Help me find this CS Lewis (?) quote

Cafe Society
1

I found it pretty profound when I first heard it, but stupid me, never wrote it down. Now I need to find it, so I turn to the Teeming Millions. I’ve looked at many CS Lewis sites, but I haven’t found it, so it may not be his.

It goes a little something like this:

I believe when you die, you become more of what you were in real life.
or
I believe when you die, you become what you were during life, only more so.
or
I don’t believe in heaven. When you die you become what you were in life, only more so.

Can anyone save me?
Thanks-

2

Moved from General Questions to Cafe Society.

Gfactor
General Questions Moderator

3

Maybe this, from Mere Christianity?

“The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him [Christ] take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.”

4

No, this was definately in reference to the afterlife… maybe something like:

“I don’t believe in fluffy clouds and saint peter at the gate, I believe that we’re like we are in life, only more so.”

Yeah, that doesn’t sound much like Lewis, but I have these floating thoughts in my head, and I’m grasping at them. They might not even be related.

5

It doesn’t sound like anything in C. S. Lewis.

6

I don’t know if the quote is in it, but it’s definitely the theme of THE GREAT DIVORCE.

7

Nothing like that is listed on the C.S. Lewis Quote Page; but the quotes on that page are by no means exhaustive. There is only one quote from The Great Divorce, for example.

8

It’s a vaguely recalled quote, of course, but that’s a pretty good summation of some of what he believed about life after death.

9

smiling bandit writes:

> It’s a vaguely recalled quote, of course, but that’s a pretty good summation of
> some of what he believed about life after death.

Really? Then give me some exact quotes which come anywhere close to saying the same thing as this.

FriarTed writes:

> I don’t know if the quote is in it, but it’s definitely the theme of THE GREAT
> DIVORCE.

Explain to me in what sense it’s the theme of The Great Divorce.

10

Lewis, in GD and elsewhere, described heaven as a place that is “more real” than earth. In fact, earth is described as “shadowlands,” a poor, barely real reflection of heaven. This is also the theme of the last few chapters of The Last Battle from the Chronicles of Narnia.

That said, I can’t find any quote that suggests that people become more real, or more themselves, in the afterlife. I agree that it doesn’t sound like him.