Ladies, this evening Bapak would like to continue his talks about the spiritual path because, if Bapak keeps on repeating what he has already said, this will certainly reduce the time ( available ) for giving this talk this evening. For this reason, Bapak hopes that those of you ladies who haven't yet heard Bapak's earlier talks will listen to the tape recordings of them.

What Bapak wants to clarify now is the fact that within the human self is found, or exists, a layered arrangement of forces needed for human life. As for these forces, which are called roh ( souls ) in the field of spiritual knowledge, Bapak will begin with the lowest stratum - the material force - then ( continue ) to the vegetable force, then still further to the animal force and the ordinary human force. Besides these integrated forces of man, there is the true human force, which in this arrangement functions as the guide and the regulator of all the other forces that Bapak mentioned earlier.

Why is it that it should happen that in the human self, or in the life of human beings, the forces Bapak mentioned earlier are layered in this way? It is so that human beings, in their life in this world, are always able to do things specifically for their life in this world. For this reason - in order to balance the way these forces are within the human self with those outside humankind, that is to say in the world - the natures of all these forces are also to be found: first the material nature, the nature of all kinds of visible objects like clothing, houses, and the other kinds of visible objects, all the things called material objects. In addition there is the existence of plants, which are visible, which can be seen, and which you already know ( about ) yourselves. There is also the nature of animals, the animals that you, my children, can see. There is also the human, that's to say people like you, my children, and so on.

These natures, those of material objects, plants, animals and human beings, which you can see, my children, have within them, or within them there has come into being, essences that have as their origin the material, vegetable, animal and ordinary human forces. This is the reason why you are able to carry out those ( tasks referred to earlier ), or have a feeling of being able to get along with these outer conditions or natures Bapak spoke of before. This is because they are already present within the being of all of you, so that the life of human beings, or life as it should really be, is a chain of being that is harmonious or that can truly cooperate ( one part with another ).

That's the way it is with the proper composition ( of forces ) when the nature of mankind is truly still an excellent nature, so that outwardly a person looks like a human being and inside also has a human soul ( jiwa ) that can regulate all the forces Bapak spoke of earlier. However, because of the influence of the conditions of the world, and also because mankind is weak and inattentive and extremely helpless against the surrounding forces described earlier, mankind sooner or later comes deeply under their influence, with the result that these human beings fall from their true position, that is to say they very easily sink to the level of the lowest force.

This is why among the human race, or people, there are many who look just the same and are outwardly the same, but within have different forces, different souls ( jiwa ). Because of this, there are many among the human race who, despite having acquired useful knowledge and having had good educations, and having good positions, from time to time do things that are not appropriate to perfect human beings. What Bapak calls a perfect human being is one with the nature of a creature that knows the true life and knows, too, the life of other natures, and which always feels love, and loves and assists anyone in need, or those who are ill or in need of care.

So if that person or human being, despite a good education, still insists on continuing to do bad things, it's because the inner feeling is influenced and greatly oppressed by the force that is really in the wrong place, that is to say the material force that always exerts pressure on and influences the inner feeling.

So it's by no means unusual for a human being to place more importance on material things than on the One God. The faith and the assumption of the feelings of such people will be to not believe in God if they cannot see Him in the way they see material objects and the material realm.

That's how it is with the influence of the material force and the animal force and the vegetable force on the inner feeling of human beings who are inattentive, who are weak, who are not really aware yet of their true life. You cannot, my children, say that such a person is wrong; the person himself will not feel wrong, but will rather claim that all the deeds representing his behavior, such things as are carried out in response to the will of a human being, are the will of a self that is really a true human being.

That's how it happens that there's no lack of people who claim to be right, who claim that what they have received is really right, and claim as well that they have received knowledge that is truly the knowledge of a perfect human being. This cannot be faulted because, truly, the material force tyrannizing the human inner feeling will never admit that it's not actually human, that it is the material force which is reigning over that human self.

Bapak will use the example of a thief. Thieves will never admit to being at fault; they will never admit that they're thieves, even though their actions are wrong actions. In fact, the thief won't confess until there's clear, official proof that can confirm his guilt as a real thief. That's how difficult it is for human beings to be able really to know what goes on in the inner feeling. The result is that many members of the human race deliberately distance themselves from the busy world of people and leave everything behind so that they can cleanse their inner feeling from all the oppression, the huge blemishes inside the inner feeling.

