Ladies and Gentlemen,

This evening Bapak wishes to continue his explanations of spiritual matters, so as to enable you to understand a little better what to do in the latihan that has been received.

As Bapak has explained before, the spiritual exercise of Subud is in truth man's worship of God, in accordance with the will of God Himself, Who gives guidance and directions within us. Therefore Bapak hopes that the brothers and sisters will never try to use any method or technique to assist the flow of the work of God's power within you.

It is true that to a superficial glance from our ordinary understanding, there seems to be a considerable similarity between the spiritual way of the Subud latihan and those of other ways, such as spiritualism, magnetism, etc, and, for example, the movements occurring in the latihan appear, in the early stages, to be very much like those occurring in the others. This may be compared to the playing of a piano: the resulting sounds are very much the same, whether the person pressing the keys is an accomplished pianist or whether he has been taking lessons for only six months, because at this stage the whole process is still at a rather low level.

Or Bapak may perhaps give another, clearer, comparison: take a child who has just started to learn how to write; it does not matter very much whether his teacher is a university professor or not: the lessons required by the child at this stage, that is the basic beginner's lessons, are very much the same in all cases. Later, when the child reaches the higher stages of study, the lessons given by an ordinary teacher may no longer be felt to be adequate, and a university professor may be needed.

The same happens in the spiritual latihan: you cannot yet know and receive that which could enable you to become aware of the difference between other spiritual exercises and those of Subud. The difference between the knowledge derived from the thinking mind and the understanding given by God if that the latter enables you to discern whether the leader of a spiritual movement is genuine, whether he really receives revelations from God; this can only be seen from the spiritual point of view. But you have not yet reached the stage from which the spiritual level of such teachers can be tested.

Outward, that is ordinary, knowledge and intellectual ability can be seen by a diploma or certificate which shows, for instance, that the person concerned is a university professor; but the spiritual level cannot be known in this way. Only after you have become able to ask God Himself will you be in a position to know the capacity of the spiritual knowledge of a teacher who truly dwells in the realm of the Power of God. This is the difference between the knowledge of the intellectual mind turned towards worldly purposes, and the height or loftiness attained in the spiritual life.

It is thus clear that the level attained by a person in the spiritual life can be determined, decided, and given by God alone and not by anyone else.

Concerning whether what you have been doing is in accordance with the Will of God, whether it is really the true way to God or not, and concerning what you are likely to receive in the future, you should be able to ask God yourself when you have reached that stage. We cannot possibly improve upon, or assist in speeding up, the work of the Power of God within ourselves, for if this were possible, if we could give help and smooth the way for the inner work to be speeded up, then this would mean that the force working within is not the power of God, but the personal force of the individual concerned.

Bapak does not know whether there are exactly corresponding words in English, but the fact is that we distinguish between jiwa and sukma and that they are not the same. jiwa does not belong to the individual, personal self, not even in its deepest sense; what Bapak means to say is that jiwa has no physical form. How then could a method of 'materialized form' give direction or show the way to the jiwa? Obviously, this is impossible, since it is of a different nature and does not correspond to the true character of the jiwa.

jiwa, then, is a life force which fills, awakens, brings into being, and works upon sukma, which is the subtle counterpart of the physical body - actually this subtle body, sukma, is not one only, but five. Therefore it is referred to as five brothers, whose natures correspond to various colors: the first one, black; the second, red; the third, yellow; the fourth, white; and the fifth, brown.

Therefore, although your own skin is white, you may occasionally meet beings in the latihan which look exactly like yourself, but are blackish in color, and again you may meet beings which are red, yellow, white, or brown. It is said that the five brothers have their place and dwelling in the heart of man and there give rise to the passions: the first passion is called ( in Arabic ) aluwamah; the second, amarah; the third, supiah; the fourth, mutmainah; the fifth, however, is not called a passion but purity; it is a combination of all and constitutes a unit)'.

If Bapak may translate them aluu'amah is ( in Indonesian ) murka, greed: amarah is a ngkara, arrogance: supiah is keinginan, desire; mutmainah is k'esedaran or ketenangan, that is awareness: and the fifth is the combination of the preceding four. And those natures being thus, it may happen that when you sec a shape in your own likeness, you may find that not only his skin is black, red, yellow, white or brown, but that his whole being through to the inner core is of the same color. This is evidence that the whole of mankind in this world, black, red, yellow, white, and brown, is really one. There is one mankind and it has one origin.

