Subud Vision - Discussion

Stefan Freedman - Subud at Middle East Spirituality and Peace Festival

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From stefan, April 24, 2008. Time 9:13

Hi David,

Your explanation of latihan (in response to Sjahari's questions) includes:

>one practitioner "opens" another to a universal "inner >energy"

>The objective of both the latihan as explained by Subuh, >and the spontaneous silat from which the latihan is >derived, is to be able to spontaneously and unreflectively >do the right thing in a given situation, without being >pulled by base impulses

Then you try to convince me that nobody will be interested in an "inner directed life".

This seems contradictory.

Friends of mine who are not in Subud, really do speak in "inner/outer" terms. Some of these enjoyed talking with me about Subud and later were opened. Such talk is by no means exclusive to Subud or Sufis but part of many pardigms. Jung describes a process of inner reflection. Gestalt and Voice Dialogue psychologists developed this into an integrative practice. Psychosynthesis (psychology which recognises a transpersonal dimension) uses inner-reflection to throw light on a person's outer situation, and outer problems as signposts for inner issues. Pagans and neo-shamans talk about "inner journeying or "pathworking".

So whatever your internet search suggests, I still contest
a) your certainty that nobody finds this relevant
b) that your alternative explanations are free from the same
implication

However your position does remind me to be aware of those who don't share my frame of reference and to wonder how I'd explain Subud to them. David, can you recommend a good book to help me appreciate a Jewish perspective? My many sources of inspiration don't yet include Jewish thought, perhaps due to the aversion therapy of being raised as one of God's chosen. Smitings, plagues, stolen birthrights and jealous Gods have yet to win me over.

Stefan

From sjahari, April 24, 2008. Time 22:35

Hi David.
I am responding to your attempt to explain and characterize what the latihan is. For the sake of brevity in this forum I will confine my remarks to just your response to the question “what is the latihan?”

Lets imagine that I am a person who is interested in Subud and come to talk to you about it. According to what you have written here, you would First tell me that it is a form of “spontaneous exercise”.

Now I am someone who likes language to have specific meaning, and I will want to know what does this mean exactly? There are many kinds of exercise. Are you referring to physical exercise? Emotional exercise? Mental excercise. So my first question to you is “what exactly is being exercised in this thing you do?”

Next you would tell me that it is an exercise which is intended “for advanced practitioners of Silat”. I am not an advanced practitioner of silat so how could this be for me? (by now I am probably half way out the door anyway because i am not interested in becoming an advanced practitoner of silat)

Next you say that one practitioner “opens” another. (What you are saying here is very unique to you. ie to David Week. In general subud members never claim to have the power to exert any kind of influence on other people nor to be able to “open” them. Be that as it may:...) As an interested member I would want to know what it was that you did to me in this process. How do you go about opening someone? What does this mean? And what are you opening? Is it the mind? Is it the emotions? Is it something else? What? And how exactly do you do this? I know what it means to open a can of soup, or to open a door, but I have no idea what it means to open another person.

Next you say that the person is being opened to a “universal energy”. Is this what people often refer to as “God”?

Your final statement in this “explanation” is that the practitioner begins to move spontaneously.

Now I am involved in a number of different exercises where I move spontaneously. I do this sort of thing every day as part of my dance practice. Is there any difference between what I do already and this? If so, what is the difference? And also, what exactly do you mean by this word spontaneous? My wife is a very spontaneous person. She is always saying the first thing that comes in her mind. Is this the same thing? Is it different in any way from the ordinary spontaneous actions of every day life? If so. How and in what way is it different?” And finally. What is the big deal about moving spontaneously? Why is it a desirable thing to do?

There is no point in my going through the rest of your reply which is full of flaws, and inconsistencies. However I will just mention two things.

You state that the purpose of the latihan connected to “doing the right thing”. How is this anything more than a rephrasing of everything Bapak talked about under the general heading of “susila”?

You also talk about avoiding the “base impulses”. How are the base impulses different in any essential way from the impulses that Bapak talked about under the general heading of the “nafsu”?

No I am afraid that Your explanation is not full and complete. And in fact in large part it is simply a rehashing of everything that Bapak has already said. The trouble is that you have only taken bits and pieces out of his explanations and you havent presented a coherent whole.

