Parts of the book included in these pages:

• Foreword
• An Interview with Patricia Lacey
• Describing how it came to be written - (directed at Subud members)

  Extracts from Personal Interviews:

  • 1. Harun talks to Patricia in San Francisco
  • 2. Latifah and Patricia in San Francisco
  • 3. Latifah recounts her dreams
  • 4. Alexandra talks to Patricia in South Africa
  • 5. Eddie talks briefly to Patricia in South Africa
  • 6. Marston and Patricia in San Francisco
  • 7. Hadijah joins Patricia in San Francisco
  • 8. Rosalind and Patricia in Durban, South Africa
  • 9. Halimah meets Patricia in California
  • 10. Rosana talks to Patricia in Gloucestershire
  • 11. Ruzena and Patricia meet at Wisma Mulia UK
    
  • 12. Oksana and Patricia talk in California about
  • 13. Rosina meets Patricia in San Francisco
  • 14. Peter talks to Patricia in San Francisco
  • 15. Conrad talks to Lynelle at his home in Yorkshire
  • 16. Michelle and Lynelle talk in Yorkshire, England
  • 17. Vivianne and Lynelle meet in Stockholm, Sweden
  • GLOSSARY

• Ordering Info.

Foreword

The Subud movement came to the West just before flower power, cults and leisure drugs burst in on the youth of the 1960's in the United States. At the same time, many young people were involved in the Gurdjieff Work, a spiritual discipline which began to thrive internationally during the post-war period, and was, inadvertently, to become the launching pad for the spread of the Subud movement in the West.

Many of these first Subud members give their stories here. They tell of the amazing changes that took place in their lives after they came into Subud. As they were drawn to their destinies, they were able to give up the many distractions and corruptions of the 1960's.

But in order to understand the context of the conversations in this book, it is important to know a little of the history of Subud in the West. In 1957, Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, an Indonesian and founder of the Subud movement, brought to the UK and the West, a way of inner purification and guidance through a contact in a revelation he said he received in 1924 from Almighty God.

The contact, he claimed, could activate the seed of the inner life which is in all human beings. Anyone who requested it, could have it. The passing of the contact to an applicant was referred to as an opening (of the inner). This contact, Muhammad Subuh said, enabled one to do an exercise known in Indonesia by the term 'Latihan' (Indonesian word for training/exercise) through which purification and personal guidance could be processed if followed sincerely and patiently.

The word 'Subud', the name by which this movement became known, is condensed from three Sanskrit words - Susila Budhi Dharma - meaning the ennoblement of man in his true humanity through submission and worship of Almighty God. The reality of Susila Budhi Dharma, Muhammad Subuh said is what man on earth can attain through receiving the contact and following the Latihan.

Muhammad Subuh who came to be addressed by the Subud membership as Bapak - an Indonesian term for 'Father' or 'Respected Elder' - made his first visit to England at the invitation of John Bennett. A dedicated teacher, searcher and philosopher, Bennett headed the Gurdjieff movement based at Coombe Springs, Kingston-on-Thames on the outskirts of London. By the time Bapak came to the UK, John Bennett was opened by Hussein Rofé, an English Language teacher and linguist who had received the contact when he was in Indonesia from Bapak. It was Hussein Rofé who had filtered details of the contact to the West through articles he had written in various newspapers.

The arrival of Muhammad Subuh at Coombe Springs coincided with the start of an International Gurdjieff Conference. To their surprise, John Bennett told the Gurdjieff membership at the conference that he had come into Subud and recommended that they should also join if they were so moved.

Many of the hundreds of people opened during the following days, weeks and months at Coombe Springs, we are told in his talks and in his book "Autobiography" by Muhammad Subuh, returned to their countries where they passed on the Subud contact to those who requested it. This unexpected spread of Subud is reported in two other books, "The Path of Subud" by Hussein Rofé’s and "Concerning Subud" by John Bennett. At the same time, many people from abroad hearing of the Subud contact through this initial Gurdjieff network, travelled to London to be opened.

After a seven month stay in the UK, Muhammad Subuh was invited to visit many countries to talk about Subud. To aid him, he appointed Subud members to open those wishing to receive the contact. And despite the efforts of these new helpers, he continued his world tours every few years until his death in June 1987 to give a wider breadth of understanding of the Latihan experience to those who would listen.

Aware of the historical significance of the lives of her friends, many being amongst the first to join the Subud movement, Patricia Lacey, a gregarious traveller, began recording conversations during her travels to the USA, Canada and South Africa. Lynelle Stewart, an American friend, in turn, recorded some of her conversations with Subud members during travels in the UK and Sweden which we have included here.

