"The darkest possibility of all is that one may know even all this that I now say to you, and yet only know it."
The purpose of the book as far as I can tell is not to advocate a certain conviction regarding the nature of the afterlife (in this way it is similar to Lewis's Great Divorce), but mostly takes wrongheaded worldviews to their logical ends through conversations with various people the narrator encounters and (best of all) the narrator himself.
The gist of the book is this: Lamiel (his guardian angel, much better than his stereotyped title sounds) takes the author to the celestial Selection Tribunal, which places people in an appropriate occupation for the purpose of turning them out of themselves (see quote below). They decide to let him choose his own placement, a choice between the Backward Believers' Department at the University or the College of Gnostics. He is allowed to take a tour of each place before returning to make the choice.
I shall take up my usual habit of quoting the parts that struck me especially. I shall do my best not to quote the entire work, but ... well, a lot of it struck me.
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[Lamiel:] "You've said far too much to yourself. I might remark that you have swamped yourself with useful information and gratuitous good advice. The self, the true self--the will, if you like, has been immobilized by the burden."
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[again, Lamiel:] "I have told you before, I think, that you are a child of your time. You have got a bee in your bonnet about progress. You imagine that our business is to push you in a certain direction. It isn't. Our business is simply to turn you inside out. Creatures who have grown accustomed to turn all their experience in upon themselves, perverting objects worthy of love, worship, and enjoyment to the service of their own egos, have got to learn to turn their wills outward in devotion to what is other... But do not deceive yourself that you have a journey to go. If you do, you will be tempted to bolster yourself and brace yourself and equip yourself for the enterprise. Here there is no journey. For the self that aspires to a goal, the self that would set out, in determination and in ambitious perseverance--that self has got to be destroyed. If you must image the demand upon you, remember that you are to be turned inside out. ... And you--if you ever seriously study here--we hope that you will learn to delight in what you study. You will find that a pleasant change from delighting in yourself studying it..."
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I might add here that Lamiel's rebukes of the author are mercilessly (or mercifully) spot on. This keeps the book from being a mere "ha ha, look what that bad worldview says!" - that is, that the author occasionally tries to point the finger at people with wrong thinking and (through Lamiel's company) continually finds it aimed at himself, and thus the reader finds the same.
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[when the author tries to use alleged feelings of charity to cover his vanity:]
"Though I trust," said Lamiel, "that you will learn to be on your guard against feelings, especially when they masquerade as impulses of charity. The exercise of charity is the work of the will. I am afraid that there are circumstances in which the exercise of charity will have an uncompromising, unsociable, even disagreeable appearance. I believe that neither Dr. Primrose nor yourself has found me at all times a congenial companion. There may be something for you to learn from that."
Sounds like some good books. I'll have to read them.
It all sounds interesting. :-) Did you get to finish them, or not?
That last quote reminds me of C.S. Lewis and "Perelandra" and the white-hot holiness of love in the faces of the eldili.
I'm still in a tangle over the studying to delight in what you study vs. studying to delight in yourself studying. The distinction is alright, but it takes a good deal of discretion to know one from the other in oneself.