Sjahari

From Merin Nielsen, April 25, 2008. Time 12:11

Hi, Sjahari,

You say that David’s post has inconsistencies, but I think your posts in this thread are inconsistent with respect to context. On one hand, you are clearly concerned with the suitability of a latihan model for presenting to enquirers. On the other hand, you dismiss the model presented by David because it “is not full and complete”.

Now, David’s post comprised about 850 words, and Philip’s earlier post comprised only about 350 words, but you derided Philip’s model because it made reference to a book by a university academic. You appear to feel that David’s post provides insufficient information, but that Philip’s post was inappropriate in referring to outside sources.

In terms of offering an adequate latihan model to enquirers, you seem to suggest that a full and complete explanation must be provided. So, how many books of Bapak’s talks would you proceed to read out to an enquirer? Alternatively, if reference to outside sources were acceptable, then how many books of Bapak’s talks would you recommend that the enquirer read -- in order that the presentation be full and complete?

Alternatively, if an adequate summary were acceptable, then what latihan model would you provide to an enquirer -- in, say, 1000 words or less? To this end, let’s imagine that I am a person who is interested in Subud and come to talk with you about it. In this website, you’ve previously mentioned (in this context) an ‘eternal soul’. To be fair, therefore, I must warn you that I am someone who likes language to have specific meaning, and I would want to know what does this mean exactly.

There could also be other terms or concepts for which I need a full and complete explanation, but surely 1000 words would suffice to quell my doubts. If not, I’m afraid that by then I would probably be halfway out the door.

The notion of a ‘full and complete’ description is ambiguous, anyway. By way of analogy, James Clerk Maxwell devised his equations of electromagnetism in 1864. They’ve since been condensed into four simple lines, and there’s an overwhelming consensus that they encapsulate a full and complete description of the classical electromagnetic field. Nevertheless, hundreds of books have been published describing what they represent.

Incidentally, when David said the latihan is a form of spontaneous exercise for advanced practitioners of Silat, he clearly meant ‘traditionally’ -- and subsequently noted that Pak Subuh took the practice out of its traditional context. It’s a non sequitur to complain that you’re not a silat practitioner.

Regards,
Merin

From Merin Nielsen, April 25, 2008. Time 12:13

Hi, David,

Just a point of priority. Do you reckon Plato invented the soul, or that he got the idea from the ancient Egyptians?

Regards,
Merin

From David Week, April 25, 2008. Time 12:47

Hi Merin

I've heard that Plato might have got it from the Egyptians, but I haven't bothered to check that out. Certainly, one only has to look at the pyramids to realise that these people were really obsessed with life after death. But what struck me most was reading about Jewish beliefs about the afterlife, and learning that there was no "eternal soul". Read the death of Moses in the Pentateuch.

I've also been informed by these lectures available at iTunes U, which I can't recommend highly enough: Hubert Dreyfus on the evolution of the concept of God in Western religion; Thomas Sheehan on the historical Jesus (Yeshua).

Yeshua wasn't interested in any eternal soul either. He was about the here and now.

Best

David

From David Week, April 25, 2008. Time 14:7

Hi Stefan

SF: one practitioner "opens" another to a universal "inner energy".

DW: I'm just reporting the silat conceptual language, not proposing it.

SF: "The objective of both the latihan as explained by Subuh, and the spontaneous silat from which the latihan is derived, is to be able to spontaneously and unreflectively do the right thing in a given situation, without being pulled by base impulses."

Then you try to convince me that nobody will be interested in an "inner directed life".

DW: What I describe above is not an "inner directed life." Let's take the example of a famous baseball player who was brilliant at catching balls. (This is a real guy, I can't remember his name -- what's significant about his story is that once he started thinking about it, he stopped being able to catch balls!) He was able to do so spontaneously, and unreflectively, without being pulled this way and that by his passions. He is not playing "inner directed baseball". Inner directed baseball does not exist, since baseball -- and life -- involves being completely in tune with the WHOLE situation, not some inner condition.

SF: Friends of mine who are not in Subud, really do speak in "inner/outer" terms. Some of these enjoyed talking with me about Subud and later were opened. Such talk is by no means exclusive to Subud or Sufis but part of many pardigms. Jung describes a process of inner reflection. Gestalt and Voice Dialogue psychologists developed this into an integrative practice. Psychosynthesis (psychology which recognises a transpersonal dimension) uses inner-reflection to throw light on a person's outer situation, and outer problems as signposts for inner issues. Pagans and neo-shamans talk about "inner journeying or "pathworking".

