Tonight Bapak would like to give some explanations concerning the meaning of man's worship, or your worship of the One God.
Man's worship, or your worship, of God is not like worshipping a person who is higher in rank than you are. The true worship is when you use everything that is in you, that is, all your members and organs, following God's will as created in each individual member. For example, someone makes a machine or something that is mobile and can move: each component part of the machine has, or is given, a blue-print showing how it should work.
In carrying out your obligation to worship the One God, and to act in harmony with your inner being, it is necessary for you to receive, to know and be aware of the awakening of the inner feeling that is within your real self. Before you received the awakening of your self, everything in you was closed up. All your physical members were influenced by the power of the thinking, imagination and desires. Moreover, before your body and your inner feeling were awakened by God's power, it was as if your thinking mind and its understanding wanted to inform and instruct the inner feeling, so that it could know and understand the nature of God's presence and greatness.
So, many people who seek the way to God try to find the real nature of the inner feeling by thinking about it. Their thinking mind is so advanced. And they represent what they are aiming for in the pictures their thinking mind and desires can create. Many of these seekers run aground and fail to reach their goal. For, in fact, the awakening of the soul ( jiwa ) occurs, not because it can be thought out by the thinking mind, but solely through God's gift, which enables you to stop the force and will of your thinking and feelings.
Why is this? As Bapak explained just now, that is not the way for man to worship God. The way is for us human beings to find the signs that show God's will, which is created within every part of us, and to carry them out conscientiously. Clearly, man worships God when he is able to find what is already there within his inner feeling. Then he can behave and work following the signs that have been created in the inner feeling of all the members of his physical body. Indeed, seen from the standpoint of the ordinary thinking and feelings - by 'ordinary' Bapak means the thinking mind only, and the highest reach of the feeling only -this matter is something that is beyond the thinking mind, beyond the bounds of human reason; it is something that really cannot be believed.
Bapak does not find fault with this view. Indeed, it is like that in the opinion and understanding of the mind. It cannot comprehend what is within the inner self. For this is not something that can be thought about; it is not something that can be understood by the thinking. It comes from the inspiration of God alone, only from God's gift, which in Islam is called the miracle ( mukjizat ) of God. Of course, we cannot know, we cannot understand or be aware of God's gift, God's power and God's understanding, if it is not willed by Him, the One God, that we should be able to understand what is given to us. Also, if we could know God with our thinking mind, it would mean that God's nature would be the same as ours. But then, surely, people would not attribute names to God, and say that God is All-knowing, Most Wise and Most Glorious, and that He is the One who created us all.
Of course, you will have guessed the reasons for this yourselves: God's nature is not like ours. Clearly, if God's nature is different from ours, we will not be able to adjust our thinking, heart and feelings to the One God. Nor will we be able to receive with ordinary feelings how the feelings of God may be. Take an example near at hand, that of human beings and animals. As animals are made differently from us humans, we cannot grasp what they are thinking. Similarly, animals cannot grasp what we are thinking. We can only understand the thinking of animals from their movements, if we can know them in their habitual daily life.
It is due to such a difference in states that human beings cannot understand or grasp with their mind what God wills. Man can only receive it within his feelings, if it is willed from above by the One God. Then, man's soul is awakened; everything in him is awakened. And in the end he is able to know the signs ( indicating ) what he needs to do, which exist within his inner feeling and within his inner self.
Clearly, God created human beings in a form that is not only easily seen and felt by everyone, but also is accompanied by a power that exists within their soul. It is necessary for man to know this power, because it is like a path, a condition, a bridge, so that man, when later he dies, can always live, or go on living, a life no different from his life while he was on earth. No - even a life more perfect than the ordinary life. Man was created on this earth, and man must certainly die. It is not God's will for man to be like a thing that lives and then dies, lives and dies, lives again and then dies again. It is willed that human beings be created on this earth to experience life, so that in the end they can continue their life outside of this present world of man's.
It is clear that, in reality, man was created on this earth, not to die, not just to be planted in this earth and then not get free of it. Man's creation on earth was willed so that he might experience the lowest and then eventually where and how is the highest level of existence on this earth. In this way man can verify and experience and feel, until he arrives at the place destined for him by God, the place of his primal origins Bapak always refers to, namely, the true human world.
What Bapak has just been saying is in line with the words, in the holy books, of the prophets. They said that death is the continuation of man's life. The prophets advised people to keep God's covenants and to do God's will, so they would be able to behave well in their life on this earth, and then, through their good behavior and human kindness, their soul would awaken by itself. And people would be able to feel, in their inner self, something that might seem to be new, but which really came before the life of this coarse physical body, and will also go on after it.
However, death will not be a continuation of a person's life if he cannot find the something in his inner feeling Bapak refers to. It really will be death. It really will be the final moment, and the end of the life that is in him.
Bapak has been speaking about the meaning of man's worship of the One God. Now Bapak will go on to explain the use of the training ( latihan ) you are doing and receiving. The real use of your doing or receiving the latihan is that all of you, while still in your life here, can become aware of how life will be later on, after death. But do not forget, even when we have received how it will be later on after death, we are still on this earth, and we must live here for a while. Do not forget that we have to strive and behave and live in the way people do in this world. So we should use our coarse physical members, our thinking mind, our feelings and our will, because these are necessary for us to attain happiness in our life on earth. So, in our life on earth, we should use our mind, our will, our desires and feelings for what they can do. And, on the other side, we can receive God's gift, which we do not need to understand with our thinking, for it is God's work, and has been given to us. Later, God Himself will provide for our need, as human beings, to be able to continue our life after death.
