The Antidote stories

A Worm's Eye View

Hartley Ramsay (UK)

Of all days, there is one above and beyond the rest that I would describe as the most important day of my life.

Coombe Springs, that holiday Monday in 1957, was crowded with followers (dedicated and otherwise) of the teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Like myself, they had been invited there to meet someone called Pak Subuh.

Who Pak Subuh was we had no idea, but as we gathered on the lawn and in the downstair rooms of the house there was a flutter of expectancy that was almost tangible. This was increased by a request from John Bennett that he would like to see us in groups of 30 in his study for a preliminary briefing. So, as we climbed the stairs all external chattering ceased. Mr B, smiling, awaited us in his big chair (he was a very big man) and when we had settled he spoke the first words all of us were to hear of Subud.

Memory cannot recall the fine detail, but the gist of the matter was that Subud, a precious gift from God, had come to England, and Bapak (Pak Subuh), the first to receive this gift, this contact with the power of God, had an appointed mission to share it with all who asked for it, regardless of race, creed or colour. Truly, God was no sectarian. Subud was for mankind, to rescue our world from the rising tides of materialism and return us to the Source from whence we came.

To receive this contact no special training, preparation or study was needed, simply a sincere wish to worship God. There was not much more to it than that. In all, about ten minutes' worth, yet a very moving and bewildering ten minutes and, like most things Subud (as we were to learn in due course), totally unexpected.

John Bennett looked round the circle of faces. If any present, he said, wished that evening to receive the contact, they should put their names on the list now being circulated.

A piece of paper and a pencil arrived in my hand. I signed and passed it on. 'What have we to lose?' I heard someone say. Fishermen in Galilee 2,000 years ago may well have asked the same question when they heard 'Follow me' spoken softly in their ears.

We trooped downstairs in a manner far different from that of our ascent, numbed at first, then thawing as we turned to each other for corroboration of the facts, sparse as they were. 'How could this be?' everyone seemed to ask. The credo of the Work we had been following was 'conscious labour and intentional suffering': in that context there had been no free lunches, no payment without effort. Yet this Subud was free for all for the asking, something for nothing, which was near to blasphemy. I added my pennyworth - with nil effect - to the debate, which for many of the Gurdjieff old guard went on for months, even years.

Two hours later we sat on the floor, without shoes, ties, rings, watches or glasses, outside the dining room where Bapak and his Indonesian helpers were opening people at the rate of 30 every 40 minutes or so, behind closed doors. The sounds that came from within did little to ease our mounting apprehension. We were next.

The evening sun shone brightly, but the dining room curtains were drawn. Chinks of light filtering through revealed three or four shadowy figures by the large bay windows. Bapak was one of them, we knew now for certain. He was smoking a cigar.

We were spread out in a wide oval, an arm's length apart. Bapak moved into the centre and spoke a few words in Indonesian which his assistant Icksan translated. I shall never forget them:

'Close your eyes. Relax. Hold on to no thought. Believe in God. Begin.'

I closed my eyes, as bidden, and was filled instantly with a joy I had not known before or since. Words were shouted exultantly inside my head: 'I am going home, I am going home' and were repeated without stop as I began to weep tears of relief, remorse, gratitude, wonder, worship. 'I am going home' - every particle of my being responded to the notion.

Around me I heard strange cries and thuds of falling bodies, stamping and singing and shouting and the sounds of running feet - but I had more than enough to contend with to take much notice. Time lost all meaning. Then, suddenly it was over. A voice called 'Finish'.

We were now all members of Subud. thanks be to God and thanks be to Bapak.

Expectations for my second latihan. naturally, were high. But there was no repeat. Nothing happened. And likewise for the next 40 latihans, or so it seemed. 'Going home' was going to be a longer journey than I had imagined, a lot of it uphill in lousy weather, with no signposts that I could decipher. I had no road map and no American Express. But I'11 say this: it felt good.

Lists were always a feature at Coombe, as they are in any civilised community, from Compostella to the House of Commons. Six latihans a night (at least) and 30 members to each latihan gave a total of 180, not including late-comers and queue-jumpers. Quite a congregation. So six lists were put up on the notice board in the entrance hall and members were asked to put their names to the latihan of their choice.

The reasoning was acute: if the first latihan started at 8pm, the last could finish at 11pm. Thus would order prevail, if everything ran to time. But Subud time is not Greenwich mean time, as we now all know.

Further, at least 50 percent of the attendance at any one evening wanted unfailingly to be at the 8pm latihan (perhaps their wives insisted). Consequently when the lists went up. there was always a rush to the board to be in the first 30, or even the second or third 30. The narrow hallway within seconds became a rugby scrum - at the bottom of which would usually be a member from Manchester with a biro that wouldn't write doing his best despite the rush to insert on the early list the names of 15 of his friends who would be along later.

On occasion there were threats of lynching.