DW: Let's not conflate different models on the basis of that -- in English translation -- they use the same words. There is certainly a normal English use of the words "inner" and "outer" to refer to workaday experience of things in terms of "consciousness" and "world" or "mind" and "external reality", etc.

But you missed my main point. You were speaking to a conference on Middle Eastern spirituality and peace. Jung (a notorious anti-Semite), pagans, neo-shamans and psychosynthesis have nothing do with Middle Eastern spirituality.

SF: So whatever your internet search suggests, I still contest (a) your certainty that nobody finds this relevant

DW: I never said any such thing. I said that Middle Eastern spirituality (with the possible exception of Sufism) does not promote or recommend anything like "inner directed life." That's very different from saying "no-one finds it relevant."

SF: (b) that your alternative explanations are free from the same implication.

DW: I'm not clear on what implication you mean.

SF: However your position does remind me to be aware of those who don't share my frame of reference and to wonder how I'd explain Subud to them. David, can you recommend a good book to help me appreciate a Jewish perspective? My many sources of inspiration don't yet include Jewish thought, perhaps due to the aversion therapy of being raised as one of God's chosen. Smitings, plagues, stolen birthrights and jealous Gods have yet to win me over.

DW: Sounds like you were raised in some form of orthodox or conservative Judaism? Try Reform or liberal Judaism. Try:

Rabbi Steven Leder, The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things.
http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Nature-Ordinary-Things/dp/0874416477

Since you're interested in peace, you might also enjoy the work of Rabbi Michael Lerner:
http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/

Then there's the fabulous Rabbi Sharon Brous, founder of IKAR
http://www.ikar-la.org/
http://www.ikar-la.org/rabbi.html
(she's cute!)

I also find Rabbi Justin Jaron Lewis a smart and compassionate teacher:
http://www.kolel.org/zohar/intro.html
and you can probably find other good stuff at that site:
http://www.kolel.org/

Finally, my favourite roshi, who is as Jewish as he is Zen: Bernard Glassman... Zen language, but Jewish sensibilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsugen_Bernard_Glassman
http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/
http://www.greyston.org/
http://www.greystonbakery.com/

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is not one of my favourites, and probably more of a traditionalist, but has a big audience, and he's smart, and worth knowing about. Try:
http://www.shmuley.com/articles.php?id=165

Best

David

From David Week, April 25, 2008. Time 16:27

Hi Sjahari

SJ: Now I am someone who likes language to have specific meaning, and I will want to know what does this mean exactly? There are many kinds of exercise. Are you referring to physical exercise? Emotional exercise? Mental excercise. So my first question to you is “what exactly is being exercised in this thing you do?”

DW: As I stated in my post, the whole of your being. No part of you is excluded. How your culture or religion tells you to carve up a human being may vary: but the latihan is an integrative exercise of the whole, not a part.

SJ: Next you would tell me that it is an exercise which is intended “for advanced practitioners of Silat”. I am not an advanced practitioner of silat so how could this be for me? (by now I am probably half way out the door anyway because i am not interested in becoming an advanced practitoner of silat).

DW: I think Merin cleared up that misunderstanding. By the way, I notice no-one is running away from Tai Chi (several hundred million practitioners?) just because it has its origins in a martial art with a funny name.

SJ: Next you say that one practitioner “opens” another. (What you are saying here is very unique to you. ie to David Week. In general subud members never claim to have the power to exert any kind of influence on other people nor to be able to “open” them. Be that as it may:...)

DW: I am just giving some of the historical language used by the Silat tradition, not the Subud offshoot.

SJ: As an interested member I would want to know what it was that you did to me in this process. How do you go about opening someone? What does this mean? And what are you opening? Is it the mind? Is it the emotions? Is it something else? What? And how exactly do you do this? I know what it means to open a can of soup, or to open a door, but I have no idea what it means to open another person.

DW: It’s a process of induction that begins by hanging around outside the hall for a couple of months, and then proceeds inside the hall. Although there is a notional, ceremonial “opening”, some people feel nothing at this point. Others may feel it well before this point. The process of induction has to be understood in terms of the instruction to put yourself into a very receptive and open state. In this state, you learn to do the latihan from other practitioners.

