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Ragnar Lystad - The Imprisonment of the Latihan

The Universal Latihan. From Nick Church, June 9, 2009. Time 11:32

Having just been told about the Subud Vision website, I sought it out, and read this article first. What a marvellous surprise! What a relief...

Ragnar here touches on a key, core subject with precision and clarity, and with an evidently sane and refreshingly universal approach and appraisal. The question of future relevance and the nature of its direction should be a major concern of Subud. The latihan - the 'universal latihan' - always was and shall always be. The role of Subud, in our time, of supplying a vehicle for its recognition, practice and dissemination, is a transient one. Subud, like all other organisations, will come and go. The latihan, through ever-changing names and forms and expressions, remains.

Thus, Subud's association with the latihan - or more accurately that of which 'latihan' is a particular description - is necessarily limited and relative. Of course, the mediator Bapak understood this very well, and hoped to unequivocally communicate it.

And of course, the mediocre minds of the followers have fallen into the snare of understanding differently - of misunderstanding, in effect. It is a common - one might say inevitable - example and result of human limitation. While this particular limitation itself serves a certain purpose for certain humans, those self-imposed limits will in time be overcome and transcended. So that then another milieu and nexus can be realised and established within further extended limits, more appropriately suited to the developing consciousness of the progressing pilgrim along his expansive Way.

Ragnar has offered a glimpse of this expansion for those inclined to break through the confines of Subud as it has erected and established within itself. Here is a call to recognise the limiting crystallisation of a movement that really needs to move again, and to reach out beyond its own particular "imprisonment of the latihan" - to a conception of, and engagement in, the truly Universal Latihan.

P.s. I have recently written an article - entitled 'Is the Subud Party Over?' - that might be of interest to anyone who appreciates Ragnar Lystad's contribution here. I shall submit it, and hopefully more, to this site for appraisal.


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