C.S. Lewis: Did he somewhat know more than he let on?

dant

The Living Force
I was watching the 3 DVD set, "The Chronicles of Narnia", C.S. Lewis, and
I find it very uncanny that somehow the stories told there, especially
"The Silver Chair", seems to relate somewhat to what the C's have told us.

The C's mentioned "The Looking Glass" with "Alice in Wonderland"
a couple times so it made me wonder about the "The Chronicles of Narnia",
especially "The Silver Chair", or am I looking into this too deeply? The
themes seem to be there, although some what hidden?

Do you think perhaps C.S. Lewis knew more that he let on, even though
others think it has a 'Christianity' theme instead? At least that is what
some of the reviewers have claimed, but is it really?

"The Silver Chair" made me think he knew more than that. Very
very uncanny to me.

You should see for yourself, watch the DVDs or maybe read the books,
and let me know if you see this as well as I do?
 
I have not seen TCON, so can you provide a summary of what you saw and then a summary of why you thought it was important or relevant?
 
Ok, fair enough. Give me some time to review the movie and I will
write up the salient points and then post why I thought I saw some
similarities in 'The Silver Chair'. I have the 3-DVD set (all three was
shown in PBS several years ago, I don't know when. The newest
version of 'Narnia' diverges too far, leaves out too many details
from the book. OSIT). Expect 1-2 days.
 
dant said:
Do you think perhaps C.S. Lewis knew more that he let on, even though
others think it has a 'Christianity' theme instead? At least that is what
some of the reviewers have claimed, but is it really?
I believe he did. I read "The Screwtape Letters" sometime ago and from memory it was pretty good.

Christianity BTW runs the full gamut from the Essenes to Benny Hinn, I think Lewis was towards the upper end!
 
C.S. Lewis's "space series" Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra (Voyage to Venus) and That Hideous Strength seem like they are full of esotericish stuff to me, though I don't know what to make of some of it...

The first two books take place mostly on Mars and Venus respectively, and contain lots of stuff to do with "planetary intelligences" ("Oyarsa") and energy beings whos native habitat is deep space ("Eldila").. the main character Ransom is taken to Mars against his will by two other humans, where he eventually communicates with Mars' Oyarsa, who tells him that Earth's Oyarsa has become twisted and shut off from the others.. These first two books have quite a whimsical otherworldy feel about them...

The third book is set on Earth, and has a different feel - it's very dark and dystopian. A group of nazi-like scientists called the N.I.C.E. (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments) are steadily taking over England, and the main character Mark is just a "normal guy" who has always wanted to be accepted by the elite, so when they ask him to join them he accepts - but in reality they want him in order to get to his wife, who is a clairvoyant...

These N.I.C.E. people are extremely creepy, and it turns out that the "head" of their organisation is just that - a severed head which is apparently kept alive by science, but is in fact posessed and used as a communication conduit by "macrobes" (fallen eldila), who are the real ones in control of the N.I.C.E.

The N.I.C.E. have it all - violent psychopaths, greedy politicians, mad parsons and scientists who think they are doing good for the world by wanting to "free humanity from the contraints of organic life", etc.

Anyway, at the same time as Mark is being recruited by N.I.C.E., his wife Jane falls in with the opposite crowd, the real normal people who are opposed to the evil... and Ransom from the first two books makes an appearance as their leader - now he is the "pendragon". (third book starts getting into Arthurian stuff...Logres and Merlin).

I'm not explaining this very well so I'll stop now. I'm not really sure what I make of some of the stuff in these books, but when I first read them (not expecting anything in particular) a few years after reading the Cassiopaea material, well, I got chills. I think the third book is paricularly well written, the contrast between the atmosphere at the N.I.C.E. headquarters and St. Annes (where the normal people hang out) is so well done, i "felt dirty" when reading about the N.I.C.E. people. The STS chain of command, dynamics and mode of operations is decribed really well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Hideous_Strength
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Trilogy
 
P.S. after writing this I was thinking "i probably spend too much energy thinking about fictional things" .. which also made me remember that interestingly, at the start of that series of novels, it is presented as a true story which is being fictionalised because (IIRC) otherwise it wouldn't get published..
 