Like a musical instrument, the fact that you learn from others, doesn’t mean that you are in any sense constrained to copying them. And just as you may learn jazz improvisation by playing jazz with others, in the case of the latihan, you already know the mechanics: it’s your own being. What’s being learned then, is the improvisation, not the mechanics of being human.

However, we do know that various movements and sounds from one practitioner do influence another. An example is the common transfer of the word “Allah”, which — contrary to Subud myth — is neither the oldest word for God, nor the first word that babies utter.

Note: If standard Subud theory invokes an animist “Great Life Force” as a supernatural explanation for the induction process. Practitioners are very reluctant to test this theory out, though it would be simple to do. Simply isolate the applicant from any visual or auditory contact with the latihan, and see if this GLF passes through walls. If it does, go collect Nobel Prize. If it doesn’t, revise theory of GLF so it doesn’t pass through plasterboard. Or consider alternatives.

SJ: Next you say that the person is being opened to a “universal energy”. Is this what people often refer to as “God”?

DW: In talking about “universal energy”, I am just re-iterating the animist worldview of the Chinese, Indians and Javanese. I am just providing historical background: most people like to have little bit of history. I’m not suggesting you adopt it.

And no, qi or tenaga dalam is not God. God is the language of the religions of the Abramic tradition. Qi, prana, tenaga dalam, life force, great life force, shaktipat -- call it what you will -- is the language and worldview of very different Eastern traditions. The worldviews are incommensurable.

SJ: Your final statement in this “explanation” is that the practitioner begins to move spontaneously. Now I am involved in a number of different exercises where I move spontaneously. I do this sort of thing every day as part of my dance practice. Is there any difference between what I do already and this? If so, what is the difference?

DW: I don’t know. I don’t do those practices. However, happy to engage in an open-minded spirit of enquiry to find out. Certainly, people who do both latihan and spontaneous qigong report that it’s exactly the same, or almost exactly the same. This tells us that making such comparisons is certainly possible.

Since current practitioners tend to be ideologically biased, probably the best way to find out would be to introduce dance practitioners to the latihan, sans any ideological induction. Then we can find out if they experience any difference.

SJ: And also, what exactly do you mean by this word spontaneous? My wife is a very spontaneous person. She is always saying the first thing that comes in her mind. Is this the same thing? Is it different in any way from the ordinary spontaneous actions of every day life? If so. How and in what way is it different?”

DW: The word “spontaneous”, in English, means “performed or occurring as a result of a sudden inner impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus.” Note the “without external stimulus”. If your wife really utters things without any connection to what is going on around her, she sounds like she might have Tourette’s Syndrome!

For the same reason, I have to warn you, that if you practice latihan in a social setting, people may suspect you of having a mental illness. That’s why it’s best done out of public view.

SJ: And finally. What is the big deal about moving spontaneously? Why is it a desirable thing to do?

DW: In the first place, the “latihan” is an exercise -- it’s practice. It’s not “the real thing”. The “real thing” is life. What we know from how we do activities like playing the piano, or golf, or tennis, is that first we do it badly; then, we engage ourselves in a program of study, and do things mechanistically and reflectively: like playing scales. Eventually, our practice becomes natural and spontaneous, and even creative. This state some psychologists call the state of “flow”.

The latihan is just an exercise in flow. Why is it a good idea? Because culture tends to condition to function in overly reactive and mentalistic modes, and to forget how to be in flow. Thus, in many aspects of our life -- being with others, working, sex, eating -- we lose the capacity to be in flow. Latihan is an exercise in pure flow.

A warning: just practicing being in pure flow will not by itself get you anywhere. You still need that outer training. For instance, if you want to develop ethical flow, where you naturally and spontaneously treat people well, you need an outer ethical framework, as well as this practice in flow: just as it is with learning to play a musical instrument.

For this reason, I believe, Subuh always advised that people adopt the framework of a religion, as well as their latihan practice, to develop ethical flow. Unfortunately, many have not done so. The results that we see today -- perhaps predictably -- is many people complaining that nothing changes, they don’t progress, and that Subud people treat each other very badly.

SJ: You state that the purpose of the latihan connected to “doing the right thing”. How is this anything more than a rephrasing of everything Bapak talked about under the general heading of “susila”?

