The latihan – the spiritual training you have received and practise – is a training that comes from God’s power whenever the influence of the desires that reside in your heart and thinking is stopped. Therefore, in doing the latihan you are simply in a state of surrender: patient, accepting and willing to let go before the power of Almighty God. Even though you are not yet able to know or to sense the extent of God’s power that envelops you, God is aware of your trust, and therefore you are able to feel submission, satisfaction and full faith.

Looked at from the point of view of the intellect – from the way people usually think – such behaviour is not serious or genuine, since one is allowing oneself to be dependent on God’s power. However, looked at from the spiritual point of view – given that, as Bapak said, the latihan is awakened by God’s power within you whenever the influence of the desires in your heart and mind is inactive – it will work faster if you surrender to God. This is because God knows everything about each one of you, and knows your true capacity and strength.

Bapak has experienced all this; so later on, even if you cannot do so now, you will be able to confirm it. And there are also those among you who have really experienced what he has just said.

Bapak will illustrate it. When you were a newborn baby you could not yet see, hear, smell or taste the shapes, colours and tastes in this world. But even so, your face would express sadness and happiness, and also you cried. Certainly there must have been a reason for that; and the reason was that as a baby your connection with your soul was still very close. So, because of that connection, whatever was going on within your soul was what you felt, and that led to your expressions of sadness or happiness and to your crying.

Well, adults simply assume that this is what babies do, but of course nothing happens without a cause. It showed that when you were a baby you still had a close connection with your soul. And the connection between your soul and God was close too, whereas your connection with the world was not yet really established. You were not yet able to see the forms of this world, of your surroundings, nor were you able to hear sounds. In short your connection with your soul was closer than your connection with worldly things.

After that, as days, weeks and months passed, you began to be able to see the forms of this world, to hear voices around you, to smell, to taste salty, spicy and all sorts of other tastes, and your connection with your soul began to fade. As you continued to grow, it was not only your sight, your ears, nose and mouth that were attracted to the atmosphere of this world, but also your thinking and your heart. That was the beginning of your close connection with the world, and your connection with your soul was increasingly blocked. So by the time you grew up and became the adult you are now, what we call the realm of the soul, and what Bapak has called your connection with your soul, seemed more and more alien and obscure.

And now the time has come when God is giving His blessing and grace to human beings, to all of you: your connection with your soul is being reawakened, without letting go of your connection with the world. So this latihan you are receiving is not something new or something strange; in fact it has been the property of humankind from the time human beings were created in this world.

It is not surprising that many people do not believe in the existence of God. They say that God cannot be seen, cannot be touched or heard. Indeed, Bapak does not blame these people, because their sight has become the sight of this world; it is no longer the sight of the soul. The same goes for their ears, their nose, their mouth, their feeling, their heart and mind.

Even those who do believe in the existence of God depict God as a handsome, extraordinary, radiant person who resides in an amazing, heavenly place. He is described as sitting on a throne encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, and so on. Such is the imagination of human thought, because human thought or the human brain has been filled with the influence of the world, with what exists in the world. So when people picture anything, they cannot think that it will be any different from what they have already experienced in their mind and their heart.

This is the point, brothers and sisters. It is the reason why you do not need to think about the latihan. It is because your intellect is no longer capable of analysing and really understanding anything that concerns the realm of the soul.

Through the practice of the latihan – if you really surrender to God with acceptance and submission – you will be led, guided and educated by God’s power within you. Through this guidance your inner feeling will be cleansed and everything that is wrong or inappropriate will be repaired and made clean, so that you will become more aware of your connection with your soul, and it will become more apparent. Only then will you begin to be able to use your feelings, heart and mind in a way that is free from the influence of the world.

Therefore you need to have a feeling of patience, and really surrender with acceptance and submission, because that is an absolute requirement for human beings in worshipping God. As in the case of the messengers and others who lived a long time ago: those messengers and the others received grace and revelation from God simply through their patience, acceptance and their willingness to let go.

Of course, it is not enough to practise patience, submission and acceptance for just a few years. For, although you are not aware of it, the faults that you possess have been there for a very long time and have corroded your inner feeling, so it is not easy to remove them and return everything to its original state, even though it is being done by God. That is because God is aware of your strength, and adjusts the process of cleaning and repairing the faults within your inner feeling to your strength and capacity. That is of course necessary, so that you are not damaged and do not experience anything disagreeable.

And you do not need to practise the latihan all the time; that is, every day without ceasing. No, it is enough for you to do it two or three times a week. And at other times you need to use your heart, your brain or your thinking for your worldly needs; that is, to look after your life so that you can live happily in the world.

This means that you have two responsibilities in your life. One is to worship God, following in God’s footsteps – what they call divine service, which is the work of God. This corresponds to the way people worship God in church, in the mosque, in the temple and in other places of worship. The other is the work of human beings; that is, the work of the heart and mind in looking after their life in this world, so that they do not suffer. In this way you truly dedicate your life to God, which means that you follow God’s will in serving and looking after yourself while you live in this world, and you receive and follow God’s will whenever you worship.

