Ladies and gentlemen, this evening Bapak will continue giving the explanations you need to hear. He hopes that, rather than making you more knowledgeable, these explanations about the spiritual life will instead put a brake on your strong wish to be able to receive quickly and understand quickly.

As Bapak has said, the latihan is a training of the soul, which means that it is a training of the content of your life. So it isn't a training for your thinking, your heart, or the other parts of your body; it is a training for the being of each one of you, carried out by God. All you need do is receive whatever God does within your self, so that, little by little, you can become aware of the One who will eventually be your guide and counselor.

Bapak is saying that the latihan is, in truth, your worship of the One Almighty. Clearly, it is an absolute obligation for human beings to worship God, which is why many people do it in churches, mosques and other places. Therefore you should do the latihan just as you would do your worship in the mosque, in church, or in other places of worship.

People throng to these places to worship. In their worship they rely simply on the belief that God will know when their heart is sincere and loves God. They hope that as a result of their worship God will grant them a good journey when they eventually come to their appointed day; that is, when they die. They believe that if they worship God sincerely - even though they cannot yet know what God and God's power are like - God will forgive them and will clean away all the faults from which they suffer. It should be even more like that for all of you, who have, to a greater or lesser extent, received the reality of God's power that envelops the self of human beings both on the inside and the outside. You have been able to receive it, and are aware it is something different.

God has given you something that is easy to practice. Bapak hopes you will not neglect this gift of God that is so easy for you, for usually the human heart doesn't pay much attention to something that's easy to get. It is the same as when you go to school to study. The instruction you receive at the school is really good and can quickly make you into an educated person. But many people don't take it seriously or consider it important, because they don't have to pay for their schooling or only pay very little. When the instruction doesn't cost a lot, or when you don't even have to pay at all, you don't work so hard and you don't persevere. But suppose there is a place of learning with the same instruction, leading to the same results, but it is stipulated that people must pay a considerable amount. In that case the students would work seriously because the fees are very high. It is like that.

So Bapak hopes you will receive this gift from God to you all, which is so easy, as a blessing - as an extraordinary good fortune. It enables you to do something really useful for your lives in a way that is very easy for you. Of course you all understand what Bapak is saying here. And perhaps you will not presume that because this latihan is very easy, it is something that cannot give you satisfaction. Bapak hopes that you won't harbor any such notions within you.

Truly there is no course or journey that is as easy as approaching God and being approached by God. Even when you look for something that is easy ( to find ) - a tree, a rock, for example, or something like that - you have to think, you have to summon up energy; you feel the fatigue, the difficulty of it. Whereas approaching God is not like that; it is just the opposite. To be able to be close to God and for God to be able to approach you, you have to feel very free. In other words, you should not think about anything, just feel your own self. For the closeness of God to each of you is closer than when you see with your eyes, closer than when you hear something with your ears, and closer than when you think about something. God is closer than that. That's why Bapak always says that God goes before everything that is before, and comes after everything that is after. This means there is nothing closer to a person's inner feeling than the closeness of God.

So it is clear that what creates a distance between people's feelings and their contact with the greatness of God, which always envelops human beings, is none other than their thinking, their heart and their desires. It is for this reason there are so many instances of people who long to be able to receive a contact with the power of God, to have something miraculous, and who to this end consider it necessary to go off and isolate themselves in quiet, lonely places. Once there, these people put aside their thinking, which is constantly at work, and they put aside their heart and their will, which want this and want that. And in this way their thinking, their heart and desires stop working; their inner feeling becomes peaceful. And in that peaceful state they feel God's closeness to them.

So God is close to human beings when they are able to quieten their thinking mind, desires and will. And we have received this - for which all those people have endured such hardships -just as we are. Therefore it is clear that with the coming of Subud, God is giving us something that is easy. And we really should practice what God has made so easy for us, with sincerity, with patience, and with surrender and faith in God's gift.

You don't have to throw away your intellect, to discard the knowledge you have acquired in your studies. No. But, when you do the latihan and receive the latihan, do not use your thinking mind in the ordinary way - the way you seek worldly knowledge, for instance. Actually, the more intelligent you can be in the ordinary, worldly sense, the better. Because the breadth of the learning that your mind - your brain - acquires in the world conies from questions. It consists of questions. It is not the instrument for finding the answers. So, one day, there will come a time when you can ask about the things you have studied and acquired in the world. You will get an answer, a reply from God, to each of your questions, one by one. Then you will understand the benefit of studying, and of what you have learned.

