Since it was first published, C.S. Lewis’s series for children, The Chronicles of Narnia, has gained worldwide acclaim. However, the ideas contained within the Chronicles’ pages are far from average storybook fare. In the seventh and final book, The Last Battle, Lewis introduces the concept of Shadowlands: that this physical world is only a reflection of actual reality, and that Heaven will be the fulfillment and perfection of the good we see on earth. This idea is powerful and inspiring on its own, however, as the reader’s literary experience grows, new depths of meaning to this idea appear. His oft-repeated statement, “It’s all in Plato,” sheds light on the origins of the philosophy behind the concept of Shadowlands. On the basis of a passage in Plato’s Republic, C.S. Lewis constructed a profound view of reality in this world and the next.
Toward the end of his discourse, Plato uses an analogy which has come to be known as “The Allegory of the Cave,” to illustrate the effect of philosophical training upon the ignorant mind. It goes as follows: imagine a very long tunnel leading down from the ground to a huge cave. No sunlight filters down into the chamber, but halfway down the tunnel is lit a fire. In the center of the chamber, chained with their backs to the tunnel, are a group of men. They have never seen anything except the cave wall, and the shadows reflected upon it by the fire. They have seen shadows of individuals walking about behind them, and logically suppose that the shadows are in fact people.
Then Plato explains what would happen if one of these men is unchained and led upward to the light. First, he would be dazzled and frightened by the fire, not knowing what it was, nor knowing who is leading him up the tunnel, because he would still believe that the shadows are real. After a time, his eyes would become used to the fire; but then he would be led up to the surface of the earth, and see the sun for the first time, and he would again be dazzled and afraid. But after a while, he would begin to understand that this sun, not the fire, is the true source of light, and that the people around him are more real than the shadows in the cave. The shadows were real: they were simply not as real as the individuals that cast those shadows.
Lewis compares our state to the state of that man: we are caught up in our little "reality" of the imperfect physical world, oftentimes somehow afraid that heaven will not measure up to the pleasures we seak here on earth. As he writes, "Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
In The Last Battle, Lewis paints heaven as the "real" Narnia. It is like the old Narnia, but somehow everything is bigger, and brighter, and more real, and the further in you go (as the further up Plato's man journeyed) the bigger and more real it became. "The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked like it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean." In the same way, in his book The Great Divorce, he describes heaven as a place so real that the spirits from hell appear tiny and translugent in comparison: they cannot even walk on the grass, because it cuts their feet.
Lewis also believed that we were created for eternity- for the higher reality. He writes, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." He expresses this in the words of Jewel the Unicorn in The Last Battle:"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes look a little like this... Come further up! Come further in!" We were created for greater reality: this assertion offers assurance to those who, like L.M. Montgomery's Ruby Gillis, fear death because heaven, "won't be what I'm used to." Heaven is greater, more wonderful than what we are "used to." It is the perfect form- to borrow another Platonic phrase, the ideal- of all the good on earth. The reason we love this earth so much is that it sometimes gives us a little taste of heaven.
The error that most people make is to become so satisfied with their "mud pies" that they forget to “seek those things which are above.” Complacency is a common trap, but a crippling one. Those who choose to be complacent are trapped like the men chained in the cave: they will never know anything more of truth, but rather are doomed to go on believing that shadows are real. Instead of seeking God and the marvelous blessings He has for His people, they become caught up in their comfortable, if imperfect, lifestyle. It is these individuals that Jewel’s call is particularly addressed: “Don’t stop! Come further up! Come further in!”
The call to come further in is rooted in Plato's allegorical assertion that the further up the tunnel a man travels, the more of reality he will experience. For Plato, this journey towards fulfillment represented philosophical study. Thousands of years later, C.S. Lewis studied those ideas and understood their implications for his Christian faith. For Lewis, it was not philosophy, but theology that carried a man further and further into reality. The more he knew God, the more he sought him, the more he would know and experience the good and true.
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