For my part, it has been a pleasure to work with Patricia who has travelled thousands of miles in her quest to record eye-witness accounts of the early Subud days and, more important, the effect of the latihan in peoples' lives. What is striking about these interviews is that each story is so different which confirms the claim that the Subud experience works according to the nature of the individual.

But before we print the conversations Patricia had on her travels, I would like to present an interview with Patricia in which she talks of her Subud life.

Katharine O'Sullivan

An Interview with Patricia Lacey

Patricia and her husband Richard Lacy were in the Gurdjieff movement for two years when Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo (later known as Bapak to the Subud membership) arrived in the UK in 1957.

During that time, she, with others, found in Gurdjieff what she called "gaps" and certain difficulties with a philosophy which seemed to say "You can't do and you can't change anything very much!" Yet the exercises were designed to observe and examine oneself with the aim to change.

Looking back, she recalls, "We got rather bored with being told that we can't do and we can't change very much and Bapak came and he was entirely different. It was almost the opposite of the Gurdjieff work - in the Latihan you don't think, you don't do anything except relax and receive from Almighty God.

"I was very very anti-God. I wouldn't have the word mentioned in my house and it took me a long time before I could even say the word. So imagine my surprise when I went into the Latihan room for the first time and I heard Ibu (Muhammad Subuh's wife, Ibu Sumari who died in 1971) say as she started the Latihan "There are many religions but only one God. Begin!"

I thought 'My God, I am getting out of here. I am not staying if this is all to do with God. Let me out'!

Then my arms shot into the air and I thought, 'Good heavens what are they doing? They're hypnotising me!' I looked around although one is supposed to keep one's eyes closed. There were only two women with us from Indonesia and there were '50 other women and they were all doing different things - crying, weeping, shouting and my arms had begun moving.

I thought 'They can't possibly hypnotise 50 people at once. I shall go on to see what on earth it is all about'."

Yet that Latihan exercise which she does at least twice a week these days, Patricia says, has had the most profound effect on her life.

"It has changed my whole philosophy, changed my attitudes, changed everything and given me tremendous understanding - things I never dreamed I would understand and, of course, in the end I actually believed in God. It took me about 15 years before I even mentioned the word and then, of course, it started coming out in the Latihan. For me, its opened up absolutely everything. Now I feel as though I understand about the universe and the eternal life."

Patricia, the youngest of three sisters, came from a farming family in Cumbria, England. She had initially trained as a nurse at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London and then switched to nursery kindergarten teaching after training at Homerton College in Cambridge between 1943 and 1945.

Almost as soon as the Subud movement started in the UK, Subud Groups through the Gurdjieff members who had joined Subud, sprouted throughout the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, America, South America, Sri Lanka, India and Australia. Patricia's husband was from South Africa and shortly after joining Subud he became became ill. His mother Renée Lacey invited the couple to South Africa so that Richard could recuperate. When the Laceys consulted Bapak, he said, "Yes. Go! Begin the groups on November 1. But only open two people at a time."

With two other Subud members appointed by Bapak, the Laceys went to South Africa in 1959 where eight people were waiting to be opened. Subud groups were established then in Johannesburg, Capetown and Durban and Ermerlo in the Transvaal. Today the three city groups still exist plus an Indian group outside Johannesburg.

Patricia and her husband fell in love with South Africa and stayed on. After G years, Patricia and her husband separated and she returned to the UK where she continued her career as a kindergarten teacher. Richard stayed on in South Africa.

"In the early days, when people would arrive from all over to get opened, I used to say 'Wow join Subud and see the World'. There never was a truer statement than that because everybody I knew in Subud travelled and some people, who were little suburban people who would never have said hoo to 1 goose, found themselves going to Subud gatherings all over Europe. Some even went to live in Indonesia. They've done all kinds of amazing things, so Subud widens you and widens your horizons. "

Patricia recounts the story of a father of a Subud member. "Tell me", he said, "what is this organisation you all belong to? Why is my son called another name? How do you know people from all over the world?"

She then told him about Subud. "Ah", he said," now I understand. When my son left university I gave him £1,000 and a ticket round the world. And he went away for nearly six months and he came back and gave me £800 back. I couldn't understand how he could possibly go round the world and only spend £200. Now I understand. He visited all those people."

"This man was fascinated by his son's action. He didn't mind, despite belonging to the Jewish religion, that his son had joined Subud and changed his name:' she recounts.

The hardest thing for Patricia to face in her Subud life was, she said, when Bapak tested her in front of a Subud audience. Testing is achieved through going into a Latihan state and receiving the inner reality of what, generally spiritual, is unknown to one.

"The only time I dared get up to test." she says," I had been in Subud 20 years. And Bapak slaughtered me. What I called slaughtering! (laughter) He told me the truth of my nature. He told me everything. It was pretty ghastly. And I don't mind if my friends criticise me. But Bapak! Here was my spiritual father revealing my true nature. My spiritual father was blasting me and that was really hard to take."

