17 August 1959
Friends' House, Euston Road
Ladies and gentlemen, Bapak welcomes you to this meeting this evening.
As Bapak said the other day, in reality what relates to the soul is not the work of human beings but of God; a human being simply receives God's work within his or her being. But, because of the greed of the human heart and of human desire, human beings claim God's work for themselves when they create teachings to help others find the right way to God. The result is that, in the end, human beings are more familiar with the working of their own mind than with the true way that leads to God.
With the appearance in the world of Subud - that is, of the latihan you have received and have been practicing - you return to an experience that, though it may appear to be new, is in reality very old. It has been present in human beings since they were first created on this earth.
Bapak said that the soul is God's responsibility, because it is the content of every living creature. So, in a human being the soul is the content, which means that - whether it is the right kind or not - it has authority and holds the initiative in their inner feeling. However, being unaware of this, we regard whatever we do as coming from our own intention. People are unable, of themselves, to know and understand ( the true situation ), because their powers of understanding and knowledge are merely instruments, and their thoughts and feelings arise only as a result of the initiative and influence of the forces working within them.
So it's clear that it is the presence, within a person, of a soul that does not correspond to his or her human form that leads them to a state of misery, both with regard to their health and to their actions and behavior. This is because they will pursue only the pleasures of their heart and the impulses of their passions, forgetting the limits of their strength. This causes all sorts of illnesses and all sorts of suffering of the inner feeling and of the body, which become increasingly severe as time goes on.
People try to cure their illnesses and the faults within their being using their intelligence and their thinking, but that just patches up something that is inherently defective or damaged. So, even though it is repaired, it still remains damaged. They are unable to discover the prime cause that lies at the root of all that has gone wrong, since their effort does not go beyond the use of the thinking mind.
The fact is that the most dangerous disease is not the kind that produces physical symptoms, but the kind that lies in the character or inner nature of a person. This is a more dangerous kind of disease than cancer and the like. Bapak will illustrate. Out of a thousand people perhaps only ten are afflicted by physical illness; but if one person has a flawed character that causes him to seek only his own advantage and to strive for the total gratification of his desires and passions, he may drag down thousands of others to misery and death - as happens in war and other calamities.
It is truly a paradox that on the one hand people look after themselves and look after their health very well, yet on the other hand they incite others to fight one another through war. So they are spared from illnesses but succumb instead to the sickness of war, which demands thousands and millions of casualties. As a result of this, in time of war people hardly know the meaning of good will towards other human beings. Such is the effect of forces that are out of place within the self of human beings - they provoke people to destroy each other.
Therefore the best way - the way we need to find - is one that enables us to transform people's character so they truly come to appreciate human life; to feel the feelings of people everywhere; to know what harmony in human life is like, and to know one God and one human race. That is why religions don't discriminate in their rules and content between people of different races. Whoever is willing to embrace the religion is accepted and brought to the worship of God.
So, in religion there is no discrimination between races and other groupings; and it is the same with us in Subud. In the latihan there is no discrimination between race or religion, because any discrimination between human beings becomes a block in our progress towards God. A person who keeps an animal makes sure that it is well cared for and comes to no harm; but there are quite a number of people who, at times, look upon their fellow men as lower than the animals. It is taught by the prophets - the messengers - that if you wish to be loved you must also love others and it is the same for them. The greatest obstacle for a person is not hatred of God, but hatred of their fellow men. If a person hates, or dislikes God, that doesn't matter, as that can easily be changed and cleared. But if they do not like other people and other living things, that is more difficult, for it darkens the atmosphere of their feelings in a more serious way.
Therefore, in Subud, in your worship, Bapak would like you to look upon all living beings - upon all your brothers and sisters - as you do yourself, truly one in feeling, truly united. For the heart and the thinking mind, which continually make a distinction between 'I' and 'you', are only motivated by the low forces, forces that always seek to bring about disorder in human life, so that human beings argue with one another. That is what the low forces want; they want human beings to fall from their proper level so that low forces can take their place. This is the way and behavior of the low forces; they fill people's being in order that they may carry out their will without people being aware of it. Since the entire being of a person - their feelings, heart and brain - are permeated by these forces, it is impossible for that person to perceive reality or understand his or her true condition.
The truth is that there is no other option for humankind as a whole, or for each one of you individually, but to return to Almighty God. And the condition for being close to God is to surrender, with patience, acceptance and willingness to let go, as the prophets did - among them Jesus. Jesus once said, 'The only one whom I love and to whom I am ready to sacrifice my body and soul is God my Father, whom I worship both in this world and in the life after death.' That is why Bapak always recommends that in your latihan you should have real faith, and surrender with patience and acceptance to the greatness of God, whose power you have received - although still only to a small degree - in this latihan we practice.
