Journey Through the Dark

Journey Through the Dark

1988 11 November 5-6 Journey Through the Dark (555) Arthur Koestler, the famous British writer and thinker, committed suicide along with his wife, Cynthia, in his London home in March, 1983. At the time of his death, he was 77 years of age.

Why should a man who had everything that one could wish for in this world commit suicide? He had won renown as a scholar and writer, and had acquired sufficient wealth to leave £400,000 to a British University for research in parapsychology.

The reason for his suicide was his overwhelming sense of horror and frustration at the evil being perpetrated in the world all around him—feelings which were reflected in the many books he wrote. In his famous Darkness at Noon, (published in 32 languages) he excoriates the so-called ‘people’s system of the Soviet Union, which perpetuates all the cruelty and exploitation which it was supposed to eradicate.

In a collection of his discourses published in 1974, he puts his finger on the crux of the matter: “There is a striking, symptomatic disparity between the growth curves of technological achievement on the one had and of ethical behaviour on the other.” He subsequently expresses his disillusionment with modern civilization when he writes: ‘We can control the motions of the satellites orbiting distant planets, but we cannot control the situation in Northern Ireland.”

Fatal Disequilibrium

Animals do not kill members of their own species. But man kills his own kind. After weighing up all sides of this question, Arthur Koestler came to the conclusion that in different parts of the human mind, an imbalance had occurred during the process of evolution. It was this imbalance which explained man’s killing of man on a stupendous scale.

These researches, however, did not bring him any peace. His final Philosophy was that the best thing for man in modern circumstances was to commit suicide: “Death could be a welcome and natural relief for someone whose only alternative was pain and suffering.” (The Guardian, London, March, 13, 1983)

Applying this theory to his own life, Arthur Koestler separated himself from a world which was not of his own making and which he did not have the power to change. He saw that man opened his eyes in a world of brightness only to enter the dark realms of death. He saw that despite extraordinary progress in technology, the moral progress of mankind was still to be attained. Man could control satellites, but man could not control man. Animals never killed their own species but human beings were eternally plotting the death of their fellow-men. He could see that man planned to reform defective systems of living by making the optional use of human and physical resources, communism being one such attempt, but such ‘reforms’ had proved abortive, bringing more darkness than light to the human situation. Frustrated beyond measure by these glaring defects in human existences, Koestler committed suicide.

Life cannot but appear meaningless to a man who has no conception of the Afterlife, for the significance of the present world can be understood only in the context of our present life being followed by the Hereafter. Unless this notion is ever-present in the human consciousness, a descent into negativism is inevitable. In the face of an inexplicably hostile world, it is not surprising that the more sensitive souls feel themselves pushed irrevocably towards suicide.