Bapak has seen himself black like a Negro; he has seen himself red like a Red Indian; he has also seen himself yellow like a Chinese or a Japanese - who are generally regarded by people here as a race of yellow color; Bapak has also seen himself just as he usually looks, but quite white like a European, as white as a Norwegian; and Bapak has also seen himself with the color that is proper for him.

Thus God has given Man evidence that, although there are the black, the red, the white, the yellow, and the brown, yet they are all brothers to one another, at one, united in the being of man. And some day you may be able to bear witness; so Bapak hopes that when you come to meet with this, you will not be frightened, because they are your own brothers, and not only brothers from the same womb, but brothers that were born together and will enter the grave together. And when your smelling power will be more strongly developed, you may well smell their odor occasionally, for they also have a customary odor which can be perceived by the nose.

If you happen to smell an unpleasant odor, such as that of a male goat, this is the odor of the black brother; on another occasion you may smell something like burnt bone, which is the odor of the red brother; the smell of fish ( 'amis' ) is the odor of the yellow-skinned brother; that. of slaked lime ( chalk ) belongs to the white brother; and, finally, the smell of clay is the odor of the brown brother - the combination of all these odors.

Bapak tells you all this because you may possibly have smelt such odors without, at the time, understanding their significance. And these five brothers of yours act in complete unison or unanimity with you in every matter or circumstance.

Of this fact great use has been made by teachers of mystical and ascetic practices, for these five brothers often arouse the emotions or the spirit of man so that the enthusiasm is generated for such action or work as this man intended to do. And if you had control over this mechanism, you would become someone to commend respect and admiration, for you would be able, for instance, to make a piece of rope stand upright without any visible means, or to move a load from one place to another without picking it up or otherwise touching it. Many other magical actions could be performed, as there are in Africa, where objects lying somewhere above the ground are moved down by a mere gesture of the hand.

In the intellect of educated people such magical actions are replaced by terminology; they speak of spiritualism, hypnotism, magnetism, occultism - and which, furthermore, are considered as forms of worship. And they are effective; but it means that the inner being is actuated exclusively by the power of the desires or the thinking mind. And it must not be forgotten, that if you use the desires with full force during all your life in this world, then in your death the right path which might lead you to God or the path which leads to a level higher and loftier than this world, may be barred to you because from your life in this world only the four or five passions remain with you. Whereas, what is really needful for you is the ability to enter into that blissful world which belongs to the perfected human being. To acquire this ability it is necessary for you to integrate everything into a whole, so that the five become one, in what Bapak calls the brown nature, and then you will truly be able to get into contact with what Bapak called the mighty life-force.

It is therefore clear that the spiritual exercise which we have received is in accordance with the will of God, and God has granted us His revelation so that in our worship we should receive direct from God without any interference and free from all influence from the four passions. In the spiritual exercise of worship, which we have practiced and received, we do nothing but accept and feel the working of the powerful force within our being.

In order to be able to feel how this mighty power is working within our being, it is advisable that we should not think about anything, but we must remain conscious; we must not allow ourselves to fall into unawareness, but remain aware, and we must make no use of the thinking mind or the emotions.

In this way you can constantly feel and be aware how the transmutation of your soul, from a lower to a higher level, is taking place within you. And in the end you will become able to distinguish the various states of feeling and consciousness according to whether they happen to be under the influence and domination of material, vegetable, or animal forces; you will be able to observe them when they are under the influence of ordinary human forces, and you will notice when your feelings and consciousness will have come under the influence of forces higher than human ones, so that you will no longer be used by the lower forces, but that you will use them.

To learn to live like that is actually necessary for man while living in this world: you could not live happily without material objects, without vegetables or meat, nor can you live in isolation from other people. Life just would not be life. But when you have reached the stage described above, you will no longer confuse matters, you will become able to discriminate: for instance, you need to wear clothes; but it is not the man ( the human forte ) that needs the clothes, nor is it the animal force that needs the clothes, or the vegetable force, but it is the material force that needs clothes. In the same way, when you work to earn your living, the force working within you should correspond to the force in your outer work: thus the sincerity of your worship of God will not be disturbed. Sincerity of the worship of God is above all man's needs in this world. To use an analogy, Bapak would liken this situation to a family in a house: there must be one person responsible for shopping - that is one of the lower forces; there must be a cook in the household; and there must be one person whose job it is to keep the house clean; and, finally, there must be a master of the house. It must not happen that the master of the house has to go shopping and to clean the house, while the person who ought to do the shopping, or the one who should be cleaning the house, act as masters of the household.

