JOURNEY THROUGH THE DARK

of every human being, from a silly child to the wisest of the elders, the question without which life is impossible; such was the way I felt about the matter. The question is this: What will come of what I do today and tomorrow? What will become of my entire life?” "Expressed differently, the question may be: Why should I live? Why should I wish for anything or do anything? Or to put it still differently: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?" (Confessions) Failing to find a convincing answer to this question, he says: “I grew sick of life; some irresistible force was leading me to somehow get rid of it. It was not that I wanted to kill myself. The force that was leading me away from life was more powerful, more absolute, more all-encompassing than any desire. With all my strength I struggled to get away from life. The thought of suicide came to me as naturally then as the thought of improving life had come to me before.” (Ibid.) Tolstoy was so driven to commit suicide that he had to take tremendous efforts to avoid committing this act. “And there I was, a fortunate man, carrying a rope from my room, where I was alone every night as I undressed, so that I would not hang myself from the beam between the closets. And I quit going hunting with a gun, so that I would not be too easily tempted to rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I struggled to get rid of it.” (Ibid.) Fatal Disequilibrium Animals do not kill themselves, but man does commit such act. 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. The researches done by Koestler, 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 Life cannot but appear meaningless to a person who has no conception of the afterlife. The significance of the present world can be understood only in the context of our present life being followed by the Hereafter.