It is doubtful if Subud organisation at this level has ever been surpassed in the UK,

There is a story in Varindra's beautiful new book A Memoir of Subud where Bapak explains that God's help is nearer than we think, perhaps only six inches away - but we have to stretch for it.

Touched, as I read, by the reality behind the words, I seemed to relive at Coombe again an experience which I had almost forgotten, during those mad, hectic, exciting days when all the world seemed to be beating a path to Bapak's door. After a rousing opening latihan, mentioned previously, I stood like a statue for several weeks, while everyone else danced like dervishes, sang like saints or fell about like clowns. I began to feel forsaken, an outsider, or like the fifth man in a quartet.

Then during a latihan in the 'huts' (ex-army pre-fab structures purchased to cope with an escalating membership) I saw myself on the edge of an escarpment, looking across wide plains to a limitless horizon, luminous and serene.

At one point I glanced upwards and saw a huge golden disc high in the sky. Involuntarily I raised my arms. As I did so the disc came towards me. I stretched myself and it approached nearer, becoming smaller as it did so, seeming to accommodate its scale to mine. When the disc was no more than several feet in size, it hovered at a point just beyond my fingers. By now I was on the very tips of my toes and straining every nerve and muscle: as I reached up yet again, the disc came even closer. And at the very moment when my fingers finally grabbed the edge of it, I uttered my first latihan cry.

In shock and surprise my eyelids flicked open. And there, directly in front of me, stood Bapak, his face only inches away. This produced another shock, another cry, and Bapak moved across the room.

Yes - when Bapak said God's help is six inches away, he meant six inches. I have been singing in the latihan ever since.

In five years of Gurdjieff not once did I raise my voice to contribute to the sharing of 'work' experiences which was so necessary a part of group life. Now, in the Subud latihan I became so vocal that I was deported to 'O' group, which consisted of members whose latihans were so noisy that they disturbed other members. At the time it seemed to me a particularly English (or perhaps Coombe) way of dealing with the problem, if indeed it was one. No other Subud country that I knew of had 'O' groups; it was as if the English equated worship exclusively with churches and cloisters, or were excessively sensitive (which I doubt.)

To outsiders, certainly, 'O' group must have sounded like bedlam, but not to 'O' groupers. We came to recognise each other's music across a crowded room with rare discernment. One 'O' grouper, I recall, said my latihan utterances sounded identical to those of the disturbed and retarded children he had in his care during the day - while I fondly imagined myself as a Scottish Sinatra.

My relationship with Coombe Springs before Subud came had been ambivalent. There were times when I could not bear to enter the gates and would often turn away. Yet it was the personal kindness of the people who lived there who helped me during my early days in Fleet Street. Not least of these was John Bennett. He it was who suggested that I have tea with him in his study once a month.

I found the house during week days a far different place from what it was at weekends, when work groups gathered and every corner was filled with meaningful activity. In the silence and the empty garden one seemed to take more notice of the profusion of flowers and the ancient trees and the faded charm of the house, worn a bit now at the edges, where King Edward VII was reputed to have romped in his heyday. Coming straight from London into this setting was a rare treat, and to listen to Mr B enlarge on topics close to my heart - Chartres, Rumi, Saint Teresa - was an experience for which I am ever grateful. Had it not been for such moments very likely I would have quit the Coombe groups and thus missed the opportunity of joining Subud and of seeing and hearing Bapak speak many many times.

Once when I arrived the study was empty, yet I could hear Mr B's voice. He was outside the window, lying flat out on the balcony and almost completely covered with white doves, which were feeding out of his hand. When he rose to greet me, the doves rose too, a fluttering circling mass of beating wings, catching the sunlight and sending shadows careering across the ceiling. He scattered a last handful of grain to the air.

'Look,' he said. 'Look what someone has given me for my birthday.

Mr B. lifted from the table an etching yet to be fitted to its frame and held the print, mount and glass together to give the effect. It was 'The Circumcision' by Rembrandt, an intimate family scene where Joseph holds the crying babe in his lap for the attentive old man who is carrying out the operation. Mary prays by their side. With a few scratches on the copper Rembrandt had penetrated the very heart of the matter.

A very special day.

When the Subud Chronicle started Mr B called me (and others) to help out, and this became a steady chore for many years. The pigeon holes in the entrance hall became my first call for copy when I came to the latihan; and slowly over the months links were formed across the world with Subud brothers and sisters in many countries who took the time and effort to report on the coming of Subud into their lives, and of the drama and excitement (which Coombe knew only too well) when Bapak came to visit.