No doubt you are aware that human knowledge and understanding are gained from experience, day after day, month after month, year after year, century after century. Bapak will illustrate this. In medicine for example, two or three thousand years ago there were people who were able to cure the sick. Who knows, at that time they may also have been called something like 'doctor', because they could cure sick people. But their experience in those times was not yet very broad, because there were not so many sick people - indeed there weren't many people at all in those days. Also, the people ate simple food then, with few ingredients. There were not so many different kinds of work for people to do, and their behavior wasn't as varied as today. As the days, months and years went by - with the passing of the centuries right up to the present time - people gained more and more experience. Clearly, the understanding obtained in this world is an understanding gained from the experiences people have had. People who have just studied it consider it is a new understanding - an amazing and beautiful discovery - whereas in fact it is all the result of accumulated experience.

It is like that also with the spiritual way you have received and practice. It too is based on experience. However, the experience in this latihan is not experience received by the thinking, the heart and the desires, but by the inner feeling when it is not influenced by the thinking, heart and desires.

So, if you just discuss spiritual matters, which you have not experienced yourself or received yourself, what you have is an experience of the mind, an experience of the heart and desires. It is not an experience received by the inner feeling, such as you had when you were still small and not yet influenced by this world.

And, because whatever is received by the inner feeling is from the human soul and comes from God, it Can be a beginning or starting point, a guide in everything you experience. For example, if you want to do something, at that moment you will receive how it should be done, how to do it so it can be really beneficial and really satisfy your inner feeling, heart and feelings.

Bapak will give an example. Say you are working at a picture -a painting. If you can receive while you are painting - but receive, as Bapak said, when your heart and feelings are at peace - then you will be able to paint something that will be really beneficial and needed by society. And it will truly satisfy your own heart and the hearts of the people who see it, as well as the one who buys it.

It is also like that if, for instance, you are a writer who portrays human characters and describes people's behavior: this kind of person will behave like this and that kind of person will behave like that. If, when you are doing that, you have received peace in your inner feeling, you will be able to write in such a way that whoever reads your book or your writing is attracted by it. Moreover, it will seem as though what you have written really happened, and the reader will be able to describe characters who really match those described in the book. So it is clear that you will be able to describe or sum up the characters of people exemplified in your writing.

There is another example for those of you who work in an office. From the peace of your inner feeling you will be able to experience times when you find it easy to do your work. There are instances of this. There is someone - well, not just one, but many -who have really received this peace in their inner feeling. Before, it would take them two weeks to a month to do a certain job and it still wouldn't be finished; they even had to take their work home and do it. But now, they don't work that way any more, because they receive and know what is necessary and what isn't; what will be productive and what will not be productive; what needs to be given priority and what does not. It's like that. Previously, the work took them two weeks or even longer because, at the time, they weren't yet able to perceive what was important and what would be productive; what needed to be done right away and what could wait. They would do everything at once and in a hurry. So not only did it take time, but most of the work was unproductive and unsatisfactory.

If you are unaware of the reality of what you have within you, not only will the work you do fail to bring you satisfaction, it will harm your physical health. This is because, for a job that could be done with just this ( gesture ), you use everything else as well. In this way most people coerce the various parts of their body and restrict their freedom.

Bapak will illustrate this. You are going to hang up a small picture. You need just one or two nails and a small hammer. That is enough to put the picture up. But because you don't know how to do this kind of work, in order to hang a small picture that requires just a couple of nails and a small hammer you bring a saw and you bring a plane; you bring a large hammer and a small hammer; you bring this and you bring that. In short, you bring along all the tools you have.

In this way you waste time, and you force parts of your body to work that are not required for the job. That's how it is with you. You want to see something; you want to see a film, for example. What needs to see it are your eyes - and your heart, too. But in watching the film they forget the responsibilities and the rights of the other parts of the body. And in the end they see a film, not just once, but every night - or even two or three times a night. So you force the other members to participate in the need of the eyes that want to see it. So, in the end, it will cause sickness and a loss of strength in the other members, because they are forced to follow something that is out of place. That's how it is. That's why in the Subud latihan you need to use all parts of your body, so that through their awakening, one by one, each of them will get to know its duty and its work. Then, eventually, they will not be able to coerce one another, but they will be able to work together harmoniously, in an orderly way, each in its own place.

