The Trial Of The Man Who Said He Was God Read Online Free PDF Page B

things that I want to draw your attention to now: first, that to see the truth about himself he must become childlike; and second, that when he does so he loses his human face and takes on a divine one. Or words to that effect.
    Well, I should be surprised if Mary’s testimony hasn’t shaken his monolithic complacency somewhat.
    We shall see what this asker of silly questions (I’m using Mary’s language) has to say for himself.
    Defence: The Tenfold Unmasking
    MYSELF: Every important discovery began by asking a silly question. Ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I don’t feel quite as chastened as Counsel thinks I should. Not at all. Mary’s testimony provides the perfect introduction to the story I have to tell.
    Like all convincing stories, it comes in three parts. She supplied and illustrated the first two. It will be up to an adult - a truly grown-up grown-up - to supply the third.
    COUNSEL, oozing irony, to the Jury: And we all know who that is, don’t we?
    MYSELF: The whole tale runs like this:
    (1) The animal and the infant, in their direct experience of themselves, are faceless. Unconsciously they are living from Who they really, really are - from the Clear-faced One at the Centre of their universe. None is so deluded (and so blasphemous) as to superimpose on this central Clarity or No-thing any features of their own. Every one of them, from Mary’s little brother in his play-pen down to the barely visible insect on the nursery window, and beyond, is for itself as immense and wide open as the cloudless sky. I think we should all go down on our knees to beg forgiveness for having despised these humble but majestic ones who - unlike all us humans - have never for a moment been guilty of blasphemy. And go on to recite Blake’s lines:
    Seest thou the little winged fly, smaller than a grain of sand?...
    Withinside wondrous and expansive: its gates are not clos’d:
    I hope thine are not.
    (2) But the infant grows into the child. Mary pays her literally immense subscription to the human club - namely, her Mary-free wide-openness - and gets in acknowledgement and exchange her card of identity and membership, her Mary-face. Finding herself in the mirror, she shrinks almost overnight from boundless Capacity for all things to just that one thing. No discredit to Mary. It’s a stage we all have to go through.
    (3) But now let’s look forward to the day - that rebirthday – when Mary decides that her subscription to the human club is far too high. Accordingly she withholds it, secretly cancelling her standing order, yet without ceasing to enjoy the club's innumerable amenities. She reclaims her true Face, absolutely clear and immense and non-human, but is careful to hang on to her club membership card with its picture of that little human face – keeping it in that glass-fronted showcase over there. She again takes on her Original Face, and makes sure that acquired face stays where it belongs, a yard or so away. Now she looks in that showcase – which is her mirror – to see what she isn't like! She's herSelf again.
    Your Honour and members of the Jury, you will have noticed the mirror stuck on the front of the booklet of diagrams that each of you has been given. Will you please now look in that mirror, as if for the first time, and without prejudgement take what you find, where you find it. No – don't look at me. Look steadily into your mirror – to see, for a change, not yourself but a close friend. Close, but not too close. A friend, but not too friendly.

    COUNSEL: This is farcical! John a-Nokes, I see you’ve got one of those mirror-covered booklets of yours. I challenge you to look in that glass right now and tell the court in all seriousness that it’s not your face that you see.
    MYSELF, complying carefully with Counsel’s request: No! that’s not my face!
    COUNSEL: Then for heaven’s sake whose face is it?
    MYSELF: Good question! I can truthfully tell you it doesn’t belong to me
    COUNSEL: I can’t