Replacing the Engine - Sharif Horthy

This copy came from the SIHA list server

When Hanafi asked me to put down my thoughts about enterprise, he said that for him our Subud Association was like a bus running on a motorcycle engine, meaning that because we didn't give enough attention to enterprises we always had trouble getting the rest of our worldly activities moving.

I was tempted to say, 'thanks, you've just written your article,' because I think he's right. We have this beautiful model of a Subud organisation to build ourselves a comfortable home for Subud in the world: there are the committees to provide us with large, decent spaces to do latihan, helpers groups to provide spiritual support and counsel, and the wings to support us in bringing the latihan into our lives, so we can be successful through the flowering of our talents thereby earning respect for Subud in the wider community. But the model only exists on paper and in our collective imagination. It doesn't work, because we don't have the money to support it.

But is supporting the Subud organisation the main reason for becoming an entrepreneur? I don't think so. That should be a by-product, but the real reason, I believe, is more compelling because it's kind of selfish.

I'll try to explain how I see it. Most of us at some point on our spiritual journey come to realise the enormous power of matter in the world and on each of us individually. I believe that mastering this power is our first step on the spiritual path and it is the latihan that makes this possible. Living in today's word, I don't know whether it can be done without the latihan. Perhaps that's why the latihan came to us in the twentieth century. But even with the latihan, we have to be willing to do it.

This is one of the many paradoxes in Subud; it has to do with surrender. A lot of people imagine that 'surrendering' is sort of going limp and 'leaving everything to God'; meaning that I am passive like a dead body; I put aside who I am, what I need, and let God change me and my life into whatever God wants. And then, mostly, nothing happens.

By contrast, have you noticed in the stories of prophets and saints and suchlike, that in their relationship to God's power they were 'real characters' - they were right there. They surrendered, sure, but they also responded, thought, felt, agonised, asked and answered. That's how I figure that real surrender is not passive but involves attentiveness and willingness.

What has all this to do with enterprise? Simply that for me an 'entrepreneur' in Subud is a person who is willing to face the material world with the latihan. No more and no less. It's not that everybody has to get and MBA and become a businessperson; but it means gradually integrating our material life into our spiritual life. To put it simply, I believe there's no other way to get to heaven.

If this is quite an innovative idea in the history of spiritual understanding, in the realm of intellectual debate it is even more so. The thing is that when the great religions were born, the material threat to humanity was nothing like it is now, so it was not high on the list of priorities. When the advance of science and technology produced the industrial revolution, the religious response was inadequate to deal with the increasing new burden of materialism on people's lives. Intellectual efforts to solve the problem led to the great ideological schisms that almost wiped us all out in our time.

There were the communists, who believed that material wealth