The same applies to thinking about God. You will not be able to use your brain to think about God. Not because you don't want to, but because the brain, of itself, can no longer be used to think about God. For when the brain has been awakened, has been brought to life, it is completely free; it knows its duty and how far it should work. So, ( when asked ) to think about God, the brain itself - if you compare it to a conversation between people - will reply: 'Oh, I can't do that. I wouldn't be able to do it and I don't want to do it, because it's not my work and it isn't the work we should be doing.' That's if it were a person. One day you will experience something like this, if you are sincere in doing this latihan, which in truth is your worship of the One God.

In reality it is not so obvious - not like people talking to each other. But Bapak has truly experienced the reality of it. So have the helpers, because the helpers are to a greater or lesser extent beginning to be cleaned, and the parts of their body are beginning to be awakened. When they are face to face with someone who thinks a lot - who is always thinking about something, let alone about God - their brain will feel very painful through just being near the person. Such experiences show that it is not appropriate to think about God or about spiritual matters. Anything to do with God can only be received through the grace of God, the grace of the One Almighty, when the heart and mind and desires are not being used and have come to a standstill.

Furthermore, when all the members of your body have awakened, and each one is able to be free and aware of its duty and freedom, then, when you see a film - Bapak returns to this example - yes, you can watch a movie; there's nothing against people seeing a movie, as long as there is some discernment and it is kept within limits. But, if you force it and you go to the cinema every night, strangely enough, your eyes will start to hurt. Or, if they don't hurt, then every time you go into a cinema you will fall asleep. So there will be no point at all in going.

That is what happens when parts of your body have been able to find their own freedom again. To take another example - sorry, brothers and sisters - it will be similar if you are in the habit of drinking a lot. Through the latihan you are doing, once the organs of your body are alive again, they will, as Bapak said earlier, become aware of their duty and of the reality they need. This will make you dislike drinking, because your mouth, your heart and your stomach won't like it any more. So it is apparent that once all these members have woken up and, one by one, have been brought to life by God's power, they will understand and be aware of how they should work and how they shouldn't work. One by one, each will come to know its own law.

What the prophets and messengers said is very much in line with this. They said that the power of God is within everything in us, within all the parts of a human being. They said that God is in you, in your self. That is the reason why people who fear God, people who really respect, praise or exalt God, are those to whom God's power is already close and whom God loves. This is why it is said that someone who fears God and loves God is a person who is truly religious. That is just a word. What is really meant by true religion is one that you follow and embrace until it becomes a guide within yourself, as when we receive the contact of God in the latihan we practice.

So it is not surprising, and it really is possible, that our bad character can be transformed and become good if we are really able to receive God's guidance and instructions within our self if we can become truly aware. This is because every part of us has been restored to life by God's power. And this is really what people are looking for - what we are all looking for. Because the inner state of human beings, which as yet they are unaware of, is actually sick. That sickness is in truth a sickness of the soul. And there are no doctors to heal that sickness of the soul except God.

This is not an obligation, but Bapak hopes that, in order to cure that sickness and to restore your soul, which is not yet good, to its original good state, you will really have a feeling of gratitude to God. You will really surrender and love God with complete faith, with patience, acceptance and willingness to let go. In this way, you will always be able to receive experiences in your latihan through which you will eventually become aware of your human individuality. For example, Jesus, long ago, had the nature of someone who simply received God's greatness and God's commands.

And the health of your physical body will also be taken care of, because you will know how to manage the household that is within your own being. You will become the true householder. The one in charge within your household will no longer be the low forces, which should be governed and not govern.

This is Bapak's advice to all of you, with explanations about spiritual matters, in the hope that you will worship God sincerely by way of this latihan. For this latihan is the reality of a human being's worship of God. Bapak hopes you won't feel the latihan you do as a burden, but feel and accept it as a real and absolute obligation. For your worship of God means that you are taking care of your own selves. It is not for God.

Besides that, brothers and sisters, work as actively as you can in human society in a normal way. You live on this earth like ordinary people, even though in reality you are already aware of your life after death. That is all Bapak has to say this evening, the last of Bapak's talks here. Perhaps another year Bapak will be able to come back again and give you further talks about the spiritual path. It only remains for Bapak to say good-bye to you all, and to ask God to bless you so that you can perform your worship diligently.

And Bapak says thank you very much to all of you for being so hospitable while Bapak has been here.