Those early Chronicles had many failings, but often possessed a freshness and innocence which is perhaps not without value. The means at our disposal were minimal (as they are to this day) - but it was essential to establish some sort of communication channel across an expanding Subud world. There were as many bonuses as brickbats, I was forced to take a more active interest in all that was going on around me. Names and faces and stories rise up in random recall:

- Bill and Eddie, old mates of Glasgow days and long-suffering companions on the Evening Standard and Marius too, among the first to be made a helper by Bapak at Coombe. He later withdrew from Subud for nearly 20 years, then telephoned one day with excitement in his voice to tell me that the latihan still works, as he had discovered the day before. 'Where,' he asked, 'can I find a group nearby?' - then gentle Frank who loved the latihan so much he never wanted it to stop, still producing carefully worked pictures of the Passion of Christ - and vegetarian John who wavered on the sidelines, then turned away because Bapak ate meat - and dear Charles, first editor of the Chronicle, book lover and born lexicographer whose briefcase was forever stuffed with countless slips of paper on which were written in his distinctive script Indonesian words with their English meanings - and Eddie's friend Norman who had a growth in his head the size of a small orange which disappeared after Bapak (in Australia) appeared at Norman's bedside (in a hospital in England) and had latihan with him.

Then, of course, there was the beautiful Eva Bartok whose 'miraculous' cure brought the nation's press to lay siege to Coombe where, for several traumatic weeks, photographers and reporters popped like sparrows in and out of the bushes - and then the sudden emergence of Sjafrudin the portrait painter who could not draw hands or feet, so he stood his figures in knee-high grass with hands in pockets or behind their backs - and not forgetting Ike, now a learned professor in Oz, the greatest guitarist in the world; and Paul who was possibly the worst - and Maria and Olivia, dearest sisters of all.

Bless 'em, every one. For my money, every Subud opening is an extraordinary Subud story.

When I heard that Bapak was to return home to Indonesia, I had but one wish, one thought - what must I do to make sure that the latihan would continue in me, and that I would have the good sense to stay with it. Such was my level of understanding.

Bapak had been so close to all of us over the past months that I could not bear the thought of his departure. His last talk during the first stay at Coombe was held in a newly-completed hall, packed to capacity, with many members overflowing into the cloakroom downstairs, where they would hear Bapak's voice through an open door. I arrived early and took my seat in the middle of the fourth row directly in front of Bapak's chair, determined not to miss one single word of instruction or whatever. The message came through loud and clear:

'Attend to your latihan sincerely and regularly twice a week,' said Bapak, 'and God will do the rest'.

When Subud was firmly established in us it was permitted to have one latihan each week at home. An experience at this time proved in salutary fashion for me the truth of those farewell words of Bapak.

It was a chill evening. I switched on the electric fire in the bedroom and began the latihan. Initially there was a flood of thoughts, in dialogue form: lately there had been pictures and images of Jesus appearing in the latihan, and I seemed to question their validity. Was I deluding myself? Was it imagination run riot? EspeciaIly Jesus as a figurine exquisitely fashioned in alabaster, surrounded by white birds - surely this was altogether too fanciful? As my doubts proliferated, they were suddenly checked. I was pushed to the floor on my knees, and from deep within me came the reply, expressed with astonishing emphasis: 'It is Jesus, it is Jesus!'

I became as a stone: rigid, chill, inert, lifeless, immovable. Something apart in me viewed the experience with great clarity and no emotion: hell must be like this. So it proved. Before me, as on a panoramic screen, there then appeared the mouth of a monstrous toad, from the corner of which dangled a frail human leg. A typical clip from Hieronymous Bosch - not painted, but real. I drew back in horror. As I did so I was given to understand that I must go down to hell many times until even this vile toad was redeemed.

As the latihan continued I became aware that the mundane little bedroom where I knelt was now filling with radiant white light from a source beyond. I sat back on my heels, eyes tight shut yet opened wide. The light dazzled, and seemed gradually to take the form of some immeasurable and mighty presence that towered over me, through the roof and far into the night sky above.

Again I touched the floor with my forehead and there came a dawning (and unbearable) realisation - that I was at the feet of Jesus. There, in front of me, within touch, yet I dare not. I was lifted up, and my arms were outstretched. Then I passed out.

I am obliged now, in the coolness of time, to beg forgiveness for any self-delusion or self-puffery (to use Varindra's apt term) that cannot be excluded whenever words are used. Because asked, I have tried simply to bear witness. Nothing more.

When I was able eventually to tell Bapak (on his next visit to Coombe) something of what took place during that early latihan at home, his reply put my poor head and heart at rest:

'You see Jesus when you are truly repentant.'

Thirty years on, June 1987: again a time of departure, this time for the Subud brotherhood worldwide.

Without knowing what was taking place in Indonesia, I retired to bed with a profound conviction that I was going to die. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. A leaden weight lay on my spirits and would not be shifted. I awoke in the night, convinced the end would be soon. But I rose in the morning and breakfasted as usual. Later in the day Olivia rang to tell me that Bapak had died.

I took the news calmly, but realising with a kind of chill surprise what my experience the night before had been all about. I went upstairs and the latihan started and continued for some minutes. The words came out in a rush, unbidden:

'God bless Bapak, God bless Bapak, God bless Bapak.'

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