Ladies and gentlemen before Bapak talks about the way of the latihan, he wants to explain about the formation of the committee, meaning those among you who need to be appointed to do the administrative work in our Subud community.

For the committee, you need to appoint a chairperson with a deputy, a secretary and a deputy, a treasurer and a deputy, and as many committee members as possible to help if the chairman, secretary or treasurer cannot attend - are sick or whatever - and cannot perform their tasks. It is necessary to create the committee so that our Subud community can be organized in such a way that all the needs ( of the group ) can be taken care of.

Besides carrying out the administration of the membership records, you can also set up an office to receive members' opinions that need to be sent or submitted to Bapak, and also to get in touch with members in other places.

In fact, the committee ought to start something to support the stability and strength of your group here - meaning some kind of business or enterprise. This is not just to provide personal income ( to those who work in it ), but to lessen the ( financial ) burden on your group here. It also puts into practice the truth that while worshipping God we are able really to work and use our strength like normal human beings living in the world.

You should make an effort to build or rent your own building -but building one is better - and you can establish places or whatever for providing social services. For example, the brothers and sisters in Washington and New York, as well as other places, have begun to collect money to buy a building, so that the building can be used for the latihan and for holding meetings and so on.

You should also try to build a school that is staffed with our own people, with Subud members, so they can check and find out the aptitudes or basic talents of the children who attend the school and channel them into the appropriate field. If you do this, all of you in Subud will be helping your country.

Of course the regulations that are established and instituted by those of you who sit on the committee must be adjusted to the laws that exist in your country.

As for the capital needed to establish a business enterprise, you can collect it from among all of you Subud members, on a cooperative basis. As Bapak himself doesn't know ( the best way ), he leaves it up to all of you here to arrange it so that your application to the authorities will be approved - as has been explained by those of you from other places, such as New York and Washington. They established something they call a corporation that is tax-exempt and, like other such organizations, is considered or classified as charitable.

So Bapak feels or considers that, for the committee, you do not have to choose those who have already received a lot and done the latihan for a long time; it's enough to choose people who are really intelligent and genuinely like to do committee work. So the work of the committee simply has to do with the things Bapak has explained - matters relating to this world; whereas accompanying your brothers and sisters in the latihan and opening new members is the work of those of you whom Bapak has appointed as helpers. In this way, in our organization, the work of the helpers and the committee is separate and carried out independently, except insofar as the helpers are advisors to the members of the committee. Concerning further details of the work, and what the duties of the helpers are, you will later receive or can ask to be sent the statement that Bapak wrote - perhaps now it is already available.

For now, Bapak will appoint committee members who should serve for not more than three or four months. After that a general meeting should choose a new committee from people outside the committee and the helpers' group, who are judged or considered to be able to work well.

( Dr. Zakir reads the names of the committee and helpers - with some clarification. )

The formation of the committee and the helpers' group seems settled, so now, as Bapak said ( earlier ), he would like to continue with some explanations concerning the spiritual realm.

For those of you who perhaps would like to ask Bapak whether you are permitted to do the latihan by yourselves at home, or to do the latihan with your husband, Bapak explains that you may also do the latihan in your own home once a week, but don't stop doing the general latihan that has been established by the committee. You can also do latihan together with your husband, but not together in the same room or at the same time. ( You should do it ) one after the other - ( the husband ) can time the latihan of the wife, who does it first, then he does latihan and his wife lets him know when it is time to finish.

About increasing the number of latihans that you do, Bapak advises you not to be in a hurry to do more latihan before you really have the strength - for example, before you have received your own indication from within that you need to do latihan more often.

This is what Bapak needed to tell you all, and now he will continue by explaining about the spiritual way you have received and practice.

As you have heard and as you are aware, this spiritual training of Subud that you have been doing truly does not come from the impulse of our heart and thinking; rather, it is an impulse from the soul, after the heart and thinking are able to come to a stop. And as for your progress in the latihan, you cannot be certain that by being diligent and committed you will be able to receive quickly, because it is entirely based on God's grace. This means God Himself will show you, because God knows your strength and your capacity to receive His gift, which you need to receive. God knows and understands what the result will be. So while you may feel that you would be strong enough if you were given it, in the eyes and the power of God it is not so. God knows that human willingness -your willingness - is still in your heart, which doesn't yet understand the strength of your inner self or your soul.

It's really very different from other ways, where it is usually said that through diligence, through determination, through training actively, it is possible to receive more than otherwise. In Subud the opposite is true. If you have the desire and hope to receive quickly, the hope to be able to do it quickly, instead of making progress you will actually go backwards. This is because, as Bapak said the day before yesterday, our heart and our brain - the willingness of our heart and the willingness of our thinking - are still greatly influenced by this world, by the low forces that are below our human force. So if we follow the will of our heart and thinking, which comes not from the influence of the human soul but from that of the low forces, it means that, instead of getting one hundred percent of the benefit for ourselves, we are simply following our servants - that is, the low forces - who should, on the contrary, be obeying us.

