The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God by Douglas Harding Page B
Authors: Douglas Harding
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I’m quite still!... The court’s whizzing round! Wow!
MYSELF: Please slow it down... [She stops turning. Somewhat reluctantly, it seems…]
COUNSEL: Be sensible now! Enough of Nokes’s credo-quia-impossibile nonsense. You don’t believe you set the court in motion. Be honest.
WITNESS: Why not? I was being sensible, just as you say. Coming to my senses. I understood enough of Einstein and relativity to know I’m not talking nonsense, either.
MYSELF: Thank you very much. No more questions...
What Counsel said about common sense, and the practical necessity of imagining oneself moving around in a still world, is true enough of course — so far as it goes. Which isn’t half far enough. It doesn’t go back to the beginning or on to the end. Let me complete it by telling the whole three-part story of his experience of movement:
(1) As an infant he was still and his world was all commotion. When his dad took little Gerald for a drive, he loved watching the lampposts and trees and buildings go sailing by. When his dad tossed little Gerald up in the air and swung him around, it was fun and he wasn’t a bit scared. Why? Because everything in the room was rushing about like crazy — everything except him.
(2) As an adult he’s all commotion and his world has ground to a halt. And he’s scared. Taking on all that turmoil has ousted his inner peace and left him jittery and twitchy, disturbed through and through. As you can see.
(3) My wish for him is that one day (it could be as a result of this Trial) he will come to his senses and complete his life story. Then he will no longer be agitated and in a dither. He will regain his inner tranquillity by giving back to the universe the turmoil that never was his anyway. He will be an unflappable Seer of Who-he-is, enjoying the sight of a world that has sprung to life again in a dance whose corps de ballet ranges from lampposts and city blocks to the stars. God’s Bolshoi, putting on His Nutcracker Suite. What a philistine, what a bunkered ass, what a nutcase he’d been, to rubbish that superb spectacle! But now, arrived at the third stage, instead of driving his car he drives his world. And, for good measure, is less accident-prone. Driving about in a still world is driving without due care and attention. It’s dangerous driving. In the end, it’s fatal.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, Your Honour and everyone else in this courtroom, I ask you, I put it to you with the utmost seriousness: Conceding that it’s the world that’s being driven, can you, dare you, put any creature in the driving seat, anyone except the Creator of the world? If you can and you dare, it’s not I but you who are guilty of blasphemy. God, Aristotle taught, is the Unmoved Mover of the world. When He condescends to take the wheel of my 1991 Rover, and set all His world a-roving for the price of a driblet of six-star Supershell, Jack can’t and Jack won’t try to shoulder Him out and take over. When he sets the Jungfrau waltzing with the Finsteraarhorn, Jack can’t and Jack won’t halt them in their tracks. That would make a jackass of him.
When you next drive your car, why not let the lampposts and the trees and the buildings and the hills en route tell you Who’s driving? They are all raring to enlighten you. If you go on reading them as fixtures in a stable world, then for sure it’s a human driving — without due care and attention. But please God there will come a day when you’re sensible and humble enough to look and to stop hallucinating like mad. Then you will enjoy the superb spectacle of the World-Mover at work, and you will know that He is Who you really, really, really are. And then, maybe, you will bitterly regret having brought in a verdict of Guilty against me. Or rather, against Him! Think of that: against Him!
Diagram No. 6
Diagram No.6 gives a crude impression of the World-Driver on the job. But it does bring out the fact that upright things (like telegraph poles
MYSELF: Please slow it down... [She stops turning. Somewhat reluctantly, it seems…]
COUNSEL: Be sensible now! Enough of Nokes’s credo-quia-impossibile nonsense. You don’t believe you set the court in motion. Be honest.
WITNESS: Why not? I was being sensible, just as you say. Coming to my senses. I understood enough of Einstein and relativity to know I’m not talking nonsense, either.
MYSELF: Thank you very much. No more questions...
What Counsel said about common sense, and the practical necessity of imagining oneself moving around in a still world, is true enough of course — so far as it goes. Which isn’t half far enough. It doesn’t go back to the beginning or on to the end. Let me complete it by telling the whole three-part story of his experience of movement:
(1) As an infant he was still and his world was all commotion. When his dad took little Gerald for a drive, he loved watching the lampposts and trees and buildings go sailing by. When his dad tossed little Gerald up in the air and swung him around, it was fun and he wasn’t a bit scared. Why? Because everything in the room was rushing about like crazy — everything except him.
(2) As an adult he’s all commotion and his world has ground to a halt. And he’s scared. Taking on all that turmoil has ousted his inner peace and left him jittery and twitchy, disturbed through and through. As you can see.
(3) My wish for him is that one day (it could be as a result of this Trial) he will come to his senses and complete his life story. Then he will no longer be agitated and in a dither. He will regain his inner tranquillity by giving back to the universe the turmoil that never was his anyway. He will be an unflappable Seer of Who-he-is, enjoying the sight of a world that has sprung to life again in a dance whose corps de ballet ranges from lampposts and city blocks to the stars. God’s Bolshoi, putting on His Nutcracker Suite. What a philistine, what a bunkered ass, what a nutcase he’d been, to rubbish that superb spectacle! But now, arrived at the third stage, instead of driving his car he drives his world. And, for good measure, is less accident-prone. Driving about in a still world is driving without due care and attention. It’s dangerous driving. In the end, it’s fatal.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, Your Honour and everyone else in this courtroom, I ask you, I put it to you with the utmost seriousness: Conceding that it’s the world that’s being driven, can you, dare you, put any creature in the driving seat, anyone except the Creator of the world? If you can and you dare, it’s not I but you who are guilty of blasphemy. God, Aristotle taught, is the Unmoved Mover of the world. When He condescends to take the wheel of my 1991 Rover, and set all His world a-roving for the price of a driblet of six-star Supershell, Jack can’t and Jack won’t try to shoulder Him out and take over. When he sets the Jungfrau waltzing with the Finsteraarhorn, Jack can’t and Jack won’t halt them in their tracks. That would make a jackass of him.
When you next drive your car, why not let the lampposts and the trees and the buildings and the hills en route tell you Who’s driving? They are all raring to enlighten you. If you go on reading them as fixtures in a stable world, then for sure it’s a human driving — without due care and attention. But please God there will come a day when you’re sensible and humble enough to look and to stop hallucinating like mad. Then you will enjoy the superb spectacle of the World-Mover at work, and you will know that He is Who you really, really, really are. And then, maybe, you will bitterly regret having brought in a verdict of Guilty against me. Or rather, against Him! Think of that: against Him!
Diagram No. 6
Diagram No.6 gives a crude impression of the World-Driver on the job. But it does bring out the fact that upright things (like telegraph poles
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