This evening, ladies and gentlemen, Bapak wishes to continue the explanations he has started concerning the spiritual training ( latihan ) you have all received.
You have now begun to be introduced to God's power, which works within human beings and awakens the inner feeling so that you come to move in the various kinds of ways you have been experiencing.
This introduction is just beginning from the feeling, which brings about the movements you have experienced, because everything has to begin at the beginning, with the preliminaries. This can be compared to how you were when you were still small children and you were preparing to go to school. Of course, before you began your lessons in school, you had to learn how to get to school, how to get up early, how to obey the teacher's instructions and how to hold and take care of the books you would be using.
Indeed, you have only just been born, and are now embarking upon human life, both in this world and in the life after death. And your birth occurred when the ordinary working of your brain, heart and desires had come to a stop. So your age, ladies and gentlemen, is your age in this world, the years of life you have experienced as long as you have been on earth, the age of your desires and passions and your thinking. It is not the age of your human soul ( jiwa ), which, until you were opened, had been closed up, stifled and buried within you, because of the influence and force of your desires and thinking mind.
The age that you have reached after years and years of the various experiences you have had during your life in this world is actually the age of your knowledge, your body and your consciousness, which can only live and work up to the time of your death, and end with the grave. It is therefore very necessary for man to be able to receive the contact from the power of God, because through that contact his soul and inner self can come to life, and he can live his real life and go on living it after death. This life will grow and come to awareness and maturity by itself; it does not require any support or help from the thinking mind, the will or the desires.
The messengers of God, the prophets in times long ago, advised mankind saying, 'Even though you have to work and think and give attention to this world, do not forget your worship of the One God, who created you, who created your soul, who created everything and gave you ample provision to enable you to live a full life in this world.'
You have now begun to receive something from beyond the reach of the thinking mind and heart, namely, a life force that arises from your human soul through the action of God's power. Although your receiving is still on a low level, in the lowest class of development in the life of the human soul, it is nevertheless an inestimable grace, because the growth of the human soul, which you have begun to receive in your feeling, will bring about a state of cleanness, health and goodness in your whole being.
Certainly you will understand that at this time you are not yet able to receive this awakening in a regular, ordered way, because of course you have only just begun; your human soul, which has been closed up for so long, has only just begun to wake up and come to life. But eventually you will be able to receive, and your human soul will be able to work within you in a way that is really harmonious and well ordered.
It is for this reason that, from olden times, man has required and needed to have a culture in one or another of its various forms, for example, dance, music or playing an instrument, drawing and painting, and so on. It is indeed God's will for human beings that they should be able to improve and adorn this world so that it can become a good, safe, happy place for human beings themselves, while not forgetting their worship of the One God.
The real meaning of culture - for example dance, or athletics, or what is now called the Olympics - was originally that each branch of culture should be a starting point for human beings to know the power of God that envelops them and exists within them. For it was said that a healthy and good soul ( jiwa ) would surely bring about a state of goodness and cleanness in the coarse physical body, and that it would find expression in culture. This is why the vital power or energy of culture is called in Indonesia susila, meaning that all of man's actions and behavior should be in accordance with God's will, which is written within man's self.
It is clear then, that man's worship of the One God must start from energy, action, movement, for example from the working of the physical body, from physical movements, which gradually become deeper and deeper and wider and wider until they eventually reach the level of the understanding and awareness of the human soul.
For it is the human soul which understands how these physical movements follow a pattern existing within the self; it is the human soul that can bring about health and cleanness within man's being.
Nowadays, everywhere, in England, in Europe, even ii1 Indonesia, people are encouraged to do sport, for example to play football, tennis and other kinds of games. The true meaning and intention behind this is that through sport human beings should be able to follow movements arising from their human soul, which will make them healthy and clean.
Bapak does not wish to find fault or criticize in any way, but most sport as it is practiced today is planned and carried out by the thinking mind and the desires; it does not have its origins in the human soul. But because the way sport is generally practiced is not from the human soul, not because of God's will, not because of God's power received within the self, it will not have the effect of regenerating or cleaning the self, but may on the contrary sometimes cause harm and suffering to participants, and has the effect of increasing and strengthening the desires, merely for the pleasure and enjoyment of the spectators.
For this reason most sport, as it is known today, does not come to what was really intended by the experts in true culture who lived long ago, whose wish and intention was that the culture they created should be a living culture, not a dead one. Sport as it is practiced today is different from the movements you have been receiving and doing in the latihan, even though you cannot yet receive properly, or completely.