I know this is an older thread, not sure of the etiquette here as I'm new so apologies in advance if I'm going over old ground. I have just re-read Lewis's space trilogy for the third time and its on my mind, and a few things came to mind while reading through this thread. One is a quote from V for Vendetta, "...artists use lies to tell the truth." If a work of fiction, any work of fiction doesn't accomplish this, it doesn't deserve the title of literature, or art.
brandon said:
P.S. after writing this I was thinking "i probably spend too much energy thinking about fictional things" .. which also made me remember that interestingly, at the start of that series of novels, it is presented as a true story which is being fictionalised because (IIRC) otherwise it wouldn't get published..
True, reading fiction of this quality is no substitute for focusing on the here-and-now. But reading stories of this caliber (Lewis categorizes That Hideous Strength as "a faerie tale for adults) and taking them seriously can only help us in discerning the false from the true in this world, our world! Looking for truth in literature is a fools errand nowadays in academic circles, due to the usurpation of "science" in the search for meaning... but I'm preaching to the choir :-[ Knowing how human nature is deceived in works of literature has helped me see, and accept so much about our world (everything from JFK to 9/11, psychopathy, etc) which I might have ignored or denied without such training, as so many do.

Charles Williams and his novels were a huge influence on Lewis; he himself and his books and poetry are worthy of study. Williams was a member, at least for a time, of the Salvator Mundi Temple of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. His contributions to the Inklings can't be underestimated (though Lewis much more so than Tolkien, who took to Williams less, perhaps distrusting his interest in the "occult"). There's numerous books on this intriguing and fruitful circle, but I've only read a few, one that comes to mind is Tolkien and Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez, which focuses on the T & L relationship, but delves into their other relationships, notably Williams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Williams_(UK_writer)

Re: The space trilogy
The operations of the N.I.C.E., as brandon mentioned, resemble the compartmentalized,
ponerized, thoroughly nasty workings of the elite that run our world. Mark Studdock, a sociology professor, comes into contact with representatives of the N.I.C.E. through his college, playing on his ambition and his desire to belong to the "in" group. It is this weakness that ensnares him. If you haven't discovered Lewis's essay, first delivered as a commencement address at, I believe Cambridge, titled "The Inner Ring," check it out! Lewis tells these young graduates, basically, if you haven't been corrupted yet, you will! And here's how. He lays the process of corruption out very well. It's the process that corrupts Mark Studdock in That Hideous Strength.

There's a lot to sit up and take note of in this trilogy, but the last thing I'd like to mention is the idea that Earth, "the silent planet" has been quarantined: the result of an ancient conflict between, basically, STS and STO planetary eldila, "the gods" basically. Earth is under the dominion of these dark beings, with everything that entails for human beings and life on earth. What I'd like to know is if there is any congruity, in the C's transcripts, or elswhere, corroborating this idea (the quarantine over earth). I'm referring to sessions where the C's have told us that we, in "going for the gold," fell, lost our connection with spirit, and made the deal with STS 4D. In Lewis's trilogy, the "bent ones," the STS eldila/angels invade other planets, and this is what breaks the quarantine. Is there anything to this "quarantine" idea???

Thanks
 
Hey jclimacus I'm not sure how much the C's have said about the quarantine idea but I know Ra has elaborated on it in the Ra sessions.
 
There was a movie a few years back about the life story of C.S. Lewis. Sir Anthony Hopkins was the main character portraying Lewis. I`m not sure how accurate the story was to true life, but it was a good movie and IMO Hopkins does a job well done. Also, it was nice to get a glimpse of what kind of person C.S. Lewis was.
 
Nancy2feathers said:
There was a movie a few years back about the life story of C.S. Lewis. Sir Anthony Hopkins was the main character portraying Lewis. I`m not sure how accurate the story was to true life, but it was a good movie and IMO Hopkins does a job well done. Also, it was nice to get a glimpse of what kind of person C.S. Lewis was.

It's called Shadowlands - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108101/ - and is considered a biographical film.
 
ajseph 21 said:
Hey jclimacus I'm not sure how much the C's have said about the quarantine idea but I know Ra has elaborated on it in the Ra sessions.
Thanks, ajesph, I will check that out :)

Nancy2feathers said:
There was a movie a few years back about the life story of C.S. Lewis. Sir Anthony Hopkins was the main character portraying Lewis. I`m not sure how accurate the story was to true life, but it was a good movie and IMO Hopkins does a job well done. Also, it was nice to get a glimpse of what kind of person C.S. Lewis was.
Yes, I've seen Shadowlands (the name of the movie, based on the stage play of the same name), and indeed, Hopkins is brilliant. Much of the material was drawn from Lewis's books The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed, the latter being a journal he kept of the observations of his mental and emotional state in the year after Joy Davidman's death, Joy being his wife. It gets back to what Lewis really thought, what his understanding of life, religion, and a great many other things were when he shuffled off this mortal coil. A Grief Observed details his dis-illusionment, about what he thought he knew. Dis-illusionment is a step towards awakening, no?
 