That's why you need to get rid of the willingness of your heart and your thinking, and should instead surrender to the greatness of God, meaning that it is God whom you really trust, who is really in charge of all life - of your life and that of humankind.

You might ask whether ( it is true that ) when we are in a quiet or empty state, we are no longer influenced by the low forces that are below the human force. As Bapak has explained, the low forces - that is, the material force, the vegetable force, the animal and the human forces - work alongside our desire, heart and thinking. So if we no longer use our desire, no longer use our heart and also no longer use our thinking, the low forces that are beneath our human forces will no longer have any power and will no longer have any influence within our being.

And you also need to know and understand that, in the opening in Subud, we are given the grace by God to be able to receive His gift in an easy way, in an extraordinary way. For God has indeed given us a life force that is all-great, that is all-high, that exists within your being, that will guide you, that will be your counselor, that is the law of life, that cannot be put aside or made to disappear from your individuality. That is what comes - what you all receive - when the influence of your heart and the desire of your thinking has stopped. But it is received in true consciousness, so that it feels to you like something that fills your thinking, heart and feelings. Of course, the feeling of what you receive in the latihan is no longer strange for you all. But it feels very strange to the heart and the thinking that, within our being, there is a power that pervades everything that is within us.

Indeed, this highest life force that exists within your being is a channel, a kind of pathway or string that connects your feeling, understanding and awareness here on this earth with the ambiance that exists beyond this earth. Of course at this moment you are not yet able to prove it, you cannot yet receive what Bapak is saying, because you are still at the beginning. The latihan that you are doing is still purification, meaning it is necessary first to cleanse the content that has filled your self- both the coarse and the fine.

Bapak compares it to this glass. First it is filled with Coca-Cola. To receive a different content, say whisky, the Coca-Cola needs to be thrown out, removed from the glass. This is also the case with your own selves. That which has become your content - beginning when you were a small child and continuing into your adulthood - needs to be removed, so each of you can receive the true content of your self, can really receive what is needed for your soul.

Of course to throw out and put aside the old content that has entered our being - not only into our blood and our flesh but into our heart, our passions and our brain - is not as simple as emptying this glass that has Coca Cola in it. It is truly difficult and cannot be cleaned quickly; it requires an amount of time that cannot be determined.

( Section missing )

...so you will not be able to hear the sound that comes from the divine realm - that comes from God - because you are covered and enclosed by the sounds that you hear, like radio, music, and so on. In the same way, you will not be able to see anything that is beyond this world because you are covered and enclosed by the sight of all you see, such as the cinema and things like that.

The same is true of our heart, passions and brain. So it is not surprising that people think and conceive of heaven as something like Monte Carlo; of God being something like a handsome, dazzling human being, seated on a throne strewn with diamonds and precious stones. Angels are thought to be like people with wings, and so on. All these are pictures that arise from human thinking and imagination, which is tainted by the influence of this world and what it contains.

That is why the prophets said that it is only God who can bring human beings to the realm of contentment - to the realm beyond this earth, beyond this world - where everything that is within their being, their individuality, is opened and they can see, hear and think about heaven and life after death. And there is no way to get closer to God other than by patience, acceptance and willingness to let go, truly loving and trusting in God's greatness.

Indeed, the true understanding of God and what concerns the spirit is outside the grasp of human intelligence and thinking. The content of life after death, of the final world called heaven, is something that is beyond human thought. But it can be reached by human consciousness when it is truly educated and guided by Almighty God. You will be able to witness and confirm this when you have reached the necessary level. So in the Subud latihan you are required only to surrender patiently, and you should not use your thinking, heart and desire.

In fact, ( what we receive ) in Subud is ( the same as ) the fruit of efforts that human beings make to obtain a contact with the greatness of God. ( But ) for all of you, all you have to do is simply follow whatever God does within your being, and also follow whatever you will later be shown from within.

All this is in accordance with what was experienced by the prophets during their lives a long time ago, especially by Jesus. From the time he was a child till he grew up and became an adult, Jesus never went to school, never studied this and that. So how was he able to achieve the broadest possible human consciousness, which resulted in his advice being trusted and followed by millions of people? ( It was ) because Jesus truly obeyed God, was truly pure in his feeling, truly clean in his heart and thinking - in his brain. He was really filled with the grace, will and power of God: in other words, he was filled with what Bapak just described as the ambiance from beyond this world. Therefore the one who bestows understanding - bestows wisdom - is none other than God, for God is always present within each human being.

That is Bapak's explanation for this evening. He feels it is enough because it's getting rather late. Bapak simply thanks you very much for the hospitality and welcome you have given him and his party or family during their visit here in Chicago. And Bapak hopes that all those whom he has appointed to be on the committee, and also those he has appointed as helpers, may receive God's blessing, so they will do their work thoroughly. And for the rest of you Bapak hopes that you will be able to do your latihan diligently and truly fulfill ( your promise ) to the greatness of God, and have faith that God will lead and guide you.

Now Bapak would like to take leave of you. Tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock he will leave Chicago and continue his journey to Denver. Bapak thanks you.