Antonin Scalia on Heaven, Hell, and the Devil

Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia (1936-2016)

You believe in heaven and hell?
Oh, of course I do. Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?

No.
Oh, my.

Does that mean I’m not going?
[Laughing.] Unfortunately not!

Wait, to heaven or hell? 
It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it. That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other.

But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it? 
Of course not!

Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God.
I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?

Can we talk about your drafting process—
[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.

You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.

Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.

Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.

No.
It’s because he’s smart.

So what’s he doing now?
What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.

That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the ­Devil’s work?
I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.

Well, you’re saying the Devil is ­persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.

Right.
What happened to him?

He just got wilier.
He got wilier.

Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

~from a conversation with Jennifer Senior, New York Magazine, October 6, 2013 

Bequest

 

Knowing he was ill
he offered a free choice of the books on his shelves,
but for every one wanted said,
'Couldn't bear to let that go',
and died two weeks later.
~Roy Kelly

Begin Again

Seamus Heaney by Tai-Shan Schierendberg

"Getting started, keeping going, getting started again — in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others."
~Seamus Heaney

Among the Ruins

“A spell of peace lives in the ruins of ancient Greek tem­ples. As the trav­eller leans back among the fallen cap­i­tals and allows the hours to pass, it emp­ties the mind of trou­bling thought and anx­i­eties and slowly refills it, like a ves­sel that has been drained and scoured, with a quiet ecstasy. Nearly all that has hap­pened fades to a limbo of shad­ows and insignif­i­cance and is pain­lessly replaced by an inti­ma­tion of radi­ance, sim­plic­ity and calm which unties all knots and solves all rid­dles and seems to mur­mur a benev­o­lent and unim­pe­ri­ous sug­ges­tion that the whole of life, if it were allowed to unfold with­out hin­drance or com­pul­sion or search for alien solu­tions, might be lim­it­lessly happy.”

 Mani: Trav­els in the South­ern Pelo­pon­nese, by Patrick Leigh Fer­mor. New York Review Books 1958

Old Advice for a New Year

"Do not act as if you were going to live for 10,000 years. Death hangs over you."

~Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.) Stoic philosopher and Emperor of Rome 

Happenstance

"Art loves chance and chance loves art." 

-Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, VI) --see Classical Wisdom Weekly

The Drug Fueling Syria's Bloody War

Sometimes what seems an obscure subject for a novel turns out to be strangely prescient. 

Five years ago I began writing a thriller called The Assassin Lotus about a present-day search through central Asia for the legendary elixir, soma. In the ancient Vedic hymns of India and the ancient Zoroastrian texts of Persia, the plant-derived drug was praised as a god, and was used by armies of marauding Aryan warriors to prepare themselves for battle. Soma was found to dissipate fear and give fighting men great courage. 

At the time I wrote the story, ISIS was not even a blip on the radar. Now news stories are pouring in about "the drug that's fueling Syria's bloody war."

Called Captagon, it is taken by Syrian militants who say it eliminates fear and fatigue, and "gives you great courage and power." 

Is Captagon a contemporary version of soma? Effects described by the militants seem identical to those described in the ancient Vedic hymns. An amphetamine, Captagon "stimulates the central nervous system, increasing alertness, boosting concentration and physical performance, and providing a feeling of well-being." 

This last effect, often described as a "euphoria," may seem inimical to war-fighting. Yet this is the effect that is most elaborately praised in the ancient soma texts. A feeling of euphoria, of bliss and unity, of oneness with the Divine--these were the most treasured of the ancient elixir's gifts. 

The Assassin Lotus explores the idea that soma not only gave courage to warriors, but that it gave insight into the source of courage itself.

Making permanent that inner state of fearless transcendence became the Holy Grail of India's first mystics, the yogic researchers who eventually developed many of the meditation practices still in use today. 

As Lord Krishna explained to the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield in the Bhagavad GIta, the field of war is only a hair's breadth away from the field of the divine Absolute. We can only hope the Syrians will tire of the first and finally give themselves over to the latter.