Towards A Bigger Subud
By Marcus Bolt
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Assuming
our sentient existence is not a molecular accident, but is either the creation
of a transcendent source, which we refer to as ‘God’, or a small unit of a
pantheistic ‘is-ness’, the maxim ‘We are created in the image of our Maker’
makes conceptual sense to me. Our human creative abilities reflect the way we
are made, just as whatever we write, or paint, or create, intimates what and
how we are.
Whatever
brought us into existence[1], its major creative technique appears to be a
developing from a rudimentary to a complete state, via staged maturation –
similar to the way in which a work of art or an embryo in the womb develops.
When fully formed, an entity or an abstract collective such as a society or a
religion will entropy and die, unless it adapts to changing circumstances and
starts afresh. This evolving [2] pattern of growth can be seen reflected not only
in our planet’s and our species’ development but also in the unfolding of our
history, our sciences, our cultural efforts and our belief systems.
As
an example, in the past, most people took the Bible as literal truth, whereas
today only Christian fundamentalists do, while thinking believers may read it
for its poetic mystical symbolism, or might plumb its psychological,
sociological or anthropological depths and so on. At face value it describes a
universe consisting of a smallish, flat, geocentric world sandwiched between
the extremes of heaven and hell and peopled by warring tribes. Its Abrahamic
God comes across as mean, revengeful, intolerant, and petty – not very
‘almighty’ at all (if He were around today, His social worker would recommend
an anger management course for starters). The Bible was obviously written by
men with far less scientific knowledge than even my own meagre schoolboy
chemistry and physics.
Three
thousand years later, our understanding has evolved to such an extent that even
my nine-year old grandson can get to grips with the concept of the Big Bang and
that it happened fifteen billion years ago, that we’re still expanding and may
well eventually entropy back to heatless nothingness. He also takes it as read that our earth is part of a tiny solar
system in the outer arm of a minor spiral galaxy that is 120,000 light years
across, that most stars he can see are the suns of other solar systems or are
galaxies hundreds of light years distant, and that what is visible and
measurable is only a minute fragment of what is actually out there in all
directions[3].
And
now Quantum Theory reveals that atomic particles, of which we are made, can be
in two places at once at the same time, and that, as a consequence, parallel
multi-verses may exist in which we live out all our possible lives.
Compared
to that small-minded universe of the Bible, this is beginning to evolve into a
Creation that’s pretty awesome. And awesomeness is definitely a quality I would
like my Creator to have, for the vaster the universe – the more outlandishly
incomprehensible whatever created it is – the more reassured and relieved I
feel that there is something greater than us all.
* * *
If
we accept the premise that we reflect our evolutionary nature in everything we
create, including our institutions, it follows that Subud is no exception. It
too has evolved, from a nameless grouping of a handful of Bapak's friends in
the pre- and early postwar period to the international organisation of some
10,000 souls we know today. But all organisations eventually reach their
evolutionary apogee and, if they don’t adapt and change, they run down and
expire. So, my question is: at what stage is Subud now?
Worryingly,
the symptoms of evolutionary entropy are all there. The predicted mega-growth
never happened and membership is in decline; the enterprise concept has failed
and no 'new culture' has emerged as foretold. We seem to have become worn out,
paradoxically resisting 'change' while claiming it as a benefit of the latihan.
We now employ a codified, insider language coupled with a newly intensified
belief in Subud being the only way. We have also created our first dogma in
that Bapak's talks and his organisational strategy are believed to be the
immutable words of God – all of this tilting us inexorably towards cult status
and its inevitable narrower and narrower appeal.
Being,
out of interest, an avid and generally appreciative reader of the retranslated Bapak’s
Talks (I get a great deal out of them –
he was a very interesting man), it appears to me that he too was evolving –
growing in understanding as he gained more spiritual experience as well as
becoming more worldly-wise as he travelled the globe. It does seem foolhardy,
therefore, to take all of Bapak's words as gospel, when he himself was maturing
(compare, for example, Bapak’s precursor to Susila Budhi Dharma, written
circa 1930, to the definitive version of 1954). It seems equally foolish to
rigidly defend and perpetuate into the twenty-first century an organisational
structure set up in the ’50s by an elderly Muslim gentleman steeped in Javanese
culture; for even if one believes our Creator ‘speaks’ through humans, it must
be obvious that the message will be characterised by the person through whom
God is speaking, just as a note played on a violin will have a different
quality if played on a trumpet.
By
instituting such tenets of belief, are we in danger of petrifying Subud’s
growth potential? Or, are we already, like the dinosaurs, evolving up a dead
end, incapable of responding to a changing world?