Such matters as described earlier have attracted attention, and there are indeed many people who really wish to know about the secrets found within the human self. But Bapak will say no more than that he gives praise to God and expresses his deepest thanks for God's gift, given to us in these very difficult circumstances.

God has given us something we can use as a tool for removing all these blemishes that couldn't be kept out of our inner feeling. And this gift from God Bapak has been speaking of was given to and received by Bapak, who has now passed it on to all of you, my children, so that you can receive it in your training ( latihan ) on all the scheduled days. This training that you receive, my children, is in reality an exercise in which you receive power from the One God that enables you to clear away all the pressure and all the mistakes that every one of you has made without being really aware of it. What you have received, my children, is actually a power from beyond the human mind and the human understanding.

Why does Bapak say, 'Beyond the understanding and beyond the human mind'? Because, first, it is a very great power that comes from the Most Great God; second, it is something that exists further within than everything that is within, including the human mind, character and understanding. This mind and its understanding have been with you a long time and have become disturbed and oppressed by the wrong forces, so that true human feelings, understanding and awareness are no longer the feelings, understanding and awareness of humans. All three have been deceived by and are filled with the material, vegetable and animal forces.

With the power of God, or with the power that you yourselves, my children, have received in the training ( latihan ), there are movements beyond expectation, which are beyond the mind, with the result that all the forces oppressing the human inner feeling can be cleared out, starting with the feelings, the understanding and the awareness.

And only after the human feelings, understanding and awareness that have been oppressed - been wrong - have been successfully cleared of these things, only then for the first time can human beings become aware of their true life. They will become able to understand the way that human beings worship God, and become aware of the true position of human beings. And because it's really difficult, really no light matter, my children, for all of you to clear out these things, to become a place for clearing up everything wrong that's in the inner feeling, Bapak always advises you to have patience, to be truly sincere of heart, and to believe that only God can help. Because the errors that are already there within the selves of all of you, my children, Bapak tells you, are truly piled up in great heaps, are like some objects stacked up in such numbers that they cannot even be seen in their entirety.

This cannot possibly be cleared except with the help and power that all of you, my children, have received, the power from God. Of course in the clearing-out process there will be consequences. Examples of such consequences are happenings that certainly can be felt as unpleasant, uncomfortable, not as desired. But none of these are effects of the clearing-out process. They are, rather, effects of the absence of certain things that have been cleared out, errors already discarded. And the results depend on how serious they were, how minor, how numerous or how few. So, for a person whose mistakes or 'sins' are very numerous, the process of their being cleared out will be a longer one than for a person whose sins aren't too numerous.

But if you, my children, are afraid of the clearing-out process, then the mistakes and filth that are within the inner feeling will never vanish from the human inner feeling, so that these - the filth, the mistakes, the ungodliness - will be taken to the world of the dead. That's why it has been described in the holy books of the prophets that among the sinful human beings who go there, later, after death some get the most dreadful tortures - what is referred to as being 'in hell'. In view of this, it would be well for all of you, my children, or for the human race, to clear out all that sinfulness before leaving this world, no matter what the process may be like. As for the way of clearing them out, my children, as Bapak said earlier, it is contained in the latihan that all of you receive.

As for the content of the training ( latihan ) that you're receiving, my children, it's still the lowest level, the level of purification and release from the oppression or filth that is found at the lowest level. If Bapak compares it with somebody building a house, your latihan is still the clearing of the site, of the garden, to make it an open plot of land on which a house can easily be erected. The reason is that previously, before you did the latihan, it was jungle, it was not yet an open plot of land on which a house could be built. Bapak calls it jungle because the inner feeling of people whose inner feeling has not been opened and has not been filled with the power that you've received, is filled with all kinds of vegetation; all kinds of objects, all kinds of terrifying animals can be found there.

So Bapak says it's clear that before you did this latihan, my children, within your inner feeling was still a mixture of all sorts of forces, the nature of which Bapak likens to a jungle, which is to say that there were still all kinds of dirtiness, still many thorns, and many frightening animals that make one's flesh crawl. With this latihan, the place is beginning to be cleared out little by little, completely cleared, and is becoming an open plot of fiat land fit for building a big, beautiful house upon. In other words, your selves, once they're clean within, will be like open plots of clear land fit for building a fine, great, solid house on.

