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Ragnar Lystad - A Necessary Reappraisal
There is no Santa Claus. From Gabriel Doyle, August 8, 2009. Time 1:0
Dear Ragnar,whilst having a great deal of sympathy for your point of view ,I do not share your disapointment that all Pak Subuh`s utterances and deeds were not guided by God.How could it have been otherwise?I assume that as a European born in the twentieth century you had at least a rudimentary education and probably a much better one than that .Why on earth did you abandone the healthy scepticism that your education encouraged you to develop?Did you never note the fact that the crusades were propagated by people who were convinced they had God on their side.Did you ever contemplate what other less simplistic concepts of the divine might possibly mean and that God might not necessarily be whispering instructions to his or her chosen ones or moving their fingers to produce sacred texts.Why did you and the majority of Subud adherents let yourself be dominated by a culture and a hierarchy that was antithetic to your education?I knew when I joined Subud in the 70s that most of Bapak`s plans were ill advised and that the Javanese mysticism that formed the background of his religious world view was culturally specific and was usefull to me only in a poetic or symbolic way.Some of us as lapsed catholics knew that the bible was not literaly "the word of God" and the pope was not infallible,Why didn`t you for God`s sake? Since I rejoined Subud I find I much prefer the atmosphere of dissapointed realism that I find now amongst some members than the almost hysterical millenairianism that prevailed at the time of my opening.So now we have discovered there is no Santa Claus,it`s only Dad dressed up ,great! now we can perhaps start to develope a more mature less gullible spirituality.
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