By Peter Pavarini
This past weekend, my wife and I went with a group of friends to see Max McLean’s “Further Up & Further In”, a dramatic presentation about the life and wisdom of British author C.S. Lewis. The show explores the faith journey of a man from his time as an Oxford University scholar in Medieval and Renaissance literature to when he became an internationally acclaimed author[i] and perhaps the most profound Christian thinker of his generation. The show was presented by the Fellowship for the Performing Arts, an organization dedicated to producing theatre and film from a Christian worldview for a wide audience.
The Ultimate Question
The play begins with the character of C.S. Lewis asking the ultimate question: are human beings simply conscious, self-aware creatures in a material universe that is governed by the laws of physics, or are we eternal beings who for a time dwell in physical bodies that are born, live and eventually die?
Admittedly, that’s not a subject I would expect to appeal to people only hoping to be entertained for a couple of hours. Rather, “Further Up & Further In” is a deliberate challenge to anyone who has wondered about the meaning of life.
Having read many if not most of C.S. Lewis’s works, I didn’t expect this performance to teach anything I didn’t already know about his philosophy and intellectual prowess. However, I must admit, the simple production – one actor conversing with the audience for 90 minutes without a break – resonated with me because of something I’ve been wanting to address for quite some time.
What Makes Us Sentient Beings?
A person’s awareness of being a unique individual separate from others begins at an early age and progresses throughout life. In some people, the development of self-awareness is unfortunately arrested, resulting in a variety of antisocial behaviors and, in extreme cases, solipsism. However, most people are naturally inclined to transcend a limited view of self and become cognizant of a greater reality. This proclivity underlies every person’s search for meaning in their lives and opens the door to a fuller appreciation of the spiritual self.
Dartmouth University professor of neurology, James Bernat, M.D. has said:
“How the brain generates conscious awareness remains the most intractable mystery of and the greatest remaining challenge to neuroscience. As of 2018, neuroscientists have mapped many of the important connections for human consciousness, but . . .how brain tissue yields human subjective experience remains almost completely unknown.”[ii]
For centuries, if not millennia, human beings have considered themselves to be a special combination of body and spirit. Even the most ardent materialists have acknowledged that each individual is “an amazing amalgamation of thoughts, feelings, memories, insights and perceptions”.[iii] But unless one accepts the possibility of a spiritual realm co-existing with the material realm, it’s difficult to explain what distinguishes humans from every other form of life.
The Search for Man’s Soul
As “Further Up & Further In” dramatically depicts, the search for man’s soul begins with consideration of there being a higher consciousness that pervades the known universe and beyond. Whether or not one believes in God – or any theological alternative, much of what science cannot explain points to the existence of a deliberate creative force behind the complexity and order of all things.
Modern empiricists from Carl Sagan to Sam Harris have struggled to explain the systematic design of a universe that ought to be governed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Specifically, if over time all matter is moving toward a state of random disorder (which scientists call “entropy”), what then explains the existence of something as complex and orderly as a thinking, self-aware creature? Some scientists have dismissed what appears orderly as just wishful thinking on the part of those who want to find order where none exists. Others have relied upon novel theories such as “clumping” and “multiverses” to explain the anomalous existence of humans in the midst of all the chaos. In the absence of proof, these theories require just as much faith as those who believe in the existence of God.
There’s probably no way to reconcile a worldview which requires empirical evidence when examining the natural world and a worldview that is premised upon supernatural concepts incapable of being scientifically investigated. At the same time, there’s no reason to pit one belief system against another even though they’ve co-existed throughout most of history. We only need to accept that science and religion address collateral aspects of the human experience in fundamentally different ways.
Where Is the Human Soul Found?
If the human soul truly exists within or even apart from our corporeal selves, where is it to be found? From Aristotle to Da Vinci, there has been much debate on this subject.[iv] People are said to have a spirit, but they are souls. Is this a distinction without a difference or does it suggest something more? There are verses in the Bible that say a person’s soul and spirit are connected, but are separable.[v] For the most part, however, the word “soul” refers to the whole person, whether alive on earth or in the afterlife.[vi] The soul, a person’s life essence, leaves the body at the time of physical death.
Because a discussion of where the soul goes after death would be long and theologically complex, I will defer that to another time. Nonetheless, I wish to raise it now because of the unusual title given the show I just saw. “Further Up & Further In” is also a phrase repeated several times by the C.S. Lewis character during the play. Each time I heard it, I was reminded of something Joseph Campbell, the celebrated scholar of world mythology, once said to Bill Moyers in a PBS interview:
“If you read ‘Jesus ascended to heaven’ in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward – not into outer space but into inward space, the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within.”[vii]
Therefore, if one truly wishes to find the human soul, he or she must begin by looking at the “source of all being”.
Why Do I Write?
Over the years, I’ve tried my hand at songwriting, poetry, novels and short pieces like this. Many have asked – why do I write? Honestly, I’ve never done so with any expectation of fame or fortune. I’ve only written to have a foretaste of the joy I know will someday be mine.
Again, borrowing from the words of Joseph Campbell:
“Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the Muses – or, in biblical language, ‘God’.”[viii]
It seems fitting, therefore, to say I am drawn “further up and further in” every time I dip my pen into this wellspring of souls.
[i] C.S. Lewis is probably best known for his children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia; however, his other works Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The World’s Last Night and many others have been equally impactful on adult readers. He also penned the lesser-known science-fiction series, The Space Trilogy.
[ii] See James Bernat, M.D., Ethical Issues in Neurology, 3rd Edition, Butterworth-Heineman (2008).
[iii] Heidi Klessig, M.D., “We Are Not Our Brains”, American Thinker, February 1, 2024.
[iv] See “History of the Location of the Soul”, Wikipedia.
[v] Hebrews 4:12.
[vi] Job 30:25; Psalm 43:5; Jeremiah 13:17; Revelation 6:9.
[vii] Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, MFJ Books (1998) at p. 68.
[viii] Supra at p. 71.
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