How Not to Be a Cult
by Rosalind Priestley
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My
husband’s parents used to tell an amusing story that dated back to their youth.
There was a middle-aged spinster in the community who was known for her
home-made and very potent elderberry wine. She would serve it to her guests in
large tumblers, assuring them that it was quite safe to drink since she hadn’t
added any alcohol. She was quite unaware of how the process of fermentation
works and, being a tee-totaller herself, would have been appalled to realize
that she was sending her guests home inebriated, sometimes practically legless.
No one had the heart to disillusion her.
In one
respect, Subud members collectively bear a certain resemblance to that woman.
We reject the concern that we could be a cult. There was no ‘cult’ in the
recipe. We simply joined an organization to practise a spiritual exercise, and
all the rest grew out of the natural respect we feel for Bapak and for the
latihan. Bapak specifically said that we have no guru and no teaching. So how
could we be a cult? The accusation is untrue and unfair.
But
cults can be like that. Most cults are not intended, not planned; they grow.
The ingredients combine and ferment into something unexpectedly powerful, even
at times dangerous. In their innocence and ignorance cult members persist in a
state of denial.
Cults
have much in common with religions and the religious elements in Subud are
obvious: the pervasive allusions to ‘worship’ and ‘Almighty God’, the reverence
for Bapak as our ‘Spiritual Guide’, the promotion of his talks as something
like a Bible for the members, the role of the helpers as a kind of priesthood,
interpreting God’s will. As with most religions, members have little power;
change is usually initiated at the highest levels, top down rather than from
the grass-roots up. The decision to join is regarded as very serious, requiring
three months of preparation. The decision to leave is seen as ill-advised, a
disappointment. Helpers, like priests, have a special responsibility to look
after the members, their flock.
Although
we claim that we are not a religion, the features listed above give a different
impression. For some members the distinction doesn’t matter much and is just a
question of semantics. We would be a religion, they say, except for the fact that you can belong to
Subud and practise a religion at the same time, whereas a Christian, for
example, cannot remain a Christian and also be a practising Muslim. For other
Subud members, however, the distinction is extremely important. They joined
Subud as an alternative to a religion and don’t want to mix the experience of
the latihan with belief systems and authority figures.
The
difference between a religion and a cult some say is a matter of size and
success. Some religions or sects, like some cults, are repressive, controlling,
bigoted, etc. Others have listened to the critics and been through a long
process of liberalization. Religions at least are in the public eye. Abuses
eventually are exposed, even if not always addressed. With religions, people
know what they are getting into.
In
Subud we have a strong, much-revered guru figure whose basic message is not
questioned since it is assumed to come direct from God; a messianic vision of
the future; a sense among the members of being specially blessed; a theocratic
structure which encourages conformity and discourages innovation; a
preoccupation with growth; an expectation of sacrifice and effort; and a lack
of financial accountability. These are all cult characteristics. Young people
in Subud sense that, and that’s why they don’t tell their friends about Subud.
They know how Subud will look to an outsider.
In the
cultification of Subud there are two contributing factors. For one thing, Subud
arose in a society very different from our own. One of the defining values of
Javanese society is something called Bapakisme,[1] which can be translated as
‘paternalism’ or ‘loyalty to a hierarchical structure of authority’.
Indonesians tend to consult a Bapak, a ‘father’, when making decisions or
needing help. A Bapak may be any man with a certain power and prestige: your
boss, a local bureaucrat, the family patriarch. Bapaks are always deferred to,
never confronted, never contradicted. They have an intrinsic right to your
loyalty and respect. When deference of that order is translated into our own
culture, the natural assumption is that it must be inspired by a person who is
quite extraordinary.
Another
problem in cultural translation is the wahyu, the light that is said to have descended upon Bapak when he first
received the latihan. To Christian Westerners this suggests something
miraculous, like the star the Wise Men followed or the Holy Spirit descending.
In Indonesia, however, while significant, the wahyu is a fairly common occurrence. Even the choice of a village head may be
indicated in this way.[2] So, through a
misunderstanding, what in our culture would be the natural respect due to a
teacher morphs into the reverence due to a religious leader, someone who might
even be a Prophet or Messenger of God.
Keep
in mind also that Subud was born in a culture where there is almost no
tolerance for atheism, agnosticism, humanism or other alternatives to standard
religious belief. In my country, Canada, only 72% admit to a belief in God and
the percentage is lower among younger people. Many of those who reject religion
and belief systems might well be interested in a practice like the latihan, but
we do not provide a welcoming environment for such people.
