Ditch Testing
Gabriel
Doyle
The Problem:
The
practice of testing has been behind many personal and organisational disasters
in Subud. Even the founder himself suggested it was at best ten percent
effective. Testing is used more as an oracle than as a guide to growth – which
is perhaps what was originally intended.
The Solution:
All
organisational decisions to be made through discussion and voting like ordinary
people. Personal decisions should be based on experience, insight, advice of
friends, reading, research, spinning a bottle, etc. in other words, like
ordinary people.
The Details:
Existing
guidelines as to which subjects should be tested and which should not are so
vague that abuses are inevitable.To the outside world the practice evokes
images of magic, divination and shamanism and makes us look archaic and
ridiculous.The practice is likely to offend both religious and non-religious
people who may be interested in doing the latihan. To the religious it probably
goes against the practices of their particular faith, and to the secular it
probably appears irrational.The whole process of testing discourages normal
rational debate, and reinforces the prevalent prejudice in Subud against
rational thought.The abandonment of rational thought in favour of divine
‘receiving’ is probably the most significant cause of our failed projects.
Testing is, I believe, at the root of the problem, not at the periphery. A
series of discussions should be organised at group level, in the regions, on
line, at Congress, and after a suitable period of discussion and reflection, a
proposal should be made and either rejected or accepted by majority vote to
abandon testing as official Subud policy. People of course would be free to
test in private if they so desired, but testing would not be used when making
organisational decisions and would be dropped as an officially endorsed Subud
practice.