Ladies and gentlemen, having welcomed all of you who have come to this meeting, Bapak would like to give some explanations concerning those of you he is appointing to serve on the committee and who will eventually become helpers, and also those he has appointed to be helpers or candidate helpers, whose names are not included in the committee. The names of those serving on the committee as chairman, vice-chairman and so on, will be read out by Mr Bennett.
[John Bennett reads the names.]
For those of you Bapak has appointed to the committee, this is a temporary appointment; your task is to prepare everything necessary for a harmonious working of this group. Once that work has been accomplished, which should take at the most only three months, these committee members will automatically become helpers. The helpers Bapak has appointed who are not on the committee are reserve helpers, who will eventually also become helpers in our group here.
When the members of this provisional committee have resigned, a general meeting should be held to elect a committee from those able and willing to serve as chairman, vice-chairman, etc. Members of the present committee can be re-elected if the general meeting – meaning all of you – so desire. But if they continue to serve on the committee they should devote themselves exclusively to administrative work and not act as helpers who open people, as this should be done by people who are only helpers.
Regarding the duration for which committee members will be elected at the general meeting: unlike the present one it is not to be provisional, but can run for at least one or two years. The function of helpers, on the other hand, has no time limit.
If you wish to know more about the work that helpers and committee members will be expected to do, you may look at the reports from the Congress in London and also at the talks Bapak has given. So to save time, Bapak will now go on with his explanations about the spiritual way, because if he were to talk again about the work of the helpers and committee it would take up too much time.
Ladies and gentlemen, Bapak will now continue with his explanations about the Subud latihan you have received and practise. The latihan you have received, as Bapak has always explained, does not come as a result of our desires; we are trained by the power of God, which has been given as an act of grace. As a result, with the power of God within us, we are able to restrain the influence of our thoughts, heart and desires; our inner feeling is then awakened, not by our desires, heart, and thoughts but by our inner self.
The meaning of ‘inner self’ is an inner feeling that awakens and moves. It is a feeling in our hands and feet and all our senses. It does not arise from the influence of the mind, heart and desires in the usual way. Usually, when you want to walk, or you want to eat, to go to places or to see this or that, it is preceded and motivated by your thoughts, feelings and desires; whereas the feeling of the inner self is a feeling that arises spontaneously – not influenced by thoughts and desires – and opens the way for you to touch and be touched by the life forces that are your companions; namely, material, plant, animal and human.
Naturally, everything takes time. This is especially true in matters of the soul, where it is not easy for you to know the nature of the faults within you. You cannot expect to receive right away, because the faults and the dirt, which are like a barrier or a screen in your inner feeling, need first to be cleaned. They need to be put aside or cleaned, so that your inner feeling can be changed back to the way it was when you were small, when you were born.
The fact is that what we have received in the latihan is not something new. Subud is not something new. As a matter of fact it is something very ancient, which existed when human beings were created on this earth. Why then does it seem new to you? It is because from the time you were born, and as you continued to grow and become an adult, the life of your inner feeling – initially not influenced by your heart – fell, with the passing of days, weeks, months and years, under the influence of its worldly environment. Consequently, as you grew up and matured, the content of your heart, your thoughts and your mind, as well as your feelings, have come to consist of pictures conditioned by the circumstances prevailing in this world. So, it appears and feels as if this is something new, because you are no longer used to it.
Bapak may illustrate this by something you surely remember, especially those of you who have children. Although unable to distinguish forms that are in front of them or to their right or left, unable to hear whether a voice is sweet or harsh, and unable to smell, feel or touch, a newborn baby will often have an expression of happiness or sadness. This means that the baby is really able to experience the happiness and sadness that exists within their being. This is the point: that a baby is still able to see inwardly, smell inwardly, feel inwardly and to be in contact with their innermost feelings. ‘Inwardly’ means with the soul. In this way the small child is able to know, to hear and so on, but not in the way adults do – in the way you do. It is clear that the baby’s inner feeling is still really alive and really pure. This is why it is said that a baby is beloved by God.
And a newborn baby is truly a human child; he or she has neither nationality nor language. That is why, if you took a child who is born here and you put them in Africa they would grow up and become like an African. If you took a child from Africa to live here, they would grow up a French person. This shows that the feelings of a newborn baby are still wide, and can encompass anything that exists in this world. That is why one says that they are beloved by God, for they are untainted by faults and impurities. That is what people usually say.
As Bapak has said before, the state of such a small baby is the same as our state when we do the latihan. So, there are many members, both in the United States and in England, who have never in their lives heard or seen songs or dances such as those of the Balinese, of Indonesians or people of other places, yet in their latihan they sing songs and perform dances that are very similar to those sung or danced by people in Bali and Java and other parts of the world. This proves that the inner feeling – the feeling that is pure and clean and arises without the influence of our heart, thoughts, and desires – is similar to that of a newborn child. It is a feeling that is vast and noble, capable of touching and being touched by many different forces.
