SECOND TALK BY IBU RAHAYU

AT THE TENTH SUBUD WORLD CONGRESS

IN SPOKANE, WASHINGTON, U.S.A.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14th, 1997 - OFFICIAL TRANSLATION

Retranslated by Sharif & Tuti Horthy

Brothers and sisters whom I respect and whom I love, I give praise to Almighty God that I am healthy and well today and able to give you another talk as you requested, before you all leave the Congress. When I give my explanations, I intentionally keep them short, to enable you to follow and to understand better the way of the kejiwaan - the development of our soul - which we have been following.

Do not feel dependant on somebody

What is really important for each one of us is to feel and to benefit from our latihan. In fact, it is not necessary for us to talk too much about the latihan, but rather to absorb into our being whatever we receive. Do not feel dependent on somebody or anybody. You will remember how it was when Bapak left - you felt lost, you felt a kind of a thirst because there was no one to attend to your needs in the way Bapak had done.

When I talk to you now, it is not to replace Bapak, but I do it by God's grace and by the permission of God's power which I have received. I beg you not to look on me as a successor to Bapak in what he brought you.

For me, all this just came by itself - that Almighty God gave me the strength to face all of you. Even though many of you don't know me and we rarely communicate, you have a feeling of trust towards me. Maybe this feeling of closeness that we feel toward each other is a result of the latihan which we have been following together. This is something I wanted emphasize before I start my talk.

Brothers and sisters, if the other day I spoke about the content of Subud, today I want to speak about the purpose or the aim of the latihan we do. The purpose of the latihan is to come closer to the power of God, because from our experience in the latihan we become aware and are convinced that each of us has been touched by God's power, a touch that will guide our life both in this world and after we have died.

As has been emphasized in religion, we are brought into being by Almighty God and we certainly will return to Him.

God's purpose for our life is to test us

For all of you who have already done the latihan, this life is like a dream, compared to the life of the soul, which is unlimited and eternal. In dealing with this dream, we must live in accordance with God's will - and that of course is not easy to do for human beings like us, whose life in this world may be full of plenty, full of comfort, or perhaps full of misery. It is certain that God didn't create us all in this world without a reason, without a purpose. God's purpose for our life is to test us, to see whether we are able to return to our original state, the state of a human being as God originally created us.

Because as we all know, for the purpose of our life here, we have been created with various needs which correspond to a number of life forces or companions which are already familiar to you: the material, vegetable, animal, human, rohani, rachmani and rabbani forces.

Although you are not aware of it, these life forces have been helping you to live in this world. It is true that some of them can lead you astray, but that is not their fault. It is your own fault as a human being. And, if one can put it that way, this is of concern to the power of Almighty God and that is why God repeatedly sends messengers to humankind, in order to improve our state and raise the level at which we live.

This is actually the history of life, and it has all come about by God's will. And it was through God's power that Bapak was able, as an ordinary person, to receive the gift of God.

Why do I call it a gift of God? Because other than through God's power, it would have been impossible for someone to receive and pass on the touch of God, to the point where it can now be felt by a portion of the Subud membership including to those of us attending this 10th World Congress. And if there are still Subud members who don't believe or still have doubts about the coming of the Subud latihan, they will be able to confirm it for themselves within their being.

The growth of the human soul

As you progress in the latihan, it is not only your human soul which develops, so do all your companions within your being, which I just referred to as your material, vegetable, animal and human companions. For with the latihan they come alive and grow with you. So if you then neglect your human soul which God decreed for you as a human being, you will enter the world of the lower life forces which have been living with you.

On the other hand, if you can bring these companions - who have helped you to find satisfaction in your life - along with you, then they will feel grateful to you; because when the time comes for you to leave them they can then easily return each to their own world. While you yourself - if indeed it is God's will that you return to your state as a human being who is truly human - you will be shown the way and guided in exactly the way you are guided when you do the latihan in this world.And your living soul will of course continue to live, but not in the way you live in this world.

The growth of your human soul can be compared to the growth of a baby. Your soul grows in the same way - at first you do not understand something, and then one day you begin to understand it. That's how it proceeds - and in all of this it is God who is All-knowing.

But with this Subud latihan, even though we are still in this world, thanks to God's guidance we are sometimes given experiences in which we are required to bear witness to God's power, for God Himself requires witnesses. In these cases His creatures are enabled to bear witness to the power which created them.

