Ladies and gentlemen, this evening Bapak would like to explain about the reality of what you receive in the training [latihan].
The nature of the latihan you receive is that it moves; it moves your whole body. The movement and awakening you receive come from within, from the human soul [jiwa]. Why is the human soul able to move and awake? Because when you are calm and peaceful, and your desires and thoughts are gone, your human soul and fine inner feeling can feel spontaneously the touch of the power that envelops the whole of life. This is the vast life, the Great Life, unbounded and unlimited because of the divine will and power of the One God. In truth, it penetrates and envelops all things visible and invisible: this earth and also the worlds or planets you see scattered throughout the vault of heaven. Everything is pervaded and enveloped by God's power, by God's greatness. And human beings cannot know and cannot comprehend where and how God's power is.
Human beings can only rely on nature and natural laws. Indeed, that's how things happen in life. But the truth is, nothing happens without being preceded by the one who created it. Clearly, God really does exist, and God's power really does exist, because we can feel and know and see what has been created.
Indeed, God and His power cannot be known. If human beings were able to know and understand the power and state of God, the world and its environs might even be wiped out. Why? Because within them, human beings are always enveloped and filled with passions, wants and desires, which want themselves to win, to be clever, famous, rich and so on.
In reality, only a human being who has very few wants, desires and thoughts, and who can calm and quieten his inner feeling and can be patient and entrust himself to God - only such a person is given God's power and can receive about life.
That's why many people try all kinds of paths in their search to find a way to quieten their heart and desires and to still their thoughts, so that their nature really becomes a nature that can receive God's gift. That's the way people usually follow, and the nature they must have to receive God's gift. For us, all this is really odd and surprising, because we can receive the gift of the One God, as we do in the latihan, in a situation that isn't like that.
In truth, the movement and self-awakening you all receive really comes from the human soul, from a peaceful, quiet state that cannot possibly be mixed in with the thinking. For this reason, you needn't and shouldn't worry that what you receive may be possessed by a force that could make us fall from our position as human beings who truly worship God. Why does Bapak say this? Because we receive it in a state where we have no desires, and aren't thinking, imagining or making up all kinds of things. In fact, if you imagine something, or compare and think of this and that, your latihan immediately stops. In receiving the latihan, we don't use our desires, thinking and imagination at all; we don't have any. Yet we're in a conscious state; we can feel the movement within us; our feelings become alive and pure and clean again.
Of course, the progress, extent and depth of all human endeavour, whether outer or inner, like the latihan you receive, takes time. Bapak cannot say how far or how near or how long and how quick it will be. It depends on the state of each one of you; it depends on what is in your inner self. However, it is certain that you will be able to go on receiving as you receive, and your receiving will keep changing and will go ever further and further, until eventually it penetrates your whole inner feeling. The awakening of the movement you have received will penetrate all the dirt and sickness in your whole inner feeling, and the sick members of your body will become healthy and good again.
It is generally recommended that people should exercise and do sport. Why? Because sport can make the body healthy. But that kind of sport is stimulated and developed because of the mind, and cannot go deeper than is usual. Moreover, if you're not lucky, and you overdo it by training too much or going beyond your limit, it won't bring you health but disaster, because of doing the sport in the wrong way. It's different from movement that arises and is awakened because of the soul. This is moved from within, not from outside, so it's beyond the human mind, imagination and desires. This movement is certain to touch and penetrate and restore the members of our body that are not strong, not healthy but ailing, so that they become good and healthy again. Healthy in the true sense, because the person is moved by the soul [jiwa]. Not healthy in the ordinary sense; healthy in the sense of being really clean and pure and clear.
The path of God's power received by the soul doesn't stop there; it doesn't move only the human body. Eventually it penetrates a person's heart and mind and awareness. The power received by the soul also cleans our heart, feelings and imagination, and eventually reaches the awareness of our inner self.
In truth, nothing, no method of teaching can clean and put right a person's heart and mind, unless it is received in one's own soul from the One God.
One of the ways that might improve people's behaviour is good advice. And good advice is often enhanced by instilling fear of divine retribution. But advice remains advice. As long as the person who receives the advice is close and known to the one who gives it, he won't do anything bad. But if he forgets, and is compelled by circumstance, because he wants to have something he thinks can make him happy and improve him, he will not use or obey the advice. That's why many people who are highly educated and have the best advice do things that harms others and deviates from what is right.