Coming back to this small child, this newborn baby: once he or she starts to see the shapes and hear the sounds of this world, and becomes familiar with smells and tastes, such as salty, bitter, sweet and so on, they are drawn away from what they experienced in the spiritual realm, and come close to this world. As days, months and years pass, the child grows and learns; their heart and thinking start to work and they gradually come closer to this world, and grow further away from their own soul.
No wonder, therefore, that there are many people who say, ‘I don’t believe in miracles, and I don’t believe in the power of God.’ Indeed, this is because the faith of their hearts is close to this world. They would believe in God if God were visible like this glass jar. They would believe in God if God could be seen like the walls of this building. But that is impossible. This is because all the experiences they have had, from the time they were small until they became adults, were coarse experiences, of things in this world. And they want to use these to understand the experiences of their soul, which are not in this world. The result is that they cannot know, or find, the truth.
So, that wide inner feeling – the human inner feeling – becomes narrow; and this narrowness manifests as the characteristics of a person’s own nationality and language. This narrowing can go further, not just down to nationality and language but down to a person’s own self, so there is a separation between I and you. No wonder then, that there are rich people, people with great wealth, who remain quite untouched by the sight of other people’s poverty – though of course there are also rich people who have feelings of love. Then there are many intelligent and clever people who, when they see people who are ignorant, do nothing about it. There are, furthermore, those who have plenty of food to eat and yet take food away from others, causing suffering. It is the narrowness of their worldly outlook that brings human beings to this state, whether they like it or not. So it is God’s grace that, in the latihan, we can become aware and receive how our inner feeling works when it is like that of a baby.
Through this latihan you will begin to be brought closer to other living creatures and, above all, to other human beings. And eventually you will be able to feel, understand and be aware of the nature of other forms of life. That is what will happen. But Bapak hopes you will not be in a hurry, wanting to see God and touch God. Do not be in a hurry. As yet, you are not even able to touch plants. You cannot even touch matter. You can touch them with your hands, but not yet with your inner feeling. Only when you can do that can you go higher and higher.
So, learning something must proceed from the outside inwards, from smaller to larger, and from below up to what is higher. How could someone who is learning suddenly find him or herself already at the highest point? That would in fact be dangerous, because then they would not know how many miles or metres they were from the bottom, making it very easy for them to fall from that high place. Many people have fallen in this way because they thought or imagined they knew God and felt they were guided by God, whereas in reality they did not know if it really was God. Later, when, for example, they fell ill, they would ask, ‘How can this be? How can I be sick?’ Then they would say, ‘God does not want to help me.’ That is not it. The truth is that what they experienced or what they did was not yet on the level required for a human being; that is, for all of you.
This process will not necessarily be slow, but it will proceed in an orderly manner. The barriers, obstacles and impurities have to be cleaned and eliminated, because they have piled up and they darken and cover up our inner feeling. ‘If God is All-powerful why doesn’t God just eliminate these things?’ people ask. ‘They just have to be eliminated.’ Ladies and gentlemen, certainly, God knows. God knows more than your feelings do. These impurities and faults are attached within your being. Where are they attached? They have accumulated in your flesh, in your blood – they are everywhere; so they cannot simply be isolated. It is like sugar: how can sugar be separated from its sweetness? Free sugar from sweetness and it is no longer sugar. And the sweetness you separate from the sugar, that can no longer be called sugar either. God knows this. If it is done by force, you will die. That is why God works within you in a way that is orderly, which does not lead to harm, destruction or any-thing bad for your self.
In reality, what is in a hurry within you and wants to go fast is your heart, mind and desires. The heart, mind and desires are an obstacle to the inner feeling. It is these three that lead a person to give priority to what they enjoy, to what pleases them, and to what they feel will bring advantage for themselves. It is the opposite with the inner feeling. As Bapak has said before, the human inner feeling is broad, and can embrace everything on the earth and even what is beyond this world. This is why you need to return, as it were, to the way you were when you were small. From this it follows that Subud, our latihan, is nothing new but something that has existed for a long time. It is for us only a repetition, a return to a state in which we can feel as we felt when we were very young.
However, the difference is that when we were very young, our parts could not yet work as they can now. That is the difference. So you are fortunate that as an adult you are able to receive the growth of your inner feeling, which is able to feel a contact with every kind of life force. When you were small you could feel this contact but you could do nothing about it; there was no use for it. It is the same as if, when you were small, you had a knife – you couldn’t use it, so what was the good of it? Now it is different: you are handed a knife and you know how to use it, because you are already able to function.
It is clear, then, that what happens in Subud in no way goes against what God has decreed for human beings, nor against human life in this world: namely, that we should establish mutual understanding between human beings, between nations, and between all living things. Through this, you will learn to know and recognise everything and will learn where the dangers are. So, when you finally return home – meaning to your home in the life after death – you will already be familiar with all the dangers, with the various paths; you will know which one turns this way and which one goes that way. We all need to acquire this knowledge while we still live in this world. Do not delay until you are facing death, because then it will be too late. Then you will no longer find it, because, as Bapak has told you, learning to know and recognise everything takes a very long time.