Sometimes, if it is God's will, some of you may smell an extraordinary smell that you have never smelled before, or see something you have never seen with your everyday eyes. Or such experiences may involve your hands or your feet. This shows that the power of God has loaned eyes to your soul, enabling you to see something supernatural, something that other people will not be able to replicate or study.

This is why we need to do the latihan - we have to try to make our being into a vessel where God's power can penetrate. And this is the reason that in the latihan we sometimes go through painful experiences, which are called purification. For indeed the fact is that human beings are not perfect beings, and still require a lot of development and cleansing, with the result that Subud is not very pleasant.

Sometimes we experience something that is hard to bear or purification that we have to go through. That is when God is testing us by letting us feel to what extent we are still full of sins. So when you sense that you have made a mistake, then try at least not to repeat it over and over again, for that will bring you into a state of darkness where you are no longer able to be aware of where your mistake lies.

Because you are already in Subud and can already feel [God's] power within your being, it is no longer possible for you to lie to yourself in such things. For it is all there within you - meaning you yourself have kept the record. So that when you come in front of God, He no longer needs to ask you what you did while in this world, for you yourself will tell the whole story of everything you did. If you consider that we human beings can for instance call up records from a computer, you can imagine how much more God is capable of doing that to a human being. Everything is visible and can be clearly seen.

This is not just a story or a fairy tale. I think there are those among you who have been given the proof of how much Almighty God loves you as his creatures. That's why He gives us the opportunity of our life on the earth to put right all that is wrong in our human life, which we have inherited from those who came before us, from our ancestors.

Use carefully what you receive

I'm not going to try and tell you what it is you will experience in your life from here on, but I do advise you to use carefully that which you receive in your latihan, in order to live your outer lives in a way that is honest and happy and peaceful, and not to do things, take actions or do work that is harmful to yourself. For it is God's will that human beings should be able to live in harmony between each-other, between countries, and with the people they meet in the course of their work.

This is even more true for us. As Subud members we are aware of two fields of activity in our life. The one is where we open our feelings towards each-other and feel at one in following the latihan. But you also have to work in society, out among people who have not received what we have in Subud. The fact is that even within our own Subud community, there are still many shortcomings in this respect, where we fail to achieve harmony, whether it is in our work, or in our duties in the kejiwaan - in what concerns our soul.

This is because we still have trouble controlling our human nature which does not like to give way and would like to win. Sometimes we don't want to understand; we think we know better. But the truth is that in the life of our soul, in the kejiwaan, there is no such thing as winning or losing. What is the point of winning when everything is enveloped by God the All-knowing? If we can remain aware that we are capable of doing something because there is One Who guides us, that awareness will always bring us to a state where we can overcome anything that we have to face.

If you always feel you are right

If you always feel you are right, at times God will give you a reminder through disagreeable experiences. Of course this is something none of us want, since we all have just one aim, the worship of God. But if, on the contrary, you feel open and trust God, He will guide you in a direction that is good for you.

So what I would like to ask is that those of you who have been doing the latihan for a long time, who have been in Subud thirty years or twenty years, look again at where you are headed and what you are following.

Those of you who are young..

And those of you who are young, don't let what I have just said scare you, but try to prepare yourself as quickly as possible to become the people who will carry Subud forward. If you see those who are older doing something wrong, don't imitate what is wrong, but follow what is right. Because the ability to correct something in your life lies within your own being. There is no other person who can correct what is in your soul - no matter whether they are helpers or whatever, they cannot correct what is in your being. But God always gives his grace and mercy to those who follow Him, if they ask for forgiveness and if they ask for his guidance.

Constantly reflect..

It is certainly true that everyone encounters innumerable problems in their lives. These push you along until you sometimes forget and are no longer aware of what you are doing. Because in Subud there are no

teachings - so if we don't constantly reflect on what is going on in our own being, we will often be misled by the working of our own thinking, by our own inner activity. That is why the role of religion is very, very important in our lives, because in religion we are taught and have something to follow that was planted in us by our parents or by our own conviction.

I believe that is all I need to say to you this afternoon. I hope you are not disappointed if what I have said is not entirely satisfying to you. And I hope that we can continue on Saturday when I can add some more things that you need to know. Thank you very much.

Please note that this is the official translation, replacing the provisional one that has been circulated.