In this training ( latihan ) that you have now received, you will eventually receive a great amount, so that you yourselves will be amazed: you will gradually be brought to life so that you will be able to make movements and dance in ways you have never learned, and move and dance and run in ways that are completely unfamiliar to you and you have never experienced before. Of course, you yourselves must realize that such an awakening or such a real experience cannot be received straight away or quickly, because your self and the members of your physical body, which have until now been dirty and covered up by your desires and thinking, still need to be cleaned and brought to life.
What Bapak has been saying is based on fact, because it has been verified, not only by Bapak himself, but by brothers and sisters who have only recently received this latihan, for example in Germany, in England, in Holland and in Switzerland. Through this latihan, these brothers and sisters are able to dance very well Egyptian dances, Armenian dances, Turkish dances and dances of other countries. They have never learned such dances, yet the dances arise and grow by themselves. How can this be? It is because their human soul has begun to awaken, and is guided and instructed and given understanding by the Almighty, who always envelops and controls us human beings.
However, those of you who have received such an awakening, such dancing, should not think that this is as far as it goes. Because when the inner feeling, which has for so long been stifled and closed up by the desires, has eventually awakened, your human soul will always give you indications, and will always guide you in carrying out all the activities that are necessary for your life, because of God's power that is within and outside you. An example of this is in wearing clothes: although everyone wears clothes, in general people wear clothes in imitation of others, so that even the best and most expensive garments do not suit them. For it is not the human soul within them that prompts their choice of such clothes, but the desires and thinking, which only imitate what they have seen. And that is not all. Even in your walking, or when you are in the company of friends, you will be moved from within, so that all your behavior and actions in your everyday life will always be guided and moved from within.
Of course, all these examples, however good and however wide reaching they may be, are still on a low level, that is, in the feelings or inner feeling. Deeper and wider is the inner heart of man, that is, the understanding. And it will not stop there, it will go still deeper and wider until one is able to behave and work beyond the state of human beings in this world, that is, with the human soul, so that one is then able to work in a way that is really in a state of life after death. Clearly, God did not create mankind at random, or carelessly, just to live and then to die. Certainly God had a purpose in creating man in this world. But His will is very difficult for human beings to know if they are not really able to purify their heart, their brain and their inner feeling.
God guides and directs human beings so that they may be able to work well and usefully and live happily both in this world and later on, in the unlimited state of life after death. You have begun to know, and later will really know, the way of worshipping God, and the way of knowing the life of your inner self. And this has begun during your life on this earth. Certainly, if, in your life in this world, you are able to know and be aware of the true life that is yours, later on, when eventually you die, there will be nothing to prevent you from continuing your life to the place or level required for the perfect human being.
God, or Allah, guides human beings, whom He created, at every step, in all their actions, whether it be in writing or composing, in counting money, in driving a car, in steering or piloting other kinds of vehicles, in seeing whatever they see, and so on. God's guidance to man is continuous, so that in whatever field of activity man is engaged he will not lose contact with his worship of the One God who created him. This is exemplified in the life of the Prophet Jesus when he was still alive in this world. All his actions and behavior - when he raised his hands up in worship of God, when he walked up the mountain and down again, and when he gave advice to those who were gathered to hear him, and went here and there - all this was not because of his desires. His state was not like people nowadays. Not at all! All his actions were prompted not by desire, but by indications from within. So his hands were raised from within, as you have to some extent begun to experience in the latihan.
Similarly, in everything you do, when you laugh, when you speak, when you are angry, when you are listening to something or seeing something, even when you are watching a film, you will not do it from your desires, but from your soul. Later on, you will sometimes experience that even though a film is great, your eyes, of their own accord, do not like to watch it.
It is very necessary for you to have real evidence of this, ladies and gentlemen, but Bapak cannot do it tonight, because you may not be able to receive it yet, as you have only just begun to receive the latihan. But please do not be disappointed, because this will grow by itself. When Bapak comes here again later, Bapak should be able to test you all so that you can have real evidence. Bapak just urges you all, ladies and gentlemen, to do the latihan diligently, to worship God diligently, so that you will soon be able to receive what is hoped for.
This is the end of Bapak's explanations tonight, in continuation of Bapak's explanations last time, and Bapak will continue again next time.
Translated by Sofyan Brugger