In your latihan, when you do latihan together, you are in fact starting to be educated. Your inner feeling has begun to awaken and you have begun to know one another, so you become like brothers and sisters. This is the benefit of doing latihan together: it is – not that you create, but that there is created from within you – a group of human beings who are one, whose inner feelings are open, and who can connect and relate to other people.
Your heart, of course, sees it differently. For instance: ‘I can’t do the latihan because it’s so noisy; it’s better if I do it by myself.’ That is exactly what the heart, the thinking and the desires are like. And, as Bapak said earlier, this is what differentiates the nations, separates I and you, my family and not my family. This is what the heart is like. But once your inner feeling has been freed from the heart, thinking and desires, it will return to a human feeling that can embrace everything, and then there is no more differentiation between one and another. This is how it is in the religions. It is said that religion is not for one or two people, not for one or two nations, but for the whole of humankind, because there is one God for all human beings.
Furthermore, it is good to accustom yourselves to receive whatever you receive from God when you are surrounded by noise and busyness, because people do not always die in peaceful conditions. There are those who die while travelling in a car, those who die in the cinema, those who die after winning the lottery or after having lost their job; people die in many different circumstances. But if you have accustomed yourself to [being in the right state] wherever you are, you will know how to die without hindrance. Also, in your outer life it will become evident that you know how to be in harmony with others, how to be sociable, and how to unite the hearts of a large group of people.
You may also do latihan at home alone, in order that, as Bapak just said, you can feel the difference between life alone and life with others. Thus you will learn what it is like to die in a crowd and what it is like to die at home; in other words, how to die in a noisy place and in peaceful conditions.
So Bapak is saying that you may do latihan at home, but you should never neglect to attend the group latihan you share with others. For you have to realise that you do not yet know and understand your own measure. You do not yet understand your own capacity. Although maybe you are not aware of this – actually, there’s no maybe, you are absolutely unaware of it – when you do latihan together you are being helped by those who have made more progress. And those who are helping are also unaware that, at the level of the soul, they are helping others. Their heart may feel, ‘I do not yet have enough for myself, so how could I help you?’ That is the heart speaking, but not the soul. The soul is always in harmony with others; so is the inner feeling of your human individuality. For only in genuine harmony and real unity can human beings turn towards God, who is One for all humankind.
Therefore Bapak appeals to you, and hopes that as well as doing the latihan once or, at most, twice a week at home, you will also do it twice, or at least once, in a group with others. But in fact Bapak hopes that you will help strengthen your group, which means doing latihan twice a week in the group and once at home. That would be good, very good. Then, once you are able to receive it, you will eventually experience the truth of what Bapak has just said.
Bapak will illustrate this with a short story. He once knew a man who could know about things before they happened. How did he acquire such an amazing ability? During that period of his life he lived in great austerity, depriving himself of everything. He slept little, he ate little, he refrained from eating delicious food. He didn’t take pleasure in sleeping, and abstained from all amusement – he would never go to the cinema. In this way he obtained amazing knowledge and an insight one could be proud of. Among other things he could tell the time of a person’s birth. Someone might ask him, ‘What day and date was I born on? I have completely forgotten.’ He would answer, ‘You were born on such and such a date, at such an hour, on such a day of the week.’ He knew this, not by calculations, but from his state of inner quiet. But in the end many people came to get his help in such things, and out of gratitude they would bring him butter, milk and tasty biscuits. At first he ate only a little of this. But the biscuits were delicious, and the other things too, and as the days went by he ate more and more, and his wonderful ability got dimmer and dimmer, until everything he said was wrong. How did that happen? It was because he had obtained his ability through asceticism, by depriving himself of everything.
So, if you get what you receive in Subud alone, by yourself, in peaceful conditions, then, when you go to the cinema it will all be gone. It is different with Bapak. He continues to receive while enjoying a film or while working; while counting money or while he is concerned with the needs of the household, and so on; he still feels close to his friends. Likewise, when he is here with you his receiving does not stop; it does not disappear when he comes here to Paris, which is such a busy place. It does not disappear when he goes to New York, which is unbelievably busy. It is still there. Why is this so? Because Bapak is able to receive in a crowd as well as in quiet conditions. That is how it is.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of Bapak’s talk on this last night. Tomorrow he will be leaving all of you here in Paris and continuing his journey to Wolfsburg in Germany. So Bapak would like to say goodbye to you all; and he prays that God will bless you and that you will always be able to follow the latihan, and achieve what you hope for and what makes you truly happy. Bapak thanks you very much, especially those who serve on the committee, who received Bapak and his family, and prepared everything so well that Bapak lacked for nothing. For what you have given and done, may God reward you in the same measure.
Bapak says good-night and thank you.