The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God (17 page)

But right here all is different. For the life of me I can find nothing here to count, let alone a human thing. To add in this nothing along with things would be like adding in the date with the bill. It would be like shopping for vegetables with £100 in my purse and spending £200, in the belief that my purse is £100 and legal tender. It would be like counting those Jury benches as Jury person thirteen, or this hand as finger six. It would be asking for certification and institutional care. But enough of this foolery. I go by what I
see.
What is this Third Stage of my life, after all, but reverting to the truthfulness of the First Stage, but now with clear awareness of myself as Zero, as Capacity for numbers but myself number-free, as the uncountable Counter? What is this but humility in the face of the evidence, the humility that can find no one here to be humble? What is this but coming to my senses at long last after the senselessness of common sense (so called), the wilful nonsense of Stage Two? What is this but becoming natural again after that phoney interlude, with all the stresses and anxieties that go with self-deception and playing a hard game hard?

Opting out of that game, what do I find?
Where
do I find numbers?

I count one, two, three windows up there in the courtroom. I count one, two, three, four, five - many faces out there in the court. I count two foreshortened legs
down there
in the dock. And below them, one foreshortened trunk. Always numbers are presented there in my world, to me
here.

Here, I count nothing. I find nothing to enumerate. In this place the reckoning is always Zero - zero men, zero dogs, zero cats, zero mice, zero trees, zero what-have-you. Name anything you like, it’s conspicuous here by its absence. I’m just as innocent here of human characteristics as of any others, and I am as much no-man as I am no-dog, no-cat, no-mouse, no-tree... I’m perfectly neutral, a member of no group or class or set. I’m No-one, One minus one, a Cipher,
the
Cipher.

But I notice that from this Cipher all series originate, to it all numbers belong, by it they are counted. Therefore, in this place of seeming disadvantage and total lack, I have the advantage. I initiate every series in the universe. Zero is truly a commanding station.

I look around the court. I listen. Just as those forms are seen from this Void, and heard from this Silence of mine, so they are reckoned from this Zero. Here they come back, not to square one but to square Nought, where all reckoning starts. This is my Home Ground.

JUDGE: But what about Counsel’s point that you are more at home with people than with other orders of being? That your attitude to them gives the lie to what you say about yourself, and shows that in your bones you know you’re only human after all?

MYSELF: The Prosecution is quite wrong, Your Honour, about how I feel. My boxer Ludwig is perfect company after a day spent with noisy and demanding humans. I’m apt to feel more comfortable in the quiet and congenial society of the stars - as the Sky in which they shine - than in the blaring city street. More comfortable, it may well be, than in the Witness’s bar parlour, for that matter. In the friendly hills, among companionable trees and streams and flowers, at sea or in mid-desert, I don’t want for company, I’m no trespasser, no stranger in a foreign land. Everything fits this No-thing. It’s not that I belong to all categories, all orders and genera and species, but that they belong to me. I include the most exclusive. Here I hold court. Here is the forum, the meeting place, the open heart of the universe, where I’m always at home to all comers because there’s No-body at home to get in their way or pick and choose among them. As Edwin Markham wrote of one who shut him out,

Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.

Such, members of the Jury, is life at this Third Stage, when I stop pretending to be here what I
look like
to you over there, and I’m content to be this all-comprehensive circle which is Zero.

Let’s suppose I’m in a room with four friends. As a young child, automatically taking myself at Centre to be Zero, I count four people present. As an adult, setting up my human self at Centre as number one, I count five. As a Seer, consciously seeing myself at Centre to be Zero, I count four again. Diagram No. 11 shows these Three Stages at a glance.

Innocent Counting

Young Child

Blashphemous Counting

Grown-up

Enlightened Counting

Seer

Diagram No. 11

When at Stage Two I count this Zero in along with those people, it’s like counting the basket in with the eggs - and proceeding to scramble and eat it. Which is unhealthy. And - what’s more to the point - blasphemous.

I come back, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, to the definition of blasphemy on which my Defence rests. It is to sit oneself as man Number One on God’s throne at the centre of one’s world, and sit tight. It’s to stay stuck at the second of our Three Stages, the stage that we all have to go through, but should go through speedily. What a black joke it is, Your Honour, what irony, that I’m the one that‘s standing here in the dock charged with this truly heinous crime! I, who insist on the inviolate holiness of the Holy of Holies, where the Godhead dwells at the Centre of all things in solitary and number-free splendour, and where no man can ever, ever intrude! What irony that my accusers, who do their damnedest to force their way into that shrine and set up man there - do their damnedest to deify man - what irony that they should charge me with the crime they are guilty of every second of their waking lives! What a sick joke! I say – they should charge me with the crime they are guilty of every second of their waking lives! What a sick joke! I say –

COUNSEL, rocketing to his feet: Your Honour, this is worse than contempt! It’s contempt not only of this court, but of Your Honour personally, and all of us here!