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Brothers and sisters, Bapak will continue with the talk he was giving just now.

The name ‘Subud’ is a contraction of Susila Budhi Dharma, and as Bapak explained just now, this name simply represents your nature, the nature of a human being who receives the contact with the greatness of God, or who receives the movement of life within his or her being. So this name is also a symbol or a representation of all of you. This makes it clear that Subud is not a sect, nor a religion, but a group of people who are able to receive a contact with God’s greatness. These people come together and form an association so that they can organise and provide the things they need while they live in this world.

We cannot blame people if they do not understand about Subud, because indeed the Subud latihan – this training you have received – is moved only by God’s power, beyond the power of your intellect and your heart, beyond the power of your desires, the movement of willing and wishing that people normally use. Once you have become aware of what you receive whenever you do the latihan, you will realise that it is like the result obtained by those who spend years and years quietening their hearts and minds and paralysing the power of those desires that always want the sort of things that people generally want. The result that such people obtain after years of effort – giving up their livelihoods, even abandoning their families and quietening themselves in solitary places far from society – is the same as you have obtained in such a simple way.

How is it that you are able to receive this, whereas those people receive it only after years of putting aside the needs of their life and all pleasures? It is because what you have received is simply the help of God, the grace and the gift of God. Perhaps that is because at this time you, and humanity in general, have achieved extra-ordinary things by using your intellect, and are surrounded by so many kinds of enjoyment that disturb the peace of your inner feeling. As a result of this, people are unable to quieten themselves; they are obliged always to follow the progress of the times and the progress of their thinking mind. Therefore God is giving help to humanity – to all of you – a help that you are able to receive; and it was God’s will that Bapak was the first to receive it.

Many people question whether one can receive a contact with God’s greatness in a real way without subduing all pleasures, and also without putting aside the influence of the desires and isolating oneself in a secluded place. Indeed, brothers and sisters, that is the accepted way, because it has become a tradition, handed down from generation to generation, that one can only achieve peace if one is truly willing to give up the influence of this world, which resides in the human heart and mind. But what these people have not realised, or seem to have forgotten, is that the One Almighty God can decree or change anything according to His will. That is the reality we have witnessed and received in the latihan.

So, what we have received in the latihan is usually called the awakening of life in death, or living in death. It is also referred to as the sound from death, or the whisper from death. In Islam it is called khatir ilham. The meaning of khatir ilham is the vibration of life that comes from the grace of God.

For there are two vibrations of life: the one is felt in the human heart when it feels anxious and afraid, and is the vibration of the feeling when it is influenced or driven by the low forces that exist within our self. In Islam that is described as the vibration of the shaitaniyya. The other – where the whole inner feeling is made to vibrate and leads eventually to a feeling of lightness – is the vibration of inspiration, called khatir ilham, which comes from the grace of God.

Therefore, this grace you have received makes it easy for you to worship God, because you are guided by God. So you do not need to search: ‘Where is God? Where is God?’ You do not need to do that; you have only to stay still, where you are. In other words, you do not search, neither do you refuse what comes; you just feel your own being and do not think about lots of things. You will then feel this vibration, which, with time, will go deeper and wider until it envelops the whole of your inner feeling. It is something you will be aware of spontaneously.

This state is depicted or symbolised by the statues of the Buddha, where he is shown not wearing clothes and in a state of quietness. He is quiet – well, of course he is quiet, since the statue is made of stone – but the meaning behind it is: ‘If you can free yourself of all the desires in your heart and thinking, and you can be still like this stone, only then will you be able to receive that there is a life within you that does not depend on your thinking or on the will of your desires.’ That is the reality it represents.

So the symbols in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are all filled with good teachings, whose meaning is to explain that human beings should worship God according to the examples they have been shown. All of that has existed and people have been seeing it for years and years. But the more time goes on, the more people just see it, without being able to receive what is behind it, what its reflection is that they can receive within their being. They are unable to do that.

It may be that God has understood that, in these circumstances, people will go on and on not knowing the right way, and that is the reason God has given guidance to human beings. It is also told in the Vedas: that in every age, whenever humanity is facing something grim, a revelation will be sent down. The meaning of revelation is a gift of God that, they say, is sent down from heaven. In the Vedas, this revelation takes the form of Vishnu. Vishnu means pure, eternal, incisive, one who knows things that are beyond our thought.

Bapak is not saying that he is Vishnu. No, brothers and sisters. But who knows what you will discover later on, when you are able to receive it.

This is what is said in the scriptures; in the Vedas, the Quran, the Gospels, as well as in the Psalms and the Torah. It is all related in those books. And we have witnessed the reality within these stories: it is the latihan that you receive and practise. That is why we do not need a lot of talk in Subud. We do not need it. What you need is practice: doing the latihan.

Do the latihan! Surrender with patience, acceptance and a willingness to let go, as depicted in the statue of the Buddha. You will be able to witness the growth of your soul, the whisper of your soul that you receive through the guidance of God imprinted in your individuality.

