Sir Laurens Jan van der Post (1906–96) was a South African-born British soldier, explorer, conservationist, writer, and philosopher who was influenced by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Van der Post’s many books on travel, anthropology, and adventure make evident his sincere sympathy for Africa and its peoples.
Born in Philippolis, South Africa, van der Post served with distinction in World War II in Ethiopia, the Western Desert, Syria, and the Far East, where the Japanese captured him. Upon his release, he joined Louis Mountbatten’s staff in Java.
Van der Post went on to work for the British government on an assortment of missions in Africa, beginning with an exploration of Nyasaland (now Malawi) in 1949. His masterpiece on that journey, Venture to the Interior (1952,) was the first of several works that combined his travel-writing and descriptions of fauna with philosophical speculation.
Van der Post’s other books include The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958,) The Seed and the Sower (1963; filmed as Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, 1983,) The Hunter and the Whale (1967,) A Far Off Place (1974,) Yet Being Someone Other (1982,) and The Voice of the Thunder (1993.)
Van der Post’s other writings include the adventure story Flamingo Feather (1955) and the travel books Journey into Russia (1964,) A Portrait of All the Russias (1967,) and A Portrait of Japan (1968.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Laurens van der Post
Life begins as a quest of the child for the man and ends as a journey by the man to rediscover the child.
—Laurens van der Post
I remembered a story of how Bach was approached by a young admirer one day and asked, “But Papa Bach, how do you manage to think of all these new tunes?” “My dear fellow,” Bach is said to have answered, according to my version, “I have no need to think of them. I have the greatest difficulty not to step on them when I get out of bed in the morning and start moving around my room”.
—Laurens van der Post
Topics: Imagination
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
—Laurens van der Post
Topics: Belief
Man is never alone. Acknowledged or unacknowledged, that which dreams through him is always there to support him from within.
—Laurens van der Post
Topics: Self-Discovery
Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one’s eternal peril.
—Laurens van der Post
Topics: Change
Often I have found that the one thing that can save is the thing which appears most to threaten … one has to go down into what one most fears and in that process … comes a saving flicker of light and energy that, even if it does not produce the courage of a hero, at any rate enables a trembling mortal to take one step further.
—Laurens van der Post
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
Creativity and love come from the same source.
—Laurens van der Post
Topics: Love, Creativity
In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a “child of darkness” who is equal and complementary to the more obvious “child of light”.
—Laurens van der Post
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