JUDGE: It’s vexatious. But this man is on trial for his life, and must be allowed to fight for it in his own fashion - within limits. However, I warn you - the Accused - not to abuse our tolerance. Insulting behaviour will do you no good at all. If you persist in it, I shall have to consider what can he done to put you in a more chastened mood, and purge your contempt.

MYSELF: Truly, Your Honour, I intend no disrespect. Quite the reverse, in fact. What I’m saying is that everyone in this court is really living from Stage Three, without realizing it. My point is that none of us, never mind how Satanic our ambition, no matter how colossal our chutzpah, can begin to oust God from the Centre of our lives. There’s no dislodging this Roger the lodger. Creatures are, willy-nilly, a mere dream apart from the Creator at their core, nothing at all without this central No-thing, Clarity, Transparency, Capacity, Essence, Reality, Aware Emptiness - whatever name you like to give this Zero. Even to blaspheme against This is to do so by virtue of This, empowered by This. In truth, the crime of blasphemy is all sound and fury signifying nothing, mere bombast and posturing. All the same, alas, it’s real enough to spoil our lives.

It just isn’t a practical proposition to stick at this Second Stage, betwixt and between, imagining we’re living from the infinitesimal resources of Number One, instead of from the infinite resources of Zero. It’s deadening, anxiety-producing, exhausting, absurd –

COUNSEL: Your Honour, does the court now have to endure a sermon from the dock on how to conduct our lives?

MYSELF: It’s no uncalled-for preachifying, but an appeal from the heart for justice and sanity. If I can show the Jury that what I’m claiming to be is natural and normal, sensible, healthy and immensely more efficient than the alternative - and in fact the way I am and each of them is already, whether we acknowledge or deny it - why then they must bring in a verdict of Not Guilty. For what is blasphemy but refusal to fit in with the Divine Plan, with God’s design for the world, with His status quo? And what is the antidote for blasphemy but obedience to that plan, and saying a hearty Yes! to His arrangements?

So, if I have the court’s kind permission, let me give some impression of what it means to live consciously from this Third Stage, from Zero instead of Number One, from life as I live it instead of life as I’m told I live it. [Counsel groans, and ostentatiously sets his stopwatch. I ignore the gesture, and continue.]

Zero is my lucky no-number. Zero is my Core, my ever-present refuge in time of trouble. At once the down-swoop of my freedom from all things and my soaring union with all things. At once my absolute detachment and my absolute attachment. As Number One I was a man and nothing else. I headed the queue of humans only, and was in no such commanding position as regards mice or Cats or dogs, or plants, or any other creatures. At the front of just one cosmic queue, I was shouldered out of all the others. I wasn’t made to feel at home there, or wanted. A stranger, an outsider everywhere. Not a happy life. But as Zero I head every queue and start every line in the universe. As the launching pad they all take off from, I’m shot of them all, but remain their Shooter. Here, as Who I really am, I originate all creatures from creepy-crawlies to seraphim. No longer the lone outsider, blackballed from every club but one, I’m the Sole Insider. This is no empty boast or gooey sentiment. To the degree that I see into and enter my natureless Nature, I see and enter into the Nature of all beings. The barriers fall, and I’ve no option but to love the world that I am. My score in this cosmic championship remains at love - love fifteen, love thirty, love forty, love game. Love means Zero, no score at all. Yet Love wins every time. Oh, yes, Love wins - game, set and match! It takes God’s Wimbledon by storm.

Everything is eloquent of the Zero, the Love, the Nothing at the Source of everything. Even the way I’m obliged to talk of it, in a marvellous and seemly
double entendre,
goes straight to the heart of the matter. I say I believe in Nothing, rely on Nothing, am fanatical about Nothing, see Nothing, know Nothing, want Nothing, have Nothing, am Nothing - and so on,
ad infinitum.
Here, the most negative of assertions reads as the most positive. The mere nothing that’s scarcely fit for the universe’s scrap heap suddenly becomes the very un-mere No-thing that originates everything! Zero is the rune, the magic word which, when lived as well as spoken, reconciles all life’s opposites - peripheral belief with central scepticism, peripheral commitment with central independence, peripheral wealth with central poverty, peripheral know-how with central cluelessness, peripheral excitement with central calm... As I say, this divine
double entendre
is no verbal accident or trick. It’s not even a way of life. It’s
the
way of life, for it’s the way life
is.