We
took our cues from the Indonesians, without knowing the cultural background. We
were fascinated by Bapak’s world-view, without understanding that it was mostly
derived from the Sufism he had studied as a young man, from pencak silat, the Indonesian martial arts
tradition, and from Kejawen, native Javanese beliefs. If you read about
Javanese spiritual movements in general, you will find much that is familiar
from Bapak’s talks. Subud does not stand out among them as something radically
new. Nor is it the most successful Indonesian spiritual movement.
Over
time, Bapak’s role as Subud’s Spiritual Guide became increasingly important. He
made world tours, giving talks at every stop, and was the prime attraction at
World Congresses, where people hung on his every word (or believed they were
absorbing his wisdom in their sleep). When he revealed his vision for a Utopian
future, a world healed through the action of the latihan, members were proud
and excited to be part of such a revolutionary impetus. When the Big
Enterprises he initiated failed, Bapak was not blamed. It had to be the members
who were at fault.
Since
those years Subud has been in decline, but for many of us Bapak is still the
Great Teacher, quite possibly God’s Messenger or Prophet. Among those who steer
the course of Subud in the world, Bapak’s authority still holds. And the rest
of us are still expected to hold him in the deepest respect and reverence.
But
there is one big mitigating factor: that early on Bapak said that Subud is not
a religion, that it has no teacher, no system of thought, no dogma, no rules.
That has given ammunition to the more independent members to fight a rear-guard
action against the whole cult dynamic. Because we all affirm the above to be
true (for one thing, it makes for better PR), newcomers still expect the right
to form their own opinions about Subud, and the conformist pressures are less
than they might have been otherwise. In addition, with the lessening of Bapak’s
influence since his death, along with more progressive views taking hold in our
own societies, things have loosened up quite a lot: to give just three
examples, Subud is much less sexist and homophobic than it once was; the dress
code is no longer enforced; helpers have mostly abandoned their obsession with
weeding out ‘mixing’. The result is that, at least for some members in some
groups, the cultish element is not so pronounced, and to the extent that we are
a cult, we are actually a fairly moderate one.
However,
the cultish elements are still present, often nurtured by the most active and
high-profile members, since it is the conservatives who tend to involve
themselves most in the running of Subud. So we have two views of what Subud is:
(a) the simple exercise which itself is the teacher with no strings attached,
and (b) the exercise including Bapak’s world-view and teachings and the
structures he set up. This dichotomy gives rise to the ‘bait and switch’[3]
accusation: that we present ourselves one way and once the applicant is
‘hooked’, the whole cult agenda is gradually revealed. Having these two
conflicting interpretations of what we are means that in general Subud is a
very confused and confusing organization, with one foot in each boat (as the
Chinese say).
To
give one small example: reports from the Christchurch Congress talk about how
groups are stagnating; members are only interested in coming to latihan. If
we’re not a cult but just an organization set up to support people in their
practice of the latihan, then why expect anything more than that? People
practising the latihan? That's great; that’s the whole idea, isn’t it? Anything
else is supplementary. But just doing latihan isn’t enough for those who buy
into the cult agenda. We also need to be doing all the other things that Bapak
recommended.
The
cult dynamic affects many aspects of the way we operate. It affects how we
present ourselves, how we admit new members, how we keep new members, how we
regard the latihan, how we make decisions, how we look at other organizations —
almost everything about us.
But
why is it a bad thing to be a cult? Why do people quickly back off at the least
suspicion of one?
When
people think of cults, cyanide-laced Kool-Aid is likely to come to mind. This
was the ultimate in cult abuse: mind-control to the extent that members were
induced to kill themselves. We’ve all heard about cults run by patriarchs who
claim holiness while collecting young wives and overseeing every aspect of
their disciples’ lives. Or cults whose members were waiting for a comet to pick
them up, or collecting weapons in anticipation of some holy conflict. We have
little in common with those extreme examples.
But
there has been abuse of authority in
Subud: from overbearing, overconfident helpers, to parents who impose Bapak’s
authority on their children, to all members who feel it’s their duty to enforce
conformity with the accepted wisdom. There is in fact an unhealthy tendency
(now perhaps less in evidence than it once was) for the helpers to see members
as child-like and in need of guidance and direction, which they are ready, with
Bapak’s help, to supply. And although we constantly claim that we have no
belief system, some helpers are militant in their efforts to put down any
criticism of the Subud status quo and vilify the critics.
