gravity, but the unique sort which throws that Law into reverse.
    Now, Who can break Nature’s laws but the One who makes them? And not this Law alone but many others, as we shall see during the count of these proceedings. Meantime, how delightful, how worthy of our notice, that this fun-loving and fun-poking Deity should find the latrines of this court as suitable a place as the court itself in which to disclose His presence among us at this time! Or even more suitable!
    Again, this is too much for Counsel for the Prosecution. He shoots to his feet. Writhing and spluttering, he implores the Judge to put a stop to this indecency, this outrage, this barefaced profanity, this calculated insult to the Divine Being, this — words fail him!
    JUDGE, addressing me: Urinating upwards, forsooth! Have you taken leave of your senses? This court is no place for facetiousness, let alone profanity, and I must warn you not to try its patience too far.
    MYSELF: No, Your Honour, I’ve come to my senses — a hard but necessary thing to do. Diagram No. 4 makes it so much easier. Spare those arrows a second glance, and tumble to the truth. As for profanity, the rest of my argument will be as tactful as I can make it. His Majesty wears no fig-leaf, but I’ll try to bear in mind the conventional image of Him which is practically all fig-leaf. Mine is an uncouth God, but I’ll do my best to remember how couth Sir Gerald’s is. How frightfully genteel.

    Diagram No. 4
    Exactly what (I ask myself) is this shocking He, this shameless She, this unbowdlerized It, in reality? Its essence is Awareness, the One Light of Consciousness that lights up the world and every creature the world comes into. I locate this Light Indivisible right where I am, plumb in the Centre of this world as I find it, nearer than near, at the heart of the heart of me. Here is no spark of that Fire, but the blazing Furnace itself. It brooks no rival consciousnesses. Awareness comes whole and single, or not at all: never in pieces — one piece looking after this, another piece looking after that phenomenon. Which means that, whatever part or function of my body — cosmic or human — is being attended to, it’s not a man as such who’s attending. What I provisionally called my awareness is in the last resort my God’s, inside as well as outside the Witness’s Convenience. Awareness is His quirk,