Certainly among all of you, my children, are individuals who don't have so much dirtiness in that place, while there are many who have more than others, and so the way for it to be cleared up in the latihan cannot be the same for one and all. But that need not be feared, because no one will receive happiness in life without sacrificing mind and energy and everything that is able to feel suffering. It's also like the way you were yourselves, my children, before you grew up and became parents. First you had to experience being small children and then becoming adults. So you didn't just straight away become parents or become grown-ups. That's the way it is experienced in the latihan, the way of clearing out described earlier. One won't become perfect without first experiencing the conditions that are always suffered.

For this reason, in the holy books it has also been told that the worship of God, that is to say the worship of God of the perfect human being, is always preceded by all the sacrifices that are experienced. So it's clear that there will be no happiness that is not paid for with suffering. That's why Bapak prays and hopes that all of you, my children, will always truly have faith and will worship and believe in God within your inner feeling, because the material force that still oppresses the inner feeling of you, my children - although it doesn't do it strongly - still constantly disturbs it. The result is that at times there arises in your hearts what feels like anxieties about how conditions will turn out later. It so happens that those hearts and inner feelings that are always anxious are the inner feelings and hearts that are always disturbed by the material force, called the satanic.

If the prophets, the messengers of the past, gave advice and warned that the One God was Almighty and All-knowing, certainly all the actions of human beings are known to God, so that if all of you, my children, really believe that the One God is the All-knowing God and Almighty, there will certainly be help from Him; from God you can receive, my children.

Indeed it's true that the material force that Bapak calls satanic constantly disturbs the human heart and inner feeling to the point that the human heart and inner feeling don't believe very much in, or don't have the fullest possible belief in, the One God. And why is it so? It's because ( the material force ) deliberately hopes that human beings won't be able to return to their true position. And it hopes that eventually, after death, human beings will become its allies or its army, that's to say a satanic army. For this reason, within the inner feeling of human beings there arise times of anxiety, which are called in the field of spiritual knowledge waswas ( whispering ), the feelings of a heart that's always unstable.

For this reason, there has been included in religion a piece of information to the effect that Christians, for example, real Christians, must believe wholeheartedly that the One God exists, and that it's God who'll always protect them. It's the same for Muslims, it being said that it's the human beings who believe in the existence of the One God, God the Creator, who are really Muslims. It's clear, then, that our belief in the One God should be as great as possible, greater than our belief in our own selves.

This is all the more true, or even most true, for all of you, my children, who've already received the force of that power, so that your belief has been confirmed: that within the human inner feeling this enormously great power really exists. Of course all of you, before receiving this, if you heard about it, didn't really believe. In your hearts you wondered whether it was possible, whether there really were living movements in the human inner feeling that were not deliberately willed. This isn't the case only here, or in the inner feeling of all of you, my children. Even in Indonesia there's no lack of people who suppose, who wonder whether, separate from human desire and the human mind, there could exist within the human inner feeling vibrations from the true life.

So it's clear that the conditions that all of you have received, my children, are very odd conditions, are strange conditions, and yet, for all that, they're not foreign to the human race. What all of you have just begun feeling and receiving isn't something new but, as Bapak has already explained in earlier talks, it's a state earlier than, and preceding, everything that is first. So that before this nature came into being and began existing, before the nature of all of you came into being and began existing, this was already in existence. It's what's called the nature of the power of God.

If you ask, my children, what the existence of the nature of the power of God is like in the human self- 'Is the nature of God's power within me here, ( also ) there, there, there?' - ( well ) it's not like that! But actually, the nature of the power of God already envelops the whole world, both what's visible and invisible to man; there are no limits to where the power of God can be found. It is not only in the T and there and there but, rather, everything is already enveloped by the power of God. 'But why, if all that existed before and preceded me, couldn't I receive it myself earlier?' Because the I, before receiving this training ( latihan ), was still oppressed by forces like those Bapak was speaking of.

Earlier Bapak described the I before receiving this training as a wild jungle, as bush. There was no question of somebody deliberately building a house there. People were afraid even to enter it, so the atmosphere in the jungle of the inner feeling, of the I that had not received the training, was still one of the most tremendous chaos.