There
is the potential for abuse in any organization where questioning authority is
forbidden or discouraged. The right to form and express our own judgements is a
very basic right shared by all adults, exceptions being soldiers in the
military, those living under a dictatorship, or people whose minds are
incapacitated. We can see the disastrous effects of the cult of personality
around Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, or Mao Zedong in the days of the
Cultural Revolution. But the risks of coming under an absolute authority are
even greater where there is a spiritual element, with the possibility of God’s
sanction added to the guru’s own charisma.
In our
culture, freedom of thought and expression is accepted as a right in itself,
but it is further justified by historical evidence showing that it is the
rigid, authoritarian influences that have tended to hold back the advance of
human progress, moral as well as intellectual, whereas in the free exchange of
ideas we find the solutions we need to the problems we face and an environment
that nurtures creativity and growth.
When
you have a guru whom you accept as an ultimate authority, you step down from
your own responsibility to distinguish for yourself right from wrong,
appropriate from inappropriate, desirable from undesirable. We are all
different; the struggle to find and establish our own individuality is perhaps
the essential task of our adult lives[4] (and a goal that, according to Bapak,
the latihan can specifically help us attain). Many of us have had teachers,
mentors, and heroes, but if we have a healthy self-respect, we hold back from
giving them complete authority over our thinking. We need to develop our powers
of discrimination, not suppress them. And to do that, we need all options to be
open and available, including the option to decide for ourselves what we will
believe or not believe.
If we
don’t want to be thought of as a cult, we need to look carefully and
objectively at our cult characteristics. Some members place Bapak in a sphere
far above ordinary human beings. But no claim of that sort should go
unexamined. In fact, it’s quite clear that, as with the rest of us mortals,
Bapak’s thinking and attitudes were influenced and limited by his own education
and cultural background. He thought men were, as a sex, spiritually superior to
women. He had little sympathy for, or understanding of, homosexuality. He had
the common Javanese prejudice against Buddhism and Hinduism.[5] He did not
predict the climate crisis; was not concerned about the environment. His main
concern was to make money for Subud through enterprises. Considering all of the
above, why do we still allow his influence to dominate our organization?
Non-Subud
people are well aware these days of what it means to be a cult member, and they
give anything that smells cultish a wide berth. They don’t want someone else
doing their thinking for them, determining their priorities, influencing their
attitudes, stifling their normal responses, making them feel more helpless,
less adult, unworthy. Who needs that?
In Subud we still haven’t recognized and admitted the degree to which we
are a cult, so we don’t understand why the world stands aloof from us.
You
have all read the words sometimes attributed to Voltaire: ‘I disapprove of what
you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ If we want to
convince the world that we are not a cult, we need to embrace that attitude in
all our Subud dealings. We need to become aware of all the ways that conformist
pressures manifest in our organization, and each of us needs to make it our
business to vigorously resist them, no matter who the target is. We don’t have
to abandon our own beliefs; that’s not the problem. The problem is members
making the assumption that everyone else ought to have the same beliefs as they
do. When people assume that, and allow it to show, even in subtle ways, they
become part of Subud’s biggest problem: that it is too easily perceived as a
cult, and to some extent is one.
Here
are some general strategies for resisting conformist pressures and making
ourselves less of a cult:
• Examine and question all claims to
authority.
• Treat all members as mature adults in
charge of their own spiritual development.
• Make our own spiritual growth our first
priority, wherever that takes us.
• Make Subud easy to join, easy to leave
and easy to return to, leaving such matters entirely in the hands of the
individuals concerned and not radiating pleasure or displeasure over decisions
that are personal and not our business.
• In discussions and meetings, insist on
everyone’s right to disagree with Bapak and/or Subud conventional wisdom.
• Demand the right to self-determination
through the normal democratic process: i.e. free and open discussion concluding
with a vote. Ask the helpers not to make decisions on our behalf through
testing.
• Experiment with new structures; don’t
feel bound by old forms and practices that don’t meet our needs or suit our own
culture.
• Feel free to read the works of other
spiritual teachers and to talk about what you’ve learned with fellow Subud
members.
• Use ordinary language, not foreign
terms, to communicate with each other and with the world about our practice.
• Become informed about the ways Subud is
influenced by its Javanese origins.
