The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God by Douglas Harding Page B

that matter, a home more safe against any alien invasion at all? More untroubled by outsiders? What outsiders?
    The plain fact is that, no matter how we resist and lie about it, we are all living from What and Who we really are, not from our man-head but our God-head. Fortunately we have no choice. Besides, at some level and in some strange way, we aren’t just living from but awake to our God-head. For who of us, inside as well as outside mental hospitals, believes that we are shut up in eight-inch spherical containers, in bone-boxes stuck over with hair outside and packed with offal inside? Who of us doesn’t feel at large, no matter what we’ve been told ad nauseam to the contrary? Who of us (even before we dare or care to look) fails to find our outer space continuous with our inner space, with no perimeter fence between them? Who of us can even imagine what it would be like to be plunged and stuffed into the dark, sticky, wet, congested goo which is alleged to befoul the very Centre of our universe? In truth, though all our lives we are taught to blaspheme by superimposing man’s opacity on God’s transparency, none of us begins to learn the lesson. None of us takes it seriously for a moment. In the last resort, blasphemy is no more than a black knight’s move in the Grand Master’s great game of pretending. We are all guilty, and none of us is guilty, of this impossible offence.
    Well, members of the jury, I guess that’s enough...
    COUNSEL, rising to his feet quite steadily: No, it isn’t! I’ve two or three awkward questions to put to you, Mr a-dash-Nokes. Explain why, when you finger the unseen thingumabob on your shoulders, you always feel the head of a man. And not a head of celery or lettuce, or — painfully — a head of steam? And explain why, when you stand before a mirror, the movements of your hand over the felt but unseen contours of the thingumabob correspond so closely with its movements over that unfelt but clearly seen head? Isn’t the obvious explanation (obvious to all but the very sick or the very thick) that on the near side of the mirror is your invisible but real human head, while on the far side is your visible but unreal human head, its mere reflection?
    Not another lecture, for God in Heaven’s sake. Brief but clear answers, if you please.
    JUDGE: Yes, indeed.
    The jury perks up — feeling (I imagine) that I’ve been caught out this time. I’m inclined to share that feeling. However, I listen to my reply.
    MYSELF: God has been credited with (and accused of) making man in His image. And if in the making He indulges in a spot of kindly humour, isn’t that what we’re learning to count on from Him? In any case it’s to be expected of all heads — animal, human, divine — that they should have enough in common to justify their common name. No great surprise, then, to find that, in my huge and airy divine Head here, can be detected some curious correspondences with my stuffy little human head over there in the mirror. Most appropriate and most encouraging I find them, such as they are. I regard them as the ideal base from which to explore the immense contrasts between man’s topknot there and God’s Topknot (or, rather, Bottomknot) here.
    COUNSEL: There you are, members of the Jury! No explanations, more blasphemy! And more pathology, let me add. Acephalitis is surely one of the more serious degenerative conditions.
    MYSELF: And you’ll get a whole bunch of physicians to agree with you, Sir Gerald! According to one long-established and fairly respectable medical system (currently patronized by some royals) the experience of having no head on your shoulders is indeed a well-recognized disease. Consulting Clinical Homeopathy, by Dr Anton Jayasuriya, we find that the remedy is Asarum europaeum! Other pilules — to cure you of the feeling that your head is empty, or much enlarged, or loose — are prescribed by Dr J. T. Kent in his Repertory of Homoeopathic Materia Medica!