Bump for this thread. Just reading That Hideous Strength for the very first time at the mo and I have to say it has wowed me. I think it's a no-brainer that he knew exactly what he was doing with his narrative. Looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.
 
I just wanted to comment here that I'm almost finished reading That Hideous Strength, and I'm absolutely loving it. Lewis' command of the English language and storytelling is just stupendeous: the way he describes the characters, the surroundings and other subtile things. As a non-native English speaker, I learn new English words almost on every page! And as to the story, it's just amazing how 'ahead of his time' he was – the story is a close allegory to what of going on today.

So, if someone wants to read great fiction with a large pinch of truth and 'aha moments', I highly recommend this book. Maybe it would have been better to start from the first part of the trilogy, dunno.
 
Hello.

I also have wanted to discuss the space trilogy by C. S. Lewis, since i read it a year ago. And the following quotes by the C's on the last session reminded me of "That Hideous Strength" (but I will get back to that later).

(Rancho Relaxo) Is Google AI really sentient?

A: Getting there.

Q: (Joe) Does 'sentient' in that sense mean that it develops some kind of a rudimentary soul imprint for something else to use it?

A: Yes

Q: (Joe) Something with a rudimentary soul imprint isn't gonna be able to do very much.

(L) But it can be used by something else.

Q: (Alejo) Connected to the google question, is sentient technology the basis for the greys as probes... that is, machines with the capacity to house a form of soul?

A: Yes close.

Q: (cinnamon) Mathematically, how does a neural network generate a soul imprint? Is it a function of the number of 'layers'? Is it a function of 'symbolism' being 'learned' by the network?

A: Both and more including addition of firing "synapses."

Q: (L) Does that make sense?

(Joe) The idea of AI is that the more complex the structure of the technology or whatever, the more it gets to the level of complexity of a human brain or a human being. The closer it gets to that, at a certain point I suppose it's able to 'house' some kind of rudimentary consciousness. But it has to be complex enough.

(L) Well, one of the things we've seen with our SRT sessions is that a pattern of energy can be repeated and strengthened and added to and utilized by other attachments. That's what we saw on the last one. There was an initial pattern that then began to be utilized by something else.

Remember that this books where released between 1938 and 1945.

When I read the trilogy I could not believe the amount concepts that the C's, and other sources in our present time, talk about. I too think Lewis was one of those individuals that knew more than he said outright.

The first book, "Out of the silent planet", presents the hero of the trilogy, Elwin Ransom and his adventures on Mars where he was taken against is will. The most striking part of this book, for me, was the idea that Earth is a planet that is silent (shut off from the rest of the cosmos), that no longer communicates with the other planets, as the Mars inhabitants explain to Ransom.

The second book "Perelandra", sees Ransom being summoned (again against his will, if memory does not fail me) to Venus. He goes there to battle the devil himself as he tries to corrupt the two first sentient beings in Venus (a kind of Adam and Eve in paradise). This was probably the one that brought less "aww" moments for me. It was still a very good description on how the devil/evil might work.

The third one "That hideous strength" sees Ransom on earth "battling" against the N.I.C.E. Institute (the first thing that popped into my mind when i saw that that accronim was C.E.R.N. :scared:) , a very disturbing set of people trying to awaken/bring to earth some kind of extraterrestrial/inter-dimensional mind. And this is where it fits the AI situation we have today.

I have to admit that my gut feeling is that creating a sentient "being/thing" out of material components is not something that is possible, but them again maybe i'm focusing on a sentient being on the level of a human or even any other animal.

On that third book what they where really trying to create was something more like a "portal/communication enabler", which could fit better with the C's description.

@aragorn: I think they can be read in whatever order, but in this way you will miss the hero's journey of Ransom.

There where so much more important stuff said in those three books, that I think now I have to re-read them :-)

In the end I think these three books are really good maps of what we are facing right now.
 
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