Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, first of all Bapak would like to greet you; and now he will give clarifications or explanations about the latihan, the Subud spiritual training that you have received and practise.

Brothers and sisters, as you are aware and have experienced, the Subud latihan is a training that comes when the influence of your desires, heart and thinking, which always disturb your inner feeling, is stopped. So it is clear that the latihan, and the movements that you receive in the latihan, truly come from a pure current that is not influenced by your desires, heart or thinking, which are always used by the low forces you have within you. Therefore do not feel hesitant or worried about what happens in the latihan, because truly the movements you receive are initiated by God’s power, which starts as a vibration within you. You do not need to think about, or use your mind to understand what is going on in the latihan, because before your latihan has reached the required level, your heart and mind cannot possibly understand or appreciate how God works in your being.

What you need now is patience. The meaning of patience is that you are able to wait for the right time; you are not in a hurry. For patience – having a patient feeling in your heart – is an absolute condition, and is something that was practised and possessed by people who lived long ago, in the times of the prophets. The prophets themselves used no other means but patience, acceptance and surrender to the power of God.

That is why Bapak advises you to be patient and wait for the right time. Do not feel bored or indifferent while you are waiting, for God’s power within you continues working whenever you are truly at peace, truly quiet, and truly have faith and patience towards the greatness of God.

Actually, as people living in these times, we are very fortunate to be able to receive a contact with the greatness of God in a state that does not require us to change our behaviour. As you know, in former times people received this by reducing all their pleasures, and even withdrawing from society. This was simply to be able to receive the contact with the power of God that you have received now. So it is clear that God has made it easy for us, so that we can receive God’s guidance, direction and education while continuing to think about, paying attention to and pursuing our life in this world.

Why does Bapak say that God has made it easy for us? It is because the latihan you do is a training for the soul. The soul is the content of your being, so it is impossible for this training to be carried out by a person or by any creature of God whatsoever; it can be done only by Almighty God. Therefore Bapak asks you to have a patient feeling, have faith in God’s greatness, and be willing to receive and to wait without any feeling of boredom towards God’s power.

That is why all that remains for you to do is to receive whatever you receive, whatever God gives you. And if every time you do the latihan you have a feeling of patience, willingness to let go and acceptance towards God’s power, you will always receive changes within you; that is, within your soul.

As you have often heard Bapak say, in Subud and in the latihan there is no method. Nor is Subud a religion. It is an association of human beings whose souls and inner feelings have been awakened after having long been influenced and enslaved by their desires, thinking and hearts. For those of you who already have a path, whatever it may be, Subud is the technique16 or the reality that will enable you to find the answer concerning what can be obtained on your respective paths.

As a proof of this, you have each been able to verify to some extent what you have received. Each of you is different; that is, you differ in what you receive. This is not because there is some sort of discrimination in what people receive; rather, it follows the measure of your strength, the measure of the soul and inner feeling of each one of you.

This shows that there is no one method that can be adapted to fit every creature that lives in this world. The method that fits each creature in this world, including you, lies within each one of them and only God can apply it. So you do not need to hesitate or worry about whether Subud is this or that kind of path or religion, because what you have received is an awakening of your individuality that does not go against your own nature. You will certainly have more faith in your own seeing, hearing and feeling than in somebody else’s. That is why in this Subud latihan you are trained to receive for yourself, in a way that is different for every person, even if its direction is the same – towards the greatness of Almighty God.

In religion it is said that ‘God accompanies you; God is always with you, with you human beings.’ That is what the religions say: Christianity, Islam and the others. But do not take this as something easy, because the God who is close to us is God the Almighty, the All-wise. We, on the other hand, are human beings; and it is difficult for us to get close to God, because we are constantly disturbed, obstructed and covered by our own desires, heart and thinking. Therefore, what is important for you all is simply to be able to quieten your desires, heart and thinking, which constantly disturb you.

It is fortunate for us that in quietening and taming our desires, heart and thinking we are helped by the power of God, as you can verify every time you do the latihan. Even though it is not by your wish that your heart and thinking should stop working, they stop spontaneously in the latihan. Nevertheless, brothers and sisters, do not assume that God will always help us. As far as possible we should not waste or misuse God’s help. That is why it is very important for you that, once your thinking and your heart have become quiet and have been stopped by God’s power in the latihan, you do not then use them again and make it hard for you to receive what you are given.

It is not God’s will that you should not use your thinking and your heart; truly, you are allowed to use your heart and thinking. But to change or improve your content – meaning your soul – is impossible with the power of your mind and your heart. However, it is essential that you use your thinking, heart and desires for the world, so that thereby you can look after your life well.

If you were to ask why you need to change your soul, your inner content, it is because the inner content of each of you is different, even though you are certainly unaware of this. But it is this content or soul within you that is the power or authority that rules your life. So if the content that rules your life is wrong, or not good yet, it means that your mind and heart, as well as your behaviour, are at all times steered and moved by this wrong soul.

When a soul that is low and inappropriate becomes the content of a human being, it can lead to an accumulation of mistakes and dirt within their inner feeling. Therefore in your latihan you will receive movements, all of which will cause purification, the awakening of your inner feeling, and a change in the content or the soul within you. This is something you will be able to witness and verify once you have reached the necessary level.

