“Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle. (...) There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.” Human NatureEgoDevilDenialDelusionBad HabitsWishful ThinkingScrewtape Letters Book:The Screwtape Letters Source: The Screwtape Letters
“Teach him to call it ‘real-life and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’. (...) Never having been human (...) you don’t realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary. (...) Thanks to processes we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. (...) But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is ‘the results of modern investigation’. Do remember you are there to fuddle him.” CultureHuman NatureEgoDevilSelf AwarenessLazinessBlaming OthersSocial PressureMonkey Mind Book:The Screwtape Letters Source: The Screwtape Letters
“And the sceptic’s conclusion that the so-called spiritual is really derived from the natural, that it is a mirage or projection or imaginary extension of the natural, is also exactly as we should expect; for, as we have seen, this is the mistake which an observer who knew only the lower medium would be bound to make in any case of Transposition. The brutal man never can by analysis find anything but lust in love; the Flatlander never can find anything but flat shapes in a picture; physiology never can find anything in thought except twichings of the grey matter. It is no good browbeating the critic who approaches a Transposition form below. On the evidence available to him his conclusion is the only one possible. Everything is different when you approach a Transposition from above.” PhilosophyReligionSpiritualityEducationPsychologyHuman NatureEvolutionLazinessScrewtape LettersTransposition Book:The Screwtape Letters Source: The Screwtape Letters