DW: I’m not saying its not. I’m an American. You’re a Canadian. Why don’t we just speak in English? “Susila” is a word with a deep roots in the Hindu-Buddhist tradition, and I think it’s much better not to bandy the term about without an in depth understanding of what it means within that tradition. Best we stick with what we know, and not to dabble in other traditions unless we’re going to get serious about them.

SJ: You also talk about avoiding the “base impulses”. How are the base impulses different in any essential way from the impulses that Bapak talked about under the general heading of the “nafsu”?

DW: In that case, I have studied the issue, and can say definitively “no”. Using the triune model of the brain (I understand that this has limitations), I’m talking about impulses that come from the older reptilian and mammalian parts of our make-up: impulses such as sexual response, anger, aggression, fear, hunger, and so forth. The nafsu do not map onto these. They only come in four varieties, each of which has a its own colour: red, black, yellow and white, from memory. Nothing in our understanding of human emotion or physiology suggests these four varieties, and especially not colours.

Now, I’d like to ask you some questions about the consistency and completeness of Subuh’s model.

(a) You are a medical doctor, and you have initiated some debates within SIHA about the appropriateness of SIHA pushing “alternative” medicine. As I understand it, you are concerned about the validity of these alternative “modalities”. Given that, how do you support the use of Subuh’s model, in which all matter is made of four elements: earth, air, fire and water, an Aristotelian model which has long been abandoned?

(b) How do you support the nafsu explanation of human drives or emotions, which similarly have no basis in our current understanding of the human organism, and in fact have the same “colours” as the four humours of Medieval physiology?

Note: Most likely the nafsu model -- from the Arabic nafs -- came to Java with Islam. Islamic medicine of the period followed the Greek model of the humours. I can find out if you like.

(c) The Islamic model of the human beings posits a lower self (the nafs) and a higher self (the roh). Onto this model, Subuh attaches the Hindu jiva (divine essence) and sukma (astral bodies, or “birth siblings”.) Of all of these candidates for the English term “soul”, which one do you mean when you say “soul”: Roh, jiva, or sukma? Please explain.

(d) Your explanations have a big role for the “soul”. But the “soul” only plays a role in the Abrahamic religions. If you have an applicant from the other 50% of the world -- say a Buddhist or a Confucian -- what are you going to say? Convert?

(e) In the Abrahamic religions, souls do not have professions like “banker” or “architect”, or any of the other “inner talents” that Subuh used to assign to people. In fact, this idea of an inbuilt professional capacity is not an Abrahamic idea at all, but a Hindu one. It’s the basis of the caste system. What are you going to say to followers of the Abrahamic religions who take objection of this innovation glommed onto their religion? Maybe Jesus got it wrong? Maybe the Qur’an is “incomplete”?

(f) The majority of people in the world (including contemporary Javanese and Indians) find the caste system repellent. Do you propose that they need to revise their views? To put a finer point on it: children in Canada and Australia and the United States are told, “You can be anything you put your mind to”. Do you propose to teach them instead (as certain Subud children have been told): “You can only be one thing: Ibu Rahayu says your inner talent is ‘banker’.” And do you propose that we dismantle all of that educational and social apparatus aimed at maximising the opportunity of every child to choose their future, and instead, say, have them “tested” at birth for their “inner talent”, in the same way they get “tested” for their “right name”?

(g) People expert in human development (counselling, coaching, career development, organisational psychology, and so forth) including long-time Subud members, do not believe that people possess an “inner talent”, any more than they believe that matter is composed of four Greek elements. Rather, the modern view is that a human being has a complex and dynamic set of capacities, most of them developed through learning -- both formal and informal -- not genetics, and that Subuh’s simplistic model of an inbuilt “inner talent” is not only wrong, but because it is wrong, potentially damaging. Why would we adopt the human capacity model of Subuh, over a modern, well-researched model?

(h) Some members believe that Subuh’s talks represent the views and opinions of an intelligent, charismatic man, but views which are nonetheless a reflection of his era, culture and education. As such, they are as limited and as inappropriate to our current context as any knowledge from that time and place. Other members believe that Subud’s talks represent some kind of divine “revelation”. Do you consider Subuh’s talks to constitute “revelation” in any way, shape or form?

I look forward to your clarifications.

Best wishes, David

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