You yourselves have received experience of this. When the soul ( jiwa ) is working, the thinking mind cannot be of use. If we use our thinking in the latihan, the work of the soul will stop. This really shows us, or shows you, that we - our thinking mind, our will and our desires - do not need to meddle in spiritual things or in the awakening of the soul. We ourselves are able to grasp the reasons for this and take them into account. Such is God's grace to us that we are given freedom in our way of thinking, in our way of using our thinking, feelings and desires for living in this world. And, for our life in our soul, our life after death, I, and we, are also given something beyond our thinking mind. So our thinking, will and feelings should have no difficulty whatever.
You yourselves are able to feel this. As you may be aware, the work of our soul and inner self is deeper within us than are our thinking, feelings and will. We cannot possibly participate in that work with our thinking. When you are asleep, for example: even though you may be supremely clever, in your sleep you forget everything. This is even more the case when, later, you face death. Before your death, you will not remember a thing. Your memory and your thinking will go blank. You will not even be able to see your children and your wife clearly when they come near you. You yourselves can gauge from this the limited strength of your frail physical members.
When a person is approaching death, he already begins to forget. He is empty of all his aspirations and everything he used to think about and imagine. He used to have certain notions: 'Heaven is like this; hell is like this; the path to God is like this,' and so on. But now, as he approaches death, it all begins to fade. Finally, at the threshold of death, these ideas completely vanish from his memory and from his awareness. And, at that point, if the person still has a voice to speak, he asks for a gift from God. He asks for help from the One God. He asks that he may be given the way, that he may be opened up and freed from his mind, which has submerged and forgotten all the things it used to think about. But, during his life, he did not receive the something Bapak spoke about earlier: that is, something that is within our deepest inner feeling, and deeper than our deepest thought; something that moves our being so that we are able to move beyond our thinking mind; something one might say is beyond the scope of reason.
Clearly, what we have received is beyond our ability to understand. We cannot think about it, and we cannot readily understand the significance of the moving within us, which you have experienced and received. In truth, it is this that later will awake and live on. It is this that will admit our life from this world into the spiritual world, to enter the life that Bapak said before is the continuation of our life, and come to our original home, that is, the perfect human world.
All of you, children, have received and experienced, after the latihan, a state where you feel as if you are double, or as if someone is with you. There is evidence of this also when those of you who have experienced the latihan for some time feel as if you are experiencing something new or, Bapak may say, a new world. This shows that there is a current from the life within, which little by little gives us awareness and awakens our feelings in our ordinary daily life. This body is generally referred to as the coarse physical body, while the fine body is said to be the body of the spirit.
Thus, as we carry out our duties in life, even though we are still in this world, we begin to have two of us, or a double I. One of these is the big I. The other is the little I, this coarse physical body. To bring the fine and the coarse close together, the fine body wants to penetrate our feelings with its power, and this manifests in the form of the movements you receive. And this penetration does not stop with the coarse physical body of ours, which one can see, and our physical energy. All our organs are penetrated. Everything that is in our heart, our inner heart, our sex and our brain is permeated. The result is a state of purity, not only in the coarse sensations in our flesh, for example, but also in our heart, in our thinking and in our brain. So, not only do our body, nerves and muscles become healthy, but our heart and brain also. Our heart becomes clean. Our brain becomes clean, so that in our way of thinking, we do not imagine anything that might bring about our ignominy or downfall.
This spiritual training ( latihan ) of ours, which Bapak said before is really man's worship of God, brings with it the health of our heart, and the health of our brain and thinking. Health means cleanness and purity. If, for example, we wish with a clean heart, the wish is good. And within our brain, our thoughts think of something that is really useful for human beings, and really useful for human life. As a result, man's life will become safe and happy and peaceful, beginning in this world, until finally man comes to the frontier of life after death. This is why they say that religion is safe, that religion brings about man's salvation and well-being, and that God oversees the salvation of man.
It should therefore be clear to you now that you have begun little by little to carry out God's command, to carry out your true worship of God. Of course, you have not yet been given and you have not yet received sufficient progress and real evidence in the latihan. For perhaps you yourselves are able to realize that, in the course of the penetration, it is necessary to purify everything that is an obstacle for the progress and growth of your soul. You are now beginning to be trained in the preparation of your soul, so that it can penetrate all that is necessary. In the end, you will be able to feel the unity of life between the two natures: between the coarse nature and the fine nature, and between the fine and the coarse. Then, ultimately, when you face death, you will not find it strange.
This is the use of our Subud latihan. Bapak has explained and given his clarifications about the meaning and use of our worship in this latihan of ours. Bapak hopes, children, that you will all receive and follow the latihan. But do not be in a hurry. Do not follow it with the will of the desire, which wants to go quickly. Don't, because the soul ( jiwa ) knows better your inner capacity. So, even if you wish a thousand wishes, the soul knows that it is not yet the time for you to be penetrated. But the soul knows also when the time really has come, and it will penetrate by itself. Moreover, the desire that is in a hurry and wants to know quickly, obstructs the progress of the soul's growth. And the soul really wants to grow. On the other hand, if you do not have such a desire to be in a hurry, you open wide the way for the growth of the soul.
This is the end of Bapak's explanation tonight concerning the meaning and use of man's worship of God, especially your worship of God by way of the latihan we receive. Bapak hopes this relatively short explanation can give some satisfaction to your inner feeling, children. And Bapak hopes that when Bapak returns from Germany, he can visit here again and give you the clarifications that are necessary in the spiritual path of Subud. That is all.
Translated by Sofyan Brugger