Under such conditions, then, it is not possible for it to be touched by and to receive the atmosphere of the gaib ( unseen ), that is to say the nature of the power of God that always envelops everything. With the latihan that you have received, my children, and under these conditions, now for the first time the plot of land can be cleared, and it can be seen that a house can be built there, because the site is suitable for a house; only, unfortunately, there are all kinds of things, to the left and the right, heaped on it.

And beginning now, let's clear all that away bit by bit, clean it up until it's a place where it's appropriate to build a house, a place that will finally come into being as a good place, a place where anyone who's suffering, and needs to have their heart consoled, can be comforted.

That will be the nature of all of you, my children, if you are clear of everything that's been oppressing you. As Bapak said, your nature will be that of a comforter for anyone needing to have their heart consoled. So a distant friend, a friend who hasn't seen you for a long time and meets you, will feel happy, will feel delighted at heart. Your nature, my children, will be good wherever you may find yourself. You'll find that everyone who sees you, who comes near you, will feel love for you.

That's what the worth of a human will be if that human can really clear the inner feeling from the weight of the forces constantly oppressing it. The point will be reached where that human being, or you, my children, can come into being as humans who are truly of value to the true life.

And that's how it will continue, to the life after death, because your nature, my children, your individuality, will be such that not only will your fellow humans love and like to get close to you, but the angels and the heavenly women will also enjoy approaching you because of your personality, which will already be pure. But it will be just the reverse if you have not reached this, my children, or you haven't been able to find the right way, the way that can be used to worship God truly. The value of such a person is no greater than the value of their material possessions.

So, seen in broad outlines, mankind is the highest of all the creations existing in the world. Actually, if something is already not good, not only is it unsaleable, but it's even rare for it to be approached; few want to come near it. If it's a material object, then it's no great matter, but if it's a human who has gone bad, when that person's approached he will always be hateful or have bad intentions.

For this reason, Bapak has often heard stories people have told about individuals who, because of their hatred, because of their dislike, after having had their feelings hurt by those they've helped, have gone so far as to say, 'It's better for me to take care of a dog than a human.' If a dog's well taken care of, it can serve and prove that it loves its master to the point of guarding its master faithfully day and night. But if it's a human being, sometimes a person is helped and treated well, and he not only doesn't return the favor, but instead does very terrible things to the one who gave help.

The reason for this is none other than what Bapak said earlier. It's not the human being who's wrong, it's the human self within which have come into being bad forces that constantly reign in humankind's inner feeling. The result is that such a human being as ( described ) earlier has the appearance of a human being, but doesn't know the right way, only the wicked way. So that person beats people, blames people, slanders people, and feels this as something very pleasant. Seeing someone fall to their death, or seeing someone in difficulty is like eating a beefsteak is to you.

That's the power of the bad forces that have oppressed the human heart, so that human beings forget their true humanity and forget that they are creatures with a high level of intellect, capable of thinking about more things than any other creature living in the world.

That's why the existence of the training ( latihan ) that you have received - it is not just Bapak saying that it is good, but the proof is clear that what you all obtain in your training has the nature of, or has in reality the form of guidance, so that you behave honestly. So it's clear that it's only from the One God that mankind obtains right guidance, which truly leads in the direction of right living, both in this world and the next.

That's why Bapak hopes for all of you that your belief in the One God will be truly complete and great, so that in doing or receiving this training ( latihan ), you'll have an easy path from the One God and with that, my children, you also get guidance in the direction of the perfect, the good, the right life. And your purity will descend to your children, grandchildren and their descendants.

Bapak only hopes that, even though in the training it is necessary to use or to have the greatest possible belief in God, even so, you won't start doing the training, receiving the training, with a heart full of desires and urges to achieve as rapidly as possible what your heart wants. Instead, it would be well for it to be done, to be received, with a feeling full of patience, and received the way plants grow, little by little, so that this growth and the increase in experience received in the latihan will not have a negative effect on anyone who sees it.

That's the end of Bapak's explanation for this evening. I hope that, although Bapak's explanation has not gone on for very long - though for Bapak himself it has been long and thirsty ( laughter ) because it's been going on for an hour and a half - I hope that Bapak's short explanation is able to satisfy your inner feeling, my children. On other days, Bapak will give more talks and not repeat this one.

Bapak will stop here for this evening and will do no more than happily express his thanks that all of you, my children, have really made it your business to come and hear Bapak's brief explanation.

Bapak doesn't forget to say he is truly sorry if Bapak has used words that have gone too far or have hurt your feelings. That's all.