“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.”

John Milton

When we imagine individuals going “beyond limits,” what usually comes to mind are the pioneering achievements of creative geniuses and record-breaking athletes or the miraculous feats of great yogis and saints. Their groundbreaking exploits push the envelope for us all, challenging us to question unexamined assumptions about what we consider humanly possible. But there are others who are more reluctant heroes. Their stories come to us from hellish locales of oppression and the killing fields of war. Pushed to the breaking point by the onslaught of extreme circumstances beyond their control, these ordinary men and women find access within themselves to a spiritual strength and compassion that can be as deeply moving as that of the great saints.

John McCarthy is one such reluctant hero. On April 17, 1986, this twenty-nine-year-old British journalist on his first foreign assignment with Worldwide Television News was driving to the Beirut airport to catch a return flight to London. That morning he had been deeply shaken as he filmed his last news report in front of the ruins of the British embassy residence, still smoldering in the wake of a rocket attack by Hezbollah, the fundamentalist Muslim militia. After leaving the outskirts of the war-torn city, his car was ambushed by gunmen and he was kidnapped. Soon after, blindfolded and stripped of his belongings, he was led underground and pushed into a tiny dark cell. The door was locked behind him. It would be over five years before John McCarthy would again stand in the light of the sun.

As weeks turned into months, the unremitting darkness, cramped isolation, and deepening cycles of fear and despair began to take their toll. One night, desperately teetering on the verge of a total breakdown, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a profound spiritual presence. The utterly life-affirming grace of this experience infused him with a deep confidence that he could and would survive his hellish ordeal.

Shortly after this revelation, he was blindfolded and abruptly escorted from his cell at gunpoint. Eventually, another door was locked behind him, and as he slowly lifted his blindfold to survey his new surroundings, his eyes met the eyes of another man, also cautiously peering out from under a blindfold. Brian Keenan had been kidnapped while walking to the Beirut University campus where he was employed as an English teacher. Ironically, McCarthy had filmed a news feature on Keenan's disappearance only a few days before his own capture. These two men—McCarthy, an amiable middle-class Englishman with a raffish sense of humor, and Keenan, a passionate Irish intellectual raised on the strife-torn streets of Belfast—were to be companions in captivity for the next four years.

In the preface to his book An Evil Cradling, Brian Keenan writes that at the heart of their shared ordeal there lay an implicit paradox: that “in the most inhuman of circumstances men grow and deepen in humanity.” Both An Evil Cradling and Some Other Rainbow, John McCarthy's own candid account, are deeply moving testaments to the power of the human spirit to prevail in the darkest of dark nights.

Chained alongside each other by their wrists and feet in the confines of a squalid subterranean cell—not knowing why they were being held or if they would ever be released—McCarthy and Keenan endured a grinding monotony and unimaginable degradation. “We both instinctively knew never to share weakness until you understood it,” writes Brian Keenan. “'Share only strength' was an unspoken motto between us.” Together they fought for their dignity in the face of their erratic fundamentalist captors, mostly young men whose behavior could morph without warning from disarming expressions of warmth to gratuitous acts of violence. And they bore together the terrifying trauma of sudden moves to different locations, for which they would either be mummified in masking tape with only their nostrils exposed for air or chained wrists to feet and thrown into a sack. Crammed into the trunk of a car or an airless, coffin-like box beneath a truck, they would then be transported to some new, unknown part of Lebanon. In every cell to which they were eventually delivered after these tortuous journeys, they again had to steel themselves against the merciless assault of stifling heat, ravenous mosquitoes, giant cockroaches, and the ever-gnawing shadow of despair.

With the recent UK release of the film Blind Flight—a powerful dramatization of their shared incarceration—the story of how McCarthy and Keenan re-entered the sunlit world of freedom, not as broken and bitter men but as heroes ennobled by a rare dignity, wisdom, and compassion, has once again been in the public eye. John McCarthy, now an author and documentary filmmaker, spoke with us about his life-changing experience as a hostage in Lebanon.

WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT: In Some Other Rainbow, you describe your period in solitary confinement as “both terrifying and enlightening” and you refer to a powerful spiritual experience that you had. Can you speak about what happened to you during this initial ordeal of self-confrontation?

JOHN McCARTHY: I think that once the shock of being snatched from a car and thrown into a dismal little underground cell passed, I realized how helpless I was. There was absolutely nothing I could do. Initially, the prospect of being held for anything more than a couple of weeks was intolerable. But I kept myself going with a couple of books and magazines, which I read over and over. Then even those were taken away (I later found out they were given to Brian Keenan), and that was the moment I realized that I was absolutely on my own. I could only survive on what I had within. So then began this rather negative self-appraisal, which was a matter of literally reviewing my life. I looked back and reflected on the fact that I'd had lots of advantages coming from a stable middle-class English family. I'd had a good education and plenty of opportunities, but I had squandered so much of my time. I felt so desperately ignorant and inadequate. And at that point I realized, “My God, I don't really know who I am. What is life's purpose? What's my purpose?” Here I was in this desperate circumstance with no real self-aim or self-understanding. Eventually, I got to a point of absolute panic, almost like a helpless little child, where there was nowhere for me to go except to black out emotionally and mentally. I remember feeling as if I was being literally drawn down into a whirlpool by this darker force, and I sank to my knees moaning out loud, “Help me, please, oh God, help me.”