When one says that a person knows God, or that God is close to them, this does not mean that all the power of God enters into them. There are people who, because of their own wrong understanding, claim themselves to be God, to be Allah - to be the creator of the human race and the whole universe. But the truth is that the power of God received by any person, and which they are able to approach, is in proportion to their own strength and to the limit of their human capacity. For if the whole power and reality of God were to enter into a person, the earth itself would disappear, because God's power is greater than everything God has created.
Therefore, although human beings may attain knowledge reaching to the skies, they still remain human and can never be like God. For however pure and clean a person may be, he or she nevertheless possesses desires, a heart and a thinking mind; and the nature of these faculties is that they like to arrange this and that, to change this and that, and to choose this and that. So if a person were to possess power as mighty as that of God, maybe they would change today into a thousand days, so they could just keep on working and make a large profit. They would want everyone to bow before them and would regard them as nothing more than tools or instruments - which is what happened in the time of the pharaohs. Pharaoh, the all-powerful king, claimed to be God, and treated the rest of the people as tools or instruments.
This is why it is not possible, and could never happen, that all the power of God should reside in the self of any human being. For by their very nature human beings possess desires, a heart and a thinking mind; whereas all the prophets have said that God and God's power are not affected by the light of the day or by the darkness of the night or by anything whatsoever. On the contrary, the power of God is able to penetrate everything that God has created.
Therefore the closeness of God to human beings, to all of you, is closer than anything you see, closer than anything you hear or anything you can perceive with your senses. The truth is that people are unable to know God and to see God because they are obstructed by their own seeing; they are unable to hear the power of God because they are obstructed by their own hearing, as well as by their other faculties. So this means that whenever you try to think about God, you yourselves are closing the way whereby God could purify your thoughts and make them able to understand God's power.
Bapak compares this state to that of a child newly delivered from its mother's womb. When a child is newly born it is unable to see the forms or to recognize the sounds of this world. The child is still closely in touch with its own pure inner feelings, which are still connected with its soul. This is the reason why the child sometimes looks happy and sometimes looks sad.
As soon as the child begins to be able to see the forms of this world, to hear, to smell, and to perceive its atmosphere, little by little the connection between the child, its pure feelings and its soul begins to close. This closes further as the child begins to think and to use its heart and desires, until in the end the child is more aware of this world than of its life before coming into this world, or of its own inner self.
This is why Bapak said earlier that human beings are unable to see the power of God because they are obstructed by their own seeing; that is, by everything they have seen from the time they were children until they grew up. Likewise it is very difficult for people to think about God with their brain and intellect, because the contents of their brain, heart and feelings consist only of experiences encountered throughout their life, from childhood to old age.
So, it is clear that throughout our life the influences of the world have penetrated very deeply into our feeling of self. Therefore there is no other way for our inner feeling to be liberated from all this except by the way of death. This way has long been followed and perhaps is still being followed by those who practice semadi or meditation. Meditation means bringing the desires, the heart and the thinking mind to a standstill; and to come to this state really means to die - hence the expression: 'to die while still in this life'. In Javanese this is called mati sajroning urip.
This is so difficult and so deep that it would be very hard for anyone today, particularly someone living here in London, to practice such a thing; all the time he would hear cars passing by, the sound of people walking, the shouting of his children and the voice of his wife, or he would remember that he hasn't seen some film, and so on. So it is extremely difficult for people today ( to deal with this situation ) without the help of God that is in accordance with the conditions of human life in this present age.
Apart from that, ( the way of meditation ) is not in accordance with God's will for human beings. Bapak illustrates it in this way: if you received the gift of God and were able to get close to God through the practice of meditation - through emptying your desires, your heart and mind, and living in some lonely spot isolated from the world - then you would continue to live like that for ever; and if everyone were to follow the same way, the world as we know it would be deserted. There would be no more cinemas or airplanes, no large buildings such as this one we are in at the moment. It would not be necessary for this present world to exist, because people would wish to live only in the forests or on the mountains.
To give an example of this: Bapak once knew a man who was indeed highly gifted; that is to say, he had the power to know the future, and to know things that cannot be understood through the intellect. He attained these powers through the practice of self-denial; through fasting and restraining all his desires. At that time he was still practicing these austerities, and his abilities and his awareness were indeed amazing. But later he began to spend a lot of time with people from the city, and began to eat bread, butter and cheese; he began to drink milk and to eat biscuits that came in a tin, and then his extraordinary powers became blocked. It is clear that the faculties acquired through this kind of austerity will disappear when one no longer practices it, for the powers thus attained demand the constant practice of fasting and depriving oneself of sleep and all comforts - and no eating butter for the rest of one's life. So if you wish to go by that way you will have to refrain from eating bread, butter, cheese and so on. ( Laughter )
However, in Subud, brothers and sisters, we receive this by the will of God. We receive the contact with God's greatness in a state where we are still familiar with butter, bread, cheese and so on. So if, nevertheless, we are able to receive this from God, it means that we shall continue to be able to receive it whilst living and working as normal people in this world.
