The Great Divorce: Heaven That Dances Within

Yona told me to read The Great Divorce. Well, that would be putting it lightly. Yona told me to read The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis yesterday, at once, immediately! It was imperative that I read the book. And he was right to do so because the book is brilliant. So thank you, Yona.

Lewis begins with a preface stating his objective, namely to respond to Blake's idea that there is a marriage of heaven and hell. Lewis explains:

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a pool but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, "with backward mutters of dissevering power"- or else not. It is still "either-or."

-pages v-vi

While I do not entirely agree with him- I'm much more the Rav girl who believes that we must bring heaven down to earth, and transform the earth so that it can achieve its heavenly potential- I can definitely see where he is coming from. In this book Lewis proposes a vision of Heaven, not as he truly believes it is, but as a sort of moral or fable through which to reach our senses. And he succeeds in that, for he renders it beautifully. The way he chooses to depict the souls journeying from Hell in their quest to Heaven are as Ghosts who need to be firmed-up and achieve their solid state. It is only through letting go of whatever it is chaining them to Hell that they can become solid and stable as opposed to ephemeral and venture to Heaven. (As a sidepoint, it's interesting he chooses to depict it this way. One would think that one must forgo the earthly body and become 'spiritual,' or ghostly.)

There were two parts that really struck me. The first referred to a belief of mine, namely, that God cannot truly be upset with people who make honest mistakes.

"Are you serious, Dick?"

"Perfectly."

"This is worse than I expected. Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken."

"Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?"

"There are indeed, Dick. There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed- they are not sins."

"I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my life when I became what you call narrow. It all turns on what are honest opinions."

"Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk."

"What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came- popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?"

"Dick, this is unworthy of you. What are you suggesting?"

"Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our own lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith?"

"If this is meant to be a sketch of the genesis of liberal theology in general, I reply that it is a mere libel. Do you suggest that men like..."

"I have nothing to do with any generality. Nor with any man but me and you. Oh, as you love your own soul, remember. You know that you and I were playing with loaded dice. We didn't want the other to be true. We were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes."

"I'm far from denying that young men may make mistakes. They may well be influenced by current fashions of thought. But it's not a question of how the opinions are formed. The point is that they were my honest opinions, sincerely expressed."

"Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man's mind. If that's what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent."

[...]

"Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?"

"Well, that is a plan. I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I should require some assurances...I should want a guarantee that you are taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness- and scope for the talents that God has given me- and an atmosphere of free inquiry- in short, all that one means by civilisation and-er- the spiritual life."

"No," said the other. "I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God."

"Ah, but we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! For me there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always continue to blow through the mind, must it not? 'Prove all things'...to travel hopefully is better than to arrive."

"If that were true, and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for."

"But you must feel yourself that there is something stifling about the idea of finality? Stagnation, my dear boy, what is more soul-destroying than stagnation?"

"You think that, because hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom. Your thirst shall be quenched."

"Well, really, you know, I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made truth which puts an end to intellectual activity in the way you seem to be describing. Will it leave me the free play of Mind, Dick? I must insist on that, you know."

"Free, as a man is free to drink while he is drinking. He is not free still to be dry." The Ghost seemed to think for a moment. "I can make nothing of that idea," it said.

"Listen!" said the White Spirit. "Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now."

-pages 32-38

Lewis points out that while mistakes may be honest, they are not all innocent. I found that to be a sharp distinction. I also liked his point that when a man is drinking pure water, he is not free to remain dry simultaneously. There comes a point of choice. But perhaps best of all is the last point, to become a child once more. A friend of mine noticed that I at one time believed that to be confused was a noble pursuit. A man who felt that he had clarity was a man who could not be trusted, I decided. To admit confusion was to be truly noble. Thus, it became my desire to be a confused and clouded individual. Just as the White Spirit implores his friend, so too did my friend implore me, look for answers and for clarity; don't remain mired within a morass of confusion and claim that is true nobility! I listened to him; that's why this struck such a strong chord.

The second part that fascinated me and resonated with me had to do with love and what it means.

"You mean," said the Tragedian, "you mean- you did not love me truly in the old days?"

"Only in a poor sort of way," she answered. "I have asked you to forgive me. There was a little real love in it. But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you."

"And now!" said the Tragedian with a hackneyed gesture of despair. "Now, you need me no more?"

"But of course not!" said the Lady; and her smile made me wonder how both the phantoms could refrain from crying out with joy.

"What needs could I have," she said, "now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. I am in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak. You shall be the same. Come and see. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly."

But the Tragedian was still striking attitudes. "She needs me no more- no more. No more," he said in a choking voice to no one in particular. "Would to God," he continued, "but he was now pronouncing it Gud- "Would to Gud I had seen her lying dead at my feet before I heard those words. Lying dead at my feet. Lying dead at my feet."

[...]

I do not know that I ever saw anything more terrible than the struggle of that Dwarf Ghost against joy. For he had almost been overcome. Somewhere, incalculable ages ago, there must have been gleams of humour and reason in him. For one moment, while she looked at him in her love and mirth, he saw the absurdity of the Tragedian. For one moment he did not at all misunderstand her laughter: he too must once have known that no people find each other more absurd than lovers. But the light that reached him, reached him against his will. This was not the meeting he had pictured; he would not accept it. Once more he clutched at his death-line, and at once the Tragedian spoke.

-pages 116-118

The narrator of the tale talks over what he sees here with his Teacher. He is disturbed by it at first.

"I hardly know, Sir. What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved."

"Ye see it does not."

"I feel in a way that it ought to."

"That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it."

"What?"

"The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven."

"I don't know what I want, Sir."

"Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe."

"But dare one say- it is horrible to say- that Pity must ever die?"

"Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of pity, the pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty- that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken."

"It's a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world's garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses."

-pages 123-125

I cannot agree with all of this. I find it too simplistic. Firstly, a person must feel another's pain; there is a reason we say kol yisrael arevim zeh ba'zeh. If you cannot feel another's pain, I cannot call that goodness. I think there are times when one person's pain negates another's happiness and that is as it should be. But I do see the flaw in submitting to everyone's desire for whatever it is that will make them 'happy' as you do indeed have a Dog in the Manger ruling the universe. But I don't think most people are so unreasonable as to want the world to be a midden since they cannot abide roses. I think people have stronger claims than that, ones which are not so easily swept away. So while I respect and appreciate Lewis' point of view, he has not won me over here.

But the part that did touch me was the Lady who stated that "what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you." It is when she has no needs that she can truly love, for that love is entirely unselfish. I wonder whether that is something we must try to aspire to- an unselfish love? It seems in line with R' Dessler who states that to love is to give. One must give without desire to receive. That is very hard, I think. We are more used to seeing love as selfish; "if I can't have you, I will have no one!" the doomed lover cries as he commits suicide in various novels and plays. It is difficult to love to the extent that one does what is best for the other person rather than what one personally desires. There is a very strong desire to wish that others would care for one, "the craving to be loved" as the Lady put it, and due to it we can do things we should not, things that do not put the other person first. But what use would life be if we did not strive for the impossible dream? One day, perhaps, we shall love purely.