To explain how these lower forces, the material forces for instance, have come to have such a hold over our inner being, Bapak may recall what he has explained before, namely that it is not possible to repel these lower forces or souls ( jiwa ). And since they have entered our being and pervaded us entirely, the physical body as well as our finer parts, the bones, flesh, veins, and nerves as well as our heart and brain, and indeed, everywhere, man's very wishing as it arises is already tainted by these forces which motivate him from inside. If it is the material forces which activate him throughout, then all he does will correspond to the nature of these material forces which have become the content within him.

It is not really surprising that nowadays about ninety percent of all people have their minds occupied by material problems, because the inner content of their being is the material soul. So, if little by little, there arises the desire to seek the way to God, it still takes, for instance, as has become customary in this world, the form of calculations. This is nothing else but the very nature of material objects, which have entered brain or thinking, and then, as it were, theoretically calculate how to find the right way towards God.

After you will have done the latihan for a sufficiently long time, Bapak might be able to give you a spiritual test, so that you can have evidence that what Bapak has been saying here has really taken place and is constantly experienced in the spiritual exercise of worship.

Continuing, Bapak would like first to explain this: if the vegetable force dominates within your inner being, your energies or inner self will be closer to plants than to anything else. You will be able to witness and experience the nature of your feelings when they are permeated by the vegetable forces and what your feelings are like when they are taken by the vegetable forces into their world.

Similarly you will become able to feel and become aware how the animal forces influence your inner being, so that your inner being will be really sensitive and you will be able to witness and perceive when the feelings and the inner self have been taken by the animal forces into their world.

And again in the same way you will become able to realize and be aware of human forces entering the feelings, and how feelings and inner consciousness are taken by them to the human level.

This holds good also concerning forces higher than the human ones, such as the force of the perfected human being ( rochani ); when this force influences your inner being, you will become able to receive conscious evidence of this and you will moreover be able to perceive and feel it, when your inner self is brought by these forces into the rochani sphere.

In this way you will become able to perceive and recognize the evidence given to you, and to discriminate the degrees of contentment or bliss pertaining to life in each of these worlds; and this experience will enable you to decide which sphere is good and happiest to live in. And thus, eventually, you will become able to avoid the, quite unnecessary, possibility of sliding, by unawareness, into the compulsion of being reincarnated into a material object, a plant, an animal, or an ordinary human being; instead you will return to the world of bliss which is called the sphere of the perfected human being.

All of these worlds have been ordained by the Power of God, by the mighty force which descended from God into the being of man, free from human thought and free from all human passions which exist in the being of man and were referred to as his 'brothers'.

That is why the prophets - and for you, Jesus - never mention any particular power ( nafsu ) but keep their eyes wholly and solely on the power of the one God; for the nature of the prophets is such that it is a living symbol of the fact that their personalities are beyond all personal powers of man. Tradition associates Jesus with the color green, the meaning of green being freedom from all influence.

It is a custom among school children ( in certain countries ) that before being accepted as students they should first be "greened"; this means that a person's green garment should be opened so that he should become accessible to influences and he should now possess personal power or desire ( nafsu ). The meaning of green is thus that a person is not yet able to make use of his influences or has no nafsu yet and is free from external influences.

As regards Jesus, he had not suffered the influence of anyone else, nor had he influenced anyone else, but he was taken up entirely with the worship of God.

For this reason Bapak always hopes that you may simply accept whatever you receive in the latihan, and not speculate about it, nor attempt to find the best way yourself; but you should simply accept with your emotions calmed and pure, so that you may become aware how the great and lofty power is at work within you.

Bapak quite understands that you must make use of your thinking mind if you want to understand something; but don't forget that our brain has been working throughout the many years of our life in this world: it has been filled day by day with worldly matters, and therefore, whatever is accomplished through the power of the thinking mind - that is to say: when we think - can be nothing more than a result of what has been gathered during our life in this world.

Indeed, it is necessary that we should use our brain in order not to lose the understanding which is in it, but since this our present brain and its understanding belong to the constantly shifting existence in this world, this type of understanding fed on worldly matters is useless for comprehending life after death. Only a brain which has been purified and cleansed of everything pertaining to life in this world can be used for this kind of understanding in which the current of enlightenment flows from the One Almighty God into the brain which is purified.