What happened then was extraordinary. I suddenly felt completely happy! In fact, I was euphoric; I felt an absolute confidence, a firm belief that I was going to be all right. In that cell block, when the power was on, there was this nasty neon strip light, which emitted a very harsh, bluish glow. But now suddenly a beautiful soft light was all around me. It had a radiant Venetian quality about it. So I went from falling in despair on my knees on this disgusting little mattress to suddenly finding myself standing, feeling totally buoyed up and happy.

WIE: Did this experience of joy, of lightness of being, give you a sense of what one might describe as “God”?

McCARTHY: I remember reflecting on how I had now found myself in the midst of the various holy wars that have been going on for thousands of years. I thought that surely whatever Islam, Christianity, and Judaism meant by the word “God” must ultimately be the same. So rather than assuming that the Church of England chaplains who bored me to death at school were right all along, I decided that whether it was a God outside me or some kind of spiritual energy that had been released within me, or both, I didn't know. But clearly something had worked. So from then on, I referred to this presence as having come from the “Good Spirit” rather than from any particular notion of God. I could feel confident that this Good Spirit, whether within or around me, was there to protect me and would get me through this ordeal. Of course, at that point, I wasn't thinking about hanging around for another five years!

WIE: And was this Good Spirit a reference point for you, a source of strength throughout your captivity?

McCARTHY: Yes, it definitely was a reference point over the years, despite the fact that it didn't come back at darker times when I was really going down. But perhaps that was because, within a month or so, I was with Brian. I was never quite on my own again; there was always a fellow human being to bring my spirits up. But nevertheless, I'm sure now that that spirit was always there because my optimism would only fade for a day or two at a time over all those years. For some reason, I had this conviction that I would get through it.

WIE: And that conviction came from the spiritual experience itself?

McCARTHY: I think it must have been largely informed by that, but there was also an element of simple self-preservation. Because after having almost been taken down by that whirlpool into utter breakdown and despair, I couldn't dare look that deeply again into the abyss of what would happen if this ordeal didn't end. I just had to keep going. So I used whatever resources I had, whether it was my relationship with Brian, a sense of humor, or having an experience like that.

WIE: What was the biggest challenge you had to battle with in order to keep going, to keep your spirit and dignity intact?

McCARTHY: The awful sense of emptiness and loss of living that came back again and again—the endless monotony of living in a kind of void where hours went by as days and days went by as weeks. I'd look back and realize that a month had gone by and it was, of course, empty. Nothing had happened. I'd achieved nothing. That was very dispiriting, obviously.

WIE: In your book you describe how the phrase “choose joy” became a motif between yourself and Brian—a way that you would uplift each other during the hardest times. How did you “choose joy” in the midst of such desperate circumstances?

WIE: Did having this kind of experience in a situation in which your physical freedom had been taken away subsequently change your appreciation and understanding of the fundamental freedom of choice we possess as human beings?

McCARTHY: Well, in captivity the decisions were very simple, although very profound. At one level, there was just the simple choice to live, to keep going. But then there were other choices. For example, when we had been physically abused by the guards, we would sometimes choose not to eat in order to protest their behavior.

However, the choices I faced on my return home were so many and, in comparison, so complex. The everyday question, “Would you like to do this or do that?” was a tremendous stress! I would just think, “Oh, I don't know!” But when I began to realize that I was back in the world and that some of these choices actually had big implications, especially given the fact that I was suddenly famous, I recognized that I had to choose very carefully, because some of my statements or actions might be given more weight than I would have expected. So I began to face these complexities. Those decisions that had political or moral implications were much more challenging to deal with consciously. It took quite some time to make the transition from just relying on the hostage experience, thinking, “Well, if I got through that I'll get through anything,” to realizing that I could use what I had learned to inform my choices in the world of absolute physical freedom.

WIE: How has your life changed as a result of the unusual intimacy you experienced in your relationship with Brian?

McCARTHY: The love that grew between us transcended what were very profound differences of character, background, and experience. And that opened up the realization that rather than being wary of others, one could celebrate, explore, and feel enriched by that difference, even if one was also at times very frustrated and confused by it! I think this sense of empathy also informed our relationship with the guards. Despite the fact that we were often cruelly taunted and beaten by them, we wanted to understand these people. I recently went back to Lebanon to make a documentary, and I was very much motivated by my desire to understand the broader culture of the Shia Muslims, who were the ones who held us. So since my release, I have been exploring cultural, racial, and religious differences in an effort to understand what life is all about. I've traveled the world working on projects that look into issues of faith and understanding and the interrelationship between faith and politics at the societal and international levels. And in the process, I've also been getting to know myself.

The hostage experience, and my relationship with Brian, taught me to see beyond the barriers. It was an experience of personal and relational discovery that opened up a deeper empathy in me for people who are suffering. I remember that when I came back home and would hear a news report about a child who had died or about earthquake victims in Iran, whereas before I might have been concerned or sad, I was now, as a result of having come through my own experience of suffering, awakened to an empathy for people unknown to me that I hadn't felt before. I would be watching the news and I would find myself crying because it moved me so much.

WIE: Do you feel that there was a direct connection between the stark simplicity of the circumstances in which you and Brian were living and your ability to access a deeper part of yourselves and a deeper connection with life?

McCARTHY: Yes, I think so. And since coming home, I do need to seek out that simplicity, to take time out and be in solitude. Some people find it odd that I don't always want to be around friends, but I have come to value the simplicity of being alone. Sometimes, it is so I can actively contemplate things. But what is most inspiring and gratifying is experiencing that sense of peace, of being at one, that I experienced for the first time with the “Good Spirit.”