It
is my belief that the Subud Bapak created is both a foundation and springboard
with the potential to continue evolving through divergence. All great teachers
create something similar if attuned to promulgating truth rather than their own
grandeur, because they want their followers to achieve even greater
heights than themselves, be they engineers with apprentices, professors with
students or spiritual leaders with disciples. And in case anyone disagrees with
me, here’s a favourite Bapak dictum:
Every
person will find the right way towards God for himself, and what may be the
right way for one may be completely wrong for another. Therefore you must not
suppose that you have to follow or become like Muhammad Subuh. You must become
your own self and you must develop your inner self if you want to find the way
to God. You must not follow or imitate anyone else, because you must find your
own way to God. Usually, if there is a teacher, he teaches his followers to do
exactly the same as he does in order to reach what he has reached. But this is
really wrong, because not only between a teacher and his followers but even
between two brothers of the same parents there is already a big difference; not
only in outward appearances but also in their character and in their whole
being. So surely you can understand now that what is the right way for a
certain teacher to find God is not necessarily the right way for his pupils. (Bapak
speaking to applicants in Singapore, 1960.)
Bapak
is exhorting us here, like a good parent, to grow up, to take responsibility
for ourselves, because he knows that a pale imitation of his way of doing
things would lead to stagnation, entropy and extinction.
In
writing about Subud’s possible demise, I am referring solely to the
Association, not the latihan, which I believe has always existed and has been
'discovered' and re-presented many times – as Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity,
Islam, Quakerism etc. and now Subud. Therefore, I do not believe Subud owns the
latihan. The proof is if I were to leave, I could still continue to do it,
unfettered. In fact, any member could walk down the street asking everyone they
meet if they were interested in receiving free an amazing phenomenon that could
help improve their lives, and if they were, the contact could be passed on to
them at any time in a back bedroom or garage. The latihan will not ask, nor
care, if they are atheists or agnostics, rich or poor, mentally stable, male,
female or gay. Anyone can receive the contact if they are willing, along with
the ability to develop and deepen it with regular latihan.
This
may be Subud’s saving grace, because I foresee a not too distant time when
members such as myself will pull away from an organisation in its death throes
and start small groups with a new, more informal and unencumbered set-up. My
group, for example, would have no helpers, no constant referral to Bapak’s
cosmology as the only way of understanding or expressing the process, no
emphasis on enterprise and developing a Subud cultural concept; there'd be no
religiosity and no desire to change the world – just pure latihan, respect for
one another and a common interest in exploring and sharing our uniquely
individual experiences. And let’s see
where it goes….
I
can do this now, because after forty years of latihan, I feel grown up enough
to actually disagree with Bapak on certain issues [4]; I am confident enough to
add my latihan as a leavening to what I learned on my psychotherapy course,
thereby creating my own cosmology, my own Weltanschauung. I can use my
latihan to solve problems and enhance my creativity; I am at ease enough with
my ‘Maker’ to dialogue over such topics as ‘Why would an entity of your calibre
want me to worship you? I wouldn’t like my kids to ‘worship’ me… I’m OK with
respect and gratitude, aren’t you?’ and so on.
Even
if I leave the organisation, I shall always be grateful to Muhammad Subuh for
doggedly following his calling to share the latihan – where would I be without
it? – just as I am grateful to my parents for giving me the firm ground and
space necessary for growth. But there came a point where I had to throw off
their nineteen-thirties’ and -forties’ attitudes and beliefs, as now I have to
leave behind the Javanese mysticism and culture of Bapak, who said, and I
re-quote, “Therefore you must not suppose that you have to follow or become
like Muhammad Subuh. You must become your own self and you must develop your
inner self if you want to find the way to God….” This feels to me like entering
into the bigger, more ‘stand on your own two feet’ Subud that Bapak so clearly wanted us all eventually to
arrive at.
FOOTNOTES
1. I am finding it more and more
difficult to subscribe to the theory of a ‘personal God out there’ and am
beginning to favour a more Buddhist/pantheist concept of a great ‘is-ness’, an
eternal entity that constantly explores itself and all its possible
manifestations through sentient beings, such as humans, created within and from
itself. Believing that it explores its own scope for light and dark, love and
hatred, peace and war, is the only way I can justify to myself the existence of
evil in the world – how could evil and suffering exist if there was a
transcendent ‘God of Love’? How could He, and why would He, allow it unless He
had an oxymoronic ungodly streak? On the other hand, I’ve always enjoyed the
Incredible String Band’s lyric: ‘Whatever you think, it’s more than that…’
2. Not to be confused with 'Evolution',
the science, which no longer subscribes to the idea of evolutionary
'progression'.
3. He doesn’t yet appreciate the
concept of how critical the maths is (something I empathise with
wholeheartedly) not yet grasping how computer simulations can tell us that only
a universe 15 billion years old and a similar, but expanding, number of light
years across, containing at least 1018 stars
could have produced a carbon-based life form such as ours. And that if our
universe’s gravitational fine-structure element had been 10-30
instead of 10-40, everything would be 105 times smaller
and 1010 times denser, which would mean our sun would only burn for
a year, we would orbit it every 24 hours and spin on our axis once a second. A
pretty alarming thought.
4. One thing I take issue with Bapak
over is how he seemingly damned all Western culture as being ‘from the lower
forces’ and somehow, therefore, not worth diddly-squat. My latihan has
instilled in me a new understanding and appreciation of both ancient and
contemporary groundbreaking architecture, painting, sculpture and dance, as
well as a love of modern-day acting, film making, writing, journalism, dance
for camera, computer graphics and so on, especially when displaying the
qualities of ‘excellence’ and ‘nobility’ Bapak was so keen on. How come he
missed it?