• Make sure that the organization is
responsive to the needs of the members.
• Demand financial accountability,
including investigations into past failures and dubious practices.
We
should reject the idea that joining Subud commits us to shouldering the burden
of membership growth. When you join Subud, you make that decision because you
think the latihan may be of benefit for your life. Then somewhere along the
line you find that there’s an assumption that all members will take up Bapak’s
mission to spread the latihan to the rest of mankind. But if you were taking a
class in Tai Chi, for example, would you feel pressured to convert people to
doing Tai Chi? If your instructor told you that this was part of your role as a
Tai Chi student, would you accept that? Most people would feel this was an
improper blurring of the boundaries. You are there to learn; the teacher is
there to teach; and beyond that there are no obligations. You might find the
classes tremendously beneficial and decide to help publicize them, but that
would be from your own free will, not the fulfilment of an obligation.
But in
our case, the international organization called Subud is sometimes seen as more
than the sum of its parts, as a spiritual entity in its own right which can
make demands on the members. This is another basic question that goes to the
heart of whether or not we are a cult. Does Subud exist to serve its members’
needs, or are the members there to serve the needs and goals of the Subud
organization? Is the spiritual juice in Subud, the organization, or is it in
us, the members, who practise a spiritual exercise? If it is in the
organization, then there is not much hope of seeing any real democracy in
Subud. The will of God trumps the will of the people. Helpers rule — as
interpreters of the will of God — and the membership exists to serve that will.
The members are subservient to a greater spiritual goal; they become secondary,
a means to an end.
But
if, on the other hand, the Subud organization’s raison d’être is simply to
support the members in their practice (through providing premises, communication
and support services, organizing congresses, collecting money, etc.), then
decisions can be made democratically — the spiritual dimension being that every
voting member practices the latihan.
The highest priority will be the needs of the members, and it will be up to the
members themselves to determine whether their needs are being met.
These
two different attitudes clashed very publicly over the question of the 2001
Indonesian Congress. Testing showed that it should be held in Kalimantan. But
it made no sense practically or morally to hold a Congress in a country with
limited medical facilities when the majority of participants would be in the 60
to 80 age range — with many of them not in the best of health and so especially
vulnerable to the climate and tropical diseases. Ultimately because of unrest
in Kalimantan the venue was changed to Bali, which in my opinion was the right
decision. The needs of the members won out over the helpers’ reading of God’s
will.
Subud
will spread if enough people try the latihan and find it helpful. It is word of
mouth that will do it, more than any promotion by the Subud organization. The
idea that enterprises and other projects are necessary to supplement the
latihan and draw attention to it seems very odd. Transcendental Meditation (in
its present form), Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and other psycho/spiritual practices do
not find it necessary to have a cult supporting them and supplementary
activities to add interest. Those practices are sufficient in themselves, and
it seems to me that the latihan is not intrinsically more boring than any of
the above. We need to make it easier for people to join, by removing the long
indoctrination period, and easier for people to stay, by removing the cult
dynamic that puts so many off. We need to make the latihan visible and known;
then it will be the world’s decision whether it is worth keeping and
cultivating. In other words, once the latihan is accepted as a spiritual
practice, it will succeed or fail on its own merits. That is how it should be.
It is not in our hands.
Throwing
off the cultish tendencies might allow us to really tap into the energy of the
latihan, which is the very opposite of conformist, fearful, rigid and limiting.
If the latihan is to be made available to everyone, we need a Subud culture
that is more honest, open, and flexible, that is wider, more free, more
transparent, more egalitarian, more self-aware and informed, more accessible,
more democratic, more accepting and generous, more courageous and willing to experiment,
and more in tune with the world we live in.
What a
relief it would be to relate to non-Subud people in an open and natural way,
without feeling that we have to conceal the fact that we are (at least in part)
a cult.
Notes:
1.
See
http://www.expat.or.id/business/bigfive-bapakisme.html An interesting web-site for foreigners doing
business in Indonesia.
2. See
David Week, ‘History and Myth’, Subud Vision, June, 2007.
3. See
Helen Bailie, ‘Bait and Switch’, Subud Vision, June, 2007.
4. See
Deanna Koontz, ‘Subud the Tribe’, Subud Vision, June, 2007 for the Stages of Faith, and pressures to conform in Subud.
5. See
David Week, ‘Anwar, Anwas and Subud Prejudice’, Subud
Vision, July, 2009.