“When I first began the search, it was to find something that I thought was missing. I now know that it was to learn the letting go of something that I never needed to cling to in the first place.”

– Andre van Zijl

An excerpt from My Guru and His Disciple by Christopher Isherwood:

This state of grace cannot be sought or found, but is granted.

This living, this searching, this sacred unscratchable itch for the invisible divine is learning to travel light, attached to only that which supports this journey; it is to leap blind into the virulent unknown, traveling far beyond the tribal comfort of social or cultural religion; way beyond the comfort and security of the rules of the more prevalent ‘religions’ of class, wealth, power and public status. It is to travel beyond judgment of self or others, but not discernment; beyond fear, but not common-sense. It is traveling beyond hoping to knowing, not belief, but to a primordial experience of the essential unquestionable reality that lies beyond the screen of divisive, occluding appearance.

This is not to make a fetish, or virtue of the obscure, secret or hidden. Nor is it to glorify or disdain wealth or power, poverty or suffering. These do not need to be sought. They know very well how to find us.

Now, the journey is a continuing assimilation and ongoing integration of the lessons gleaned from suprarational knowing. One is not meant to live on the mountain all the time, so the peak experiences that come to one should not be seen as a goal to somehow perpetuate. It is to live the middle way of moderation in all things that we strive towards, and as the Buddha observed, the extremes are injurious to sincere effort.

Rev. Andre Van Zijl with Nisreyasananda