So it is clear, brothers and sisters, that the latihan you do is purification. That is what purification is like; it requires activation and movement. You know for yourself that when something is dirty you cannot dislodge the dirt if you do not move it. There are many ways of making it move: with a machine, by hand, by shaking it, and so on. All of that is movement and activation. So the activation and movement you receive in the latihan is very important, because it is what you need to get rid of the dirt and mistakes that are within you.

And the movements in the latihan are not limited to the movements of your arms and legs and your voice. As you continue, it becomes wider and deeper, and reaches your heart and brain. In short, everything needs to move, your whole feeling and your whole body. Once you are able to receive that, your inner feeling will become clean, wide, noble and spacious; an example of which is the inner nature of Jesus Christ, within whom dwelt the power of God.

That is why he was called a son of God. You can understand for yourself the relationship between a child and a parent. The child is the result of the parent, so his nature is not far from that of the parent. The significance of this is that when someone has been purified, God’s power holds sway and dwells within them. So whatever Jesus did – whatever is done by someone whose whole inner feeling is pure – his behaviour, his speech, his seeing, hearing, walking, pointing, waking, sleeping, none of that came from his desires, heart and thinking but from the will of Almighty God. It is not that Bapak compares you to Jesus Christ, or to others whose inner feeling is completely clean, but it would be really excellent and wonderful if you could, to some extent, follow in the footsteps of people who have been granted God’s grace because of their patience, acceptance and surrender towards God’s power.

Of course all of you have heard and understood more than Bapak about the life of Jesus Christ. From the time he was small until he became an adult he never sat at a school desk, and he never studied this and that. But because of the purity of his heart, the cleanness of his inner feeling, the way he kept his promises and obeyed God, and trusted God with patience and acceptance and surrender, he was able to receive everything he needed for his life. For example, his heart and thinking were cleansed and given understanding by the power of God, so that what he said was believed by millions of people.

That is it, brothers and sisters. Therefore doing the latihan without the use of your mind and your heart does not mean that you stop using your heart and thinking altogether and become stupid. No. On the contrary, by not using your thinking in the latihan and by really trusting God with patience, acceptance and a willingness to let go, your heart and thinking will be trained and filled with that which is beyond the mind that you use every day.

What you receive will of course be different from what was received and practised by people who lived long ago, and by the prophets, messengers and Jesus Christ; because, as people who are living today, your circumstances are quite different from earlier times. In former times the world was not yet full of pleasures, not yet full of things that needed the attention of your mind. But now it is different. It can be said that the moment you wake up in the morning you start to think: ‘What am I going to do today? How will I earn money and find food?’ And the same goes for all the other needs that people have these days.

That is the difference. That is why you will certainly need more time for the cleaning of your inner feeling. But with patience, acceptance, the willingness to let go and trust in God’s greatness, you will be able to achieve what you need for your life over a period that is not too long.

But this is just Bapak saying it; actually it is very hard to have a patient and trusting feeling. For people living at the present time expect that whatever they want and whatever they hope for should, as far as possible, be there the moment they have thought of it. In other words, people today have a very strong will to get what they want quickly. That is why Bapak advises you not to have that attitude towards Almighty God or in doing your latihan.

Regarding movement and what is awakened in the latihan: Bapak would like to repeat that there is certainly a connection between the process of purification of the inner feeling by God’s power, and faults in the inner feeling that are usually called illness. It is automatic that when our body is awakened, whatever is ill within us is certain to move, and that movement will heal the illness.

Nevertheless, Bapak advises you not to regard it as given, or to expect the Subud latihan to be a process for healing illnesses. In reality the latihan is a guidance in the direction of excellence, in the direction of a complete worship of God. So for those of you who happen to be ill, do not regard the healing of your illness as the most important aspect of the latihan, even though it is part of it.

Indeed, the latihan can bring about not only healing of illnesses within us. Things that are not working in our family, between husband and wife or between parents and children, can all be improved. So it is clear that the latihan can bring us not only good health, but also can improve anything that we need for our life in this world. However, Bapak says to you once again, do not let all this become the most important thing. Because although it works that way, it all depends on God’s will: if God does not permit it to happen or God does not bless us, it will not happen. Therefore it is best for you if you can just surrender everything to the greatness of God.

As an example, you certainly remember the stories about the lives of the prophets, the messengers of long ago. Take Jesus Christ, for instance. Many people felt affection for him, many people loved him, and yet there were also those who hated him. Many people loved Abraham too, but there were people who hated him. The same was true of Moses, there were many who loved him and trusted him, but there were also those who hated him. And it was the same with Muhammad.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, do not assume that once you have done the latihan and have received a lot, and you feel that you have begun to be cleaned, that you will definitely be loved by everyone. Do not assume that; because human beings remain human beings and are always to some extent accompanied by their desires, thinking and heart; they are attracted to this and to that, they still eat bread or rice and drink coffee or cocoa and other things. So you are still affected by the sort of things that usually affect people.

That is the point. So what Bapak is saying is, do not assume or take anything for granted, but do your latihan with full surrender, patience and acceptance, and be willing to let go, because God is All-knowing and All-wise.

That is the end of Bapak’s talk to you all. He simply hopes that you can receive this short talk with some feeling of satisfaction. Bapak takes his leave of you and wishes you goodnight. He hopes that you will do your latihan diligently, with a feeling of patience, acceptance, and surrender. May God bless you so that you can receive God’s gift well and easily.