In the latihan you start by receiving a vibration, which eventually takes the form of a kind of training where you are taught all over again how to walk, to move your hands, and later also how to move all your senses. The fact of the matter is that Almighty God is guiding, leading and directing the movements of our life in accordance with our individual capacities.

Clearly, it is not only inwardly that we are able to be close to God. With this guidance and education from God we are able to be close to God and God’s power with the whole of our being: in our walking, in moving our hands, when we use our voice, in our senses, and even in our intellect. That is the reality of the latihan, the results of which enable human beings to fulfil the responsibilities of their life both in this world and later, after they die.

So, we are willed by God to become human beings, creatures of God, who are complete in this world and in the hereafter. We should not pay attention just to the hereafter and neglect this world, nor should we pay attention only to this world and ignore the hereafter. We experience both. We receive the one as an education from God, the awakening of our soul that we need for our life after we die; for the second we need to use our heart and thinking mind in order to be able to look after our life in this world.

Once you have progressed in your latihan and your soul has developed, you women will worship God whenever you get dressed, whenever you comb your hair, whenever you make up your face and whenever you go anywhere, and whenever you make love with your husband. It is the same for the men. When you eventually progress in your latihan and receive the development of your soul, you will be able to worship God – to be close to God in the way Bapak just described – through your normal actions: in the office, while you are working, going around, putting on your clothes and all the other things you do. All that will be filled with the whisper of your soul, which can show the right way for you, so that you can lead a good life and be happy while you live in this world.

So if all goes well, with the birth of this spiritual training that you have received, human progress in this world will not falter but will continue to move forward. But, besides making progress in this world, people will not be able to forget their worship of God.

So why is it that the latihan you receive starts with ordinary movements? Starts not with meditation but with things that people normally do in their everyday life? It means that the guidance God gives to human beings goes all the way from A to Z – from the outer to the inner, from the coarse to the fine, from the low to the high – so that human beings can receive and experience everything. It follows that you learn to discriminate between what is right and wrong, what is high and low. That is what happens in the latihan, as Bapak has experienced it. And it is what you will experience.

What Bapak has just described used to be experienced by human beings in pre-eminent positions in ages past: by the daughters of Brahmins, the daughters of kings, the daughters of knights, the daughters of Sayyids; or by the sons of kings, Brahmins, Sayyids and knights. Why was that, brothers and sisters? It was because, in times long ago, Brahmins, knights, Sayyids and kings called themselves by those titles because they had received divine inspiration and had high souls. That was then; and that was the reason why almost all culture – in fact all, not almost – came from the Brahmins, from the Sayyids, from knights and kings. This applies to the court dances, the way the Quran was recited, the way the Gospels were read. For in that time it was those people who really had noble souls and were able to receive God’s inspiration.

But because the influence of the world is always there, in front of and behind us, to the right and left of us, eventually the living culture that guided human beings to worship God diminished and became a culture of the intellect. So that nowadays, if you want to do this [gesture], you study it. You study how to dance ballet and you study the court dances. You also study how to fight.

That is different from the way it used to be. It is why there are many stories from the past that give guidance and insights for human beings to help them to worship God in the right way, the way willed by God. But as a result of the influence of the world that is making ever greater inroads, the living culture that can guide human beings to worship God has become blocked. We are fortunate that the time has come for us to receive help from God, so that in the latihan you will eventually be able to open the screen and reveal the secrets that up until now have been hidden in teachings and stories. You will be able to understand the reality of those stories.

That is what you will understand once you become aware of it. But now, since you are not yet at that point, Bapak has no choice but to explain it to you. However, just listen; do not place it in your intellect. Because if you do that it will become an expectation, and that kind of expectation in fact becomes an obstacle. It is better just to listen, and whenever you do the latihan, surrender and do not think a lot. Like the symbol of the Buddha that Bapak explained earlier. In that way you will increasingly be able to feel and increasingly experience the spreading of the movement of life to your whole body. And the longer you go on the more it will deepen and widen, enabling you to know the things Bapak talked about: in the first place, your path in life, and secondly, the path of your life after you die. And furthermore, you will know what is right and wrong in your circumstances and your life.

And do the latihan as if it were something ordinary, something that you normally do during your life in this world, as when you walk, take a bath and so on. Because the latihan you receive will always grow and develop. The only thing that will obstruct it is if you are still influenced by your desires; in other words, if you want this, that or the other.

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[That is the reason Bapak advises that when you do the latihan, you should not have any desire, imagination or speculation, but only surrender to God,] accepting, letting go, being quiet and attentive to what is going on within you. And to find out how far you have grown and progressed in the latihan, and whether your outer and your inner are already closely connected – or somewhat connected – that is something you will be able to receive and feel later on when Bapak does some testing with you.

That is all, brothers and sisters. Bapak will finish his talk here. He wishes you goodnight, and will now have his supper.

Thank you.