Eventually there will be a division of work: for instance, part of the brain will contain forces dealing exclusively with matters of this world, while there will also be a section in the brain capable of being aware of, and apprehending, life after death. This has been well exemplified in the life-time of Jesus. He certainly made use of his thinking, and he let his heart have feelings, making use of his emotions; but you must not forget that Jesus did not think with the thinking mind fed on worldly influences: Jesus thought about heaven and about life after death, not with the thinking mind fed on worldly influences, but with the mind filled with the current of forces emanating from the higher world, from God; and the same held good for his heart.

In Islam there are other names beside the ordinary names. Thus, the place of the desires or passions which is situated lower down, is called the ordinary secret organ ( that is sex organ ), but when a person has been sanctified, consecrated and confirmed by God as a perfected human being, then the name is changed and it is no longer called the secret organ but baithalmukaddas. The same happens to a person's heart; after he has been sanctified and confirmed in the heart, its name is changed to baithal-mucharram. And it is the same with the brain; when a person is clean and has been confirmed by God, it is called brain no longer but baithalmakmur.

All this will subsequently be received, felt, and grasped by you; evidence there is already - and although it cannot yet be grasped as a whole, yet there is some clear evidence of it already in you, for those who have been carrying out the latihan diligently for about six months, for instance, and even more for those who have been doing the exercise for a year: when you happen to be near someone who has not yet done the spiritual exercise of worship, you may feel very dizzy in your head. This means that your brain has begun to be purified and therefore aches when it is close to a head which has not yet been cleansed. This is evidence that our brain or its contents need purifying from impurities; that its contents are shifted according to need from one place within it into another, and when something is required for the cleaned part it will enter it.

You are of course not aware that when you have a problem which you yourself cannot understand, clarify, and solve yourself, and you ask Bapak about it, you sometimes ask him from, our thinking mind. Since for you it has become a habit to think about everything, it makes no difference to you, but to Bapak, who receives it, it feels like small pebbles thrown at his head before the question is uttered. So when asking questions you are actually throwing small stones at him beforehand, but although Bapak feels this he does not hold it against you for he is well aware that you do it unconsciously and are not yet aware of it.

But although it is like that - and Bapak does not dislike or fear it - it does not really matter, because Bapak is able to take it without any harm to his own condition, meaning that it does not cause him any suffering. But this circumstance tells him immediately that the question comes ninety percent or more from the thinking mind and not yet from the truly purified inner consciousness.

This was meant as an example, so as to show that eventually you will have experiences similar to this of Bapak's.

Therefore you ought not to worry if, later on, you may find yourselves at times sad and depressed when confronted with a person and for no better reason than that this person is depressed. Or, at another time your heart may be filled with happiness when near a person because that person is very happy, perhaps because he has received something. Please remember that Bapak hopes that you will not be worried or frightened when faced with such an experience.

Eventually a time may come - Bapak hopes it will when your inner feelings will be very calm, widening, and happy. When this happens a question is bound to arise within you: "What is this that is happening to me?" At the same time you will receive an indication that it is the will of God that you should experience a condition or state from beyond this world, such as heaven, for instance; and this should make it clear to you that you cannot enter heaven unless you have experienced it beforehand, that you cannot reach the world of bliss if you have not found it while in this world, and that you will not succeed in seeing and meeting an angel, unless you have really come face to face with an angel in this life. Once you have had all these experiences you will, says Bapak, know a hundred percent without doubt whom you will meet and in which direction and where you will go.

As most of you here are Christians, you will later on come truly face to face with Jesus and you will also be able to feel what feelings he will be experiencing at that time, whether he is happy or not - these feelings will perceptibly be manifest in you. You will than be able to see for yourselves what a difference there is between Jesus and - say - a Mr. X. who may be a well-known speaker on spiritual matters. Thus you will no longer feel doubt or anxiety, for you will already have received within you a basic understanding of a precise and constant nature, from the One Almighty God.

And since all of you - it can be said - have just received the gift from God in the latihan, Bapak hopes that you will discard your previous thoughts and become convinced that God in his Omnipotence and Omniscience will put right all ills and faults within you, so that you will become holy and clean and be pardoned by God.

This is the end of Bapak's clarifications concerning the spiritual life, and he will now give a little test, lest you be disappointed if there is no test on this last night.