Dialogue
Time: November 22, 1963
Place: Somewhere beyond death
Characters: C. S. Lewis, Theist
John F. Kennedy, Humanist
Aldous Huxley, Pantheist
Kennedy: Where the hell are we?
Lewis: You must be a Catholic!
Kennedy: You could tell by the accent, eh?
Lewis: Yes. I sayâarenât you President Kennedy? How did you get hereâwherever here is?
Kennedy: Ex-President, I think: I seem to have been assassinated. Who are you? Andâto return to my first questionâwhere the hell are we?
Lewis: Iâm C. S. Lewis. I just died too, and Iâm pretty sure youâre wrong about the location. This place just feels too good to be hell. On the other hand, I didnât see any God, did you?
Kennedy: No.
Lewis: Then it canât be heaven either. I wonder whether weâre stuck in limbo.
Kennedy: Ugh! Do you really think so?
Lewis: Actually, I think it more likely that itâs purgaÂtory, especially if we end up getting out of it and into heaven. I did a bit of speculating about such places as a writer, especially in The Great Divorce. I donât supÂpose youâve read it? No . . . well
. . . But surely you should be familiar with such concepts if you were a Roman Catholic.
Kennedy: Well . . . I was more of a modern Catholic; I never bothered about transcendental mysteries or mythology. I was too busy trying to take care of the world I lived in for escapist thinking. âOne world at a time,â as Thoreau put it.
Lewis: You can see now that you were wrong, canât you?
Kennedy: What do you mean?
Lewis: Why, first that it isnât mythology. Itâs real. Wherever we are, here we are, large as life. And second, that the rule isnât âone world at a time.â Here we are in another world talking about our past life on earth. Thatâs two worlds at a time by my count. And while we were on earth we could think about this world too; thatâs also two worlds at a time, isnât it? Finally, itâs not escapism. In fact, not to have prepared for this journey while we were living on earth would have been escapism. Donât you agree?
Kennedy: Hmm . . . I suppose youâre right. But look! Someone else is coming. Can you make out who it is?
Lewis: Why, itâs Huxley! Aldous Huxley. Aldous, welcome. How did you get here?
Huxley: Same way you did, Iâm sure. I just died. Oh, I say! Kennedy and Lewis! What good company to die inâor live in, whatever weâre doing. Where is this place, anyway?
Kennedy: Thatâs what weâre trying to figure out. Lewis thinks it may be some sort of limbo or purgaÂtory. Iâm just hoping itâs not hell.
Huxley: Well, youâre both wrong. Itâs heaven. It must be heaven.
Kennedy: Why?
Huxley: Because everywhere is heaven, if only you have enlightened eyes.
Lewis: Even hell?
Huxley: Oh, this is going to be fun! Lewis, youâve lost none of your cantankerous penchant for Socratic questioning, have you? I remember you made Oxford a regular hornetsâ nest when you debated back on earth, and now youâve shipped your hornets to heaven. This is a nice challenge.
Lewis: Then reply to it. If everywhere is heaven, then either hell does not exist, or hell is part of heaven. Which way will you have it, Aldous?
Kennedy: Wait, please! Before you two take off, could you give me some assurances about this sort of debate? I was a debater too, but we politicians confined ourselves to the concrete and tangible. Iâm not at all convinced you can do anything more than talk through your hat about things youâve never seen.
The
question of method: how can we know?
Lewis: So you want an assurance that there is some method of really finding the truth about things we canât see.
Kennedy: Yes. Before you take off, be sure you have a plane that can fly, and can get back to earth and land. Lewis, you said you wrote a book about heaven. How the hellâhow in heavenâs nameâhow on earthâdo you know anything about heaven? Have you ever been there?
Lewis: Yes, indeed. Iâve been in and out of the back doors of both many times.
Huxley: You see, Mr. President . . .
Kennedy: Please call me Jack.
Lewis: That will be rather confusing. My friends called me Jack.
Huxley: Suppose we let rank have first choice. Would you mind if we called you Lewis?
Lewis: If you please. Clarity seems to be the thing here, not titles.
Huxley: Fine. Now Jack, Lewis meant that remark about heaven spiritually, not literally.
Kennedy: Oh, well, if thatâs all you mean . . .
Lewis: No, wait. Letâs not get bogged down in the swamps of âspiritual senses.â Letâs use words as literally as we can. I have not been in either heaven or hell literally.
Kennedy: Fine. Then how can you possibly know anything about them?
Lewis: Iâve been told.
Kennedy: What? What do you mean?
Lewis: Do you know anything at all about Tibet?
Kennedy: Of...