Someone in Indonesia once said to Bapak, 'Bapak, you are very strange; you still wear a necktie although you are a spiritual man and are supposed to have a noble soul. You still smoke cigarettes and drink tea. Sometimes you go to the opera and the cinema; at other times you go to the shops and so on. Yet all these things are regarded as useless and as closing the way to God. Why don't you allow your beard to grow and lean on a stick as those other teachers do, who are said to be near to God?'
Bapak answered, 'Oh, no; Bapak is not like that. Bapak is willed by God to be simply as Bapak is - to drink coffee, to eat butter, bread and cheese, also to smoke - because this is what people ordinarily do. It will not close my way to God, because God wills me to be so.'
God is All-knowing and All-wise, and God gives to human beings in such a way that they do not need to withdraw from normal life. They can truly receive God's greatness and the contact with God's power at all times - whenever they are doing their work, and in every moment of their lives.
Long ago, in the times of the prophets, they wore the long shapeless robes that were customary in those days because there were no tailors; they allowed their beards to grow because there were no barbers. But nowadays there are barbers and there are excellent tailors who make well-cut suits and dresses, which, for instance, you can see at Harrods. Why, then, should people choose and wear tasteless clothes? That is not the will of God. They are not the means by which a person can be near to God. No. Those means are purity of heart and mind. A man may be well dressed, but if his heart is not good he cannot be near to God, whereas a person who may not be outwardly impressive but who is pure in heart - that is the person who can be near to God.
The black clothes and the white clothes that are traditionally worn when people want to show that they are good, are really symbols. The color black represents sincerity that is not affected by anything. Black contains no beauty, but contains seriousness. That is why black garments are usually worn when attending a funeral or a marriage. It signifies that, since the dead person is no longer influenced by anything, the minds of those who attend and accompany them should not be preoccupied with a lot of thoughts but should be worshipping God, so that the soul of the one who has died may return directly to God.
Similarly, when people go to a wedding dressed in black, their garments signify a sincerity untouched except by the hope that the couple will lead a harmonious life and be protected from the influences assailing them on every side. For the effect of such influences would be to break the bonds that unite the two people. Apart from that, it also implies the wish that in coming together, the husband and wife may not be disturbed by outer or worldly influences, so that they may give birth to a child who is not affected by these influences, and whose inner content is a pure and noble soul.
All these things are symbols for human life, which you will be able to understand through doing the Subud latihan. Eventually, you will not merely conform to custom without seeing and being certain of what is true and what is false, because you will be taught about everything by God Himself, through God's power working within each one of you; the power that will bring about all necessary changes within you, putting right all that is wrong, and making whole and perfect whatever is still defective.
For the faults we have and suffer from pervade not only our flesh and blood but also our understanding and awareness; one could say they penetrate even into our inner self. Therefore putting them right cannot be accomplished quickly; it is certain to take a lot of time. You, of course, would like to know and understand how to solve the problems you have within you as soon as possible. But God knows better than you, so God will work within you and grant this no slower or faster than your individual strength will allow. And if you follow the efforts of your heart and mind to try to speed up what you receive, this may instead bring you an undesirable experience, known as a crisis.
It is like when you want to be rich but don't do any work; that is to say, your wish remains only in your head, and as you sit and dream, you begin to imagine what it will be like when you are rich and how you will invest your money when you have plenty of it. Or it is like when you buy a lottery ticket - which is, of course, not certain to win - and you begin to calculate, 'If I win it, I shall buy ten houses near the road and let them, and with the income from this I won't need to work; I'll be able to travel around, go to the opera from time to time, and so on.'
That is the way the thinking mind works; if we give it free rein it will occupy itself with all sorts of nonsense. So don't do that. Just do your latihan - as long as you do it diligently and without getting bored. Simply accept what you receive and don't have any feeling of being in a hurry or wanting to speed up the process so as to receive a lot. For God's work in the human self is like opening a way through a series of walls: the wall of the feelings, the wall of the understanding and the wall of consciousness; all of which have been formed and come into being entirely through the influences of this world. So Bapak hopes that you will not be in a hurry to understand the meaning of what you receive. Simply accept it, because when you have reached the required stage you will understand it spontaneously.
So, all this means that God comes before everything that is beginning. The qualities of the prophets of old may serve as an example. The feeling of their hearts was opened, their understanding and the awareness of their soul was opened, but not because they wished for it or studied it. It came as a result of God's grace, based on the purity and cleanness of their hearts and the sincerity of their worship and faith in God's greatness.
In this way you ( too ) will eventually reach the required state. And hopefully, you will be able to bring it into this world, resulting in a world filled with general well-being and harmony between human beings who truly worship their God.
This is the end of Bapak's talk this evening; he will continue it next Saturday. He hopes that his short explanation will have given you some satisfaction. Thank you.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -