The Antidote stories

The Teacher of all Teachers

Vicki Gordon (UK)

I was into the guru thing, not so long ago. I had a teacher, an Englishman actually, who had once been a pupil of a guru, and he had himself a very powerful and charismatic character. For two years I sat literally and metaphorically at his feet, devoted to him, doing everything he told me to and absorbing everything he said. He taught me a lot, and I am still grateful to him, but he wasn't God, and one day it began to dawn on me that he wasn't infallible either.

Another year went by, and I began to feel an itch to look around - was this a test of my loyalty I wondered? For all his goodness and his strength I became more and more aware that he was only human, and therefore in some ways pretty much like the rest of us. The shine went out of my eyes, and his aura of sanctity and unquenchable spirit imperceptibly faded as I began to think for myself. His once impressive truths grew to seem little more than clichés and his enormous self-love became disquietingly obvious. And one day at last I got the feeling that he, too. was a little bored and lonely. But by then it didn't matter because I had found Subud.

It didn't seem much at first, just a thing one went to twice a week, and the people seemed uniformly dull - but for some reason I couldn't keep away.

Finding my guru had been a sudden and marvellous Event. I had gone to some lectures and had fallen in love immediately with the whole thing: mysterious, romantic, the hundreds of other young people all around him, the interesting clothes and beads they wore, the hard physical work we did together at weekends, the solemn group meetings and the ritual morning meditations. I had loved it all - and had belonged to it. It had been a great learning experience and a wonderful way of life. Until I had begun to think for myself.

My introduction to Subud was, in comparison, uneventful. It was only gradually that I realised I was a free agent. No one was telling me what to do, or even expecting me to do anything. The trappings - the people and the place and the helpers were all so ordinary and suburban and unattractive that I felt no attachment to them. I went to latihans in spite of them rather than because of them.

And I went on going, drawn there by some invisible thread that plucked at my coatsleeves every Monday and Thursday evening and got me on the train. They were confusing, those early days when I was new in Subud, and the things the helpers said were so contradictory that I couldn't believe a word they said. But I just kept on going.

Many years later I am still going, and I still dislike the set-up. I dislike the dingy halls, the smugness of some of the helpers and platitudes or other members; but at least I now know that I have what I had been searching for all along: direction, support and guidance in my life, and a living feeling of the power of God inside me.

The force, it was called, in Star Wars. It's in Subud; it's good, and it works. And I am on my way: my own path, tailored exclusively for me by a gentle Spirit, and not a human teacher.

I suppose the days of the gurus are numbered, now that individuals can get into contact with their own teacher, inside themselves, and the power of Almighty God, the Teacher of all Teachers.

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