It's different when one can oneself receive from one's own soul. Then, however bad one was before, one will have a good heart, mind and will, and a humanitarian attitude and behaviour.
As an example, why was the advice of the Prophet Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad followed by so many people? Both had hearts that were really and truly clean and obedient to God, because their heart, inner feeling, mind and will were cleaned by God.
This is an example for us humans today. It's not that we want to be like the Prophet Muhammad or the Prophet Jesus, but both of them are our examples and guides for obeying God and finding the way to God. We should not only follow their advice, but really practise the way they did things and conducted their lives in times long ago. That's what is generally called doing good works [amal], good deeds to God, one's own good deeds to the One God
.It means really carrying out God's commands, which are within one's inner self. And God's commands, which are within the self of human beings - as Bapak explained before - can only be received when a person is clean and pure, and his desires, imagination and thoughts have been put aside and are gone, so that he is obedient, sincerely submits and entrusts himself to God and worships Him.
We receive a state like that in a completely normal situation. Besides receiving this from God, from our soul, we still carry on in the way people work, think and use their desires and thoughts in the world. That's why Bapak says that this is an extraordinary blessing - the greatest of blessings. We have received a real grace from the Almighty. So we should obey, we should believe, and we should love God and His power.
If our nature, heart and inner feeling love God, believe in God's greatness, and obey God, this will of itself wipe away the worries and doubts that are always in our heart. It is said, both in Islam and in Christianity, that a heart that is always anxious and doubts the greatness of God, is a heart that is wrong and is awakened by satanic forces; a heart that is worried and in doubt is a heart that doesn't believe in the existence of God and His power.
With this training [latihan], the heart that still has doubts will be wiped away, it will go away by itself, so that we really believe and obey God and His greatness. Not intentionally, not from our own will, but because belief penetrates and envelops our entire inner feeling.
Clearly, the state you have all received, the state of the human soul that awakens and brings to life our whole body, is not some kind of teaching. It's not a kind of development of the mind or some kind of knowledge. In truth, it is a gift, a receiving and a grace from God to human beings. So, someone who is sick can be cured through this latihan. A sick person can be restored to health, not because of the person's mind or cleverness or anything other than God's grace, and the sick person is freed from suffering and becomes healthy again. Clearly, the latihan and the fruits you will receive from it, can become your signpost, your guide, your very backbone or strength, something to hold on to; and it can cleanse you and open the way for you when you are beset by difficulties in your endeavours.
So this training [latihan] you receive is not a so-called mystical way. Usually when people say mystical way, they mean going off alone and letting the world slip by, and only giving importance to the life after death, and hardly paying any attention to worldly matters and life in this world. This is not God's will for human beings. That's why we are able to receive God's gift to us in the latihan in a completely normal situation: we can carry on doing things in the way people usually behave and work in this world. So for us to find the right way to God, there are two paths: one is to perfect our worldly life and the other is to follow the path to God. Why? Because this comes from God. This is really instruction from God. So, because of God's power, we can separate that which is necessary for this world and that which is necessary for the hereafter.
Thus, in our life on earth, in this world, there are two paths. For the one we can use our desires, our mind and imagination in the usual way, for worldly matters. The other is the path to God, with no human desire, thought or imagination. That's why Bapak always says: never let your mind interfere in the latihan, because this latihan is really the way to God. So, we become accustomed to doing both in our lives; and our thinking, our brain and our heart - if Bapak puts it plainly - won't get all mixed up. Why do many people who practise something they think is the way to God end up going crazy, and their mind becomes befuddled and their heart becomes confused? Because their path to God, the way they worship God, and their way of obeying God is with their brain, thinking and heart.
That's not the right way. God gives to human beings so that they can receive God's creation which exists within them; so human beings can find the way to God, free of desires, free of thinking, free of the ordinary brain. And we are in a healthy state; our mind is not in a whirl; we don't think too much, because our thoughts are only for this world, and we're not full of thoughts directed to the hereafter.
This concludes Bapak's explanation concerning the state, the reality and true significance of the training [latihan] you all receive. Bapak advises and urges all of you to do the latihan. There's no need to be in a hurry. Don't let your desires - which want to get something quickly, become clever quickly and receive quickly - mix in. Just continue doing the latihan as usual, free of wanting, free of expecting anything, and free of any desire to be in a hurry. Then, all will go more smoothly and more quickly. That's the end of Bapak's explanation about the latihan, and Bapak's advice to all of you.