"Yet I learned two very interesting things. The first was that it took 6 to 8 years for me to truly understand the test. It was very deep. And Tuti (Bapak's granddaughter), told me the other day, that the reason it had to be so strong was because my material force and other energies belonging to the earth within the human body which are supposed to serve and not control human beings on the earth was so strong within my will, the only way for Bapak to smash through that was to do what he did which helped to free me."

"When I went back to Bapak's house after that testing, Ibu Rahayu (Bapak's daughter) and Tuti and her sisters were there. They embraced me and they all said I was so lucky."

"'No' I cried, I am not lucky at all. Bapak was very severe with me."

"Ibu Rahayu said to me, 'You are very lucky Patricia because now you don't have to carry that burden any longer'."

At the time, Patricia found this 'lucky gift' difficult to accept. But during the following years she came to understand that Bapak had cleared her of the inherited schizophrenia which she and her sisters were carrying.

"Obviously there was something within me and I feel that maybe I was cleared of that and maybe I was also cleared of my sins. I had one or two lovers before Subud. I drank quite a lot. So I feel I was cleared and freed of some of the junk that I picked up through my life."

Another very important event for Patricia was the decision to separate from her husband. She felt it was revealed to her through the Latihan that if she stayed with him, life would always be very difficult especially as she witnessed her husband becoming more and more alcoholic and living more and more in a fantasy world. But she found it very hard to leave him even before she made this discovery.

"I must have packed three or four times and never had the guts to do it and I think the Latihan freed me. Suddenly one day 1 was able to see the whole situation I was in. From that moment I said 'No I can't do this. I can't stay like this forever. I have to leave'. Then I left."

When she sought Bapak's advice, he told her it was better to accept what was happening. He advised her to stay in England and get a job that would satisfy her heart. From then on she was back in nursery teaching but with a difference which she believes was due to the inner changes and directions that took place within her through her Subud life.

Employed by Camden Council in London, she set up nine nursery schools and mother and toddler groups during the next six years for the immigration and community relations sector. She says, "It is quite a story. And it was a gift from God. I found all the buildings. I got all the staff. I think it was a complete gift."

In the last few years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people in Eastern Europe have found out about Subud and requested the contact. Patricia went to the Ukraine when the Subud groups there requested that people with experience of the Subud Latihan spend time with them. She spent an initial three months living with Subud members in the Ukraine. She then joined them again for a further two months' stay.

Her latest project is to get "Conversations with Friends" published. Of how she got the idea to interview people in Subud, Patricia says, "l was retired and I wondered what I should do next with my life. I thought of all the people I knew, many of them of my age, who, one day, would no longer he on the earth.

"Nobody would know our stories. I'd always wanted to publish a book and I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for me to do so, if I recorded my conversations with my Subud friends."

"What 1 would like to add personally about many of the people whom I interviewed is that it is noticeable that when they joined Subud many were on drugs and alcohol, this being the culture at the time. In fact, experience has shown that drug taking and heavy drinking block the effect of the Latihan and interfere with spiritual growth. Happily for my friends, they were able to give up these habits."

Katharine O'Sullivan

But how do you print a book?  Marcus Bolt author of   "Saving Grace" gave them the name and address of his printer.  And so the solutions came step by step in a very natural manner.  And the whole affair seems to indicate that people can work together from the seed of an idea to the fruition of a real project - in this case a book.

Many of the interviews for "Conversations" have been given by members who have been in Subud for 40 years.  They have been kind enough to sit down with Patricia Lacy and record their stories without exaggeration or leaving out the "bad" bits.  We have to thank Patricia for her initiative but especially thank those interviewed for their honesty, as it is a good example to those of us who feel humiliated by our own truth. In addition, the stories here are valid experiences and not just biographical data.  

Neither self-conscious nor boastful, the interviews recount how many of  the early members were often caught up  with drugs or alcohol.  So many were able to drop these addictions by really following their latihan.  One is not shocked by these details.  Rather one is left in awe of the strength of the Subud Latihan.   If, as occasionally happens, one doubts if anything is really happening in the Latihan, then be reassured by what you read here.

The interviews published are, in the main, based on the recordings made by Patricia  in the United States, South Africa and England.  Lynelle Stewart an American friend of Patricia's who visited England and Sweden has also contributed some of the interviews.  Katharine O'Sullivan, known to many as Katharine Walmsley, spent a couple of years in her spare time editing and preparing the book.

Ian Sternfeldt set the book up for printing and designed the cover.

Contact: First Impressions Publishing , 40 Furze Hill House, Furze Hill Road, Hove, East Sussex,  BN3 IPU or  e.mail: The Walmsleys