PRISON

...even solitary confinement imposed by enemies can be the trigger for psychological experiences of lasting value. Anthony Grey, who experienced solitary confinement in China, and Arthur Koestler, who was similarly imprisoned in Spain, discussed their experiences together on television. The transcript of their discussion appears in Koestler’s collection of essays, Kaleidoscope.

Both men were grateful that they did not have to share a cell with another prisoner. Both felt that solitude enhanced their appreciation of, and sympathy with, their fellow men. Both had intense experiences of feeling that some kind of higher order of reality existed with which solitude had out the in touch. Both felt that trying to put this experience into words tended to trivialize it, because words could not really express it. Although neither man subscribed to any orthodox religious belief, both agreed that they had felt the abstract existence of something which was indefinable or which could only be experienced in symbols.

Anthony Grey thought that his experience had given him a new awareness and appreciation of normal life. Koestler concurred, but added that he had also become more aware of horrors lurking under the surface. Koestler also refers to a
feeling of inner freedom, of being alone and confronted with ultimate realties instead of with your bank statement. Your bank statement and other trivialities are again a kind of confinement. Not in space but in spiritual space…So you have got a dialogue with existence. A dialogue with life, a dialogue with death.

Grey comments that this is an area of experience into which most people do not enter. Koestler rightly affirms that most people have occasional confrontations of this kind
when they are severely ill or when a parent dies, or when they first fall in love. Then they are transferred from what I call the trivial plane to the tragic or absolute plane. But it only happens a few times. Whereas in the type of experience which we shared, one has one’s nosed rubbed into it, for a protracted period.

So, occasionally, good can come out of evil. Anthony Grey recalled being shown a painting of a Chinese friend in which a beautiful lotus flower is growing out of mud. The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.

From Solitude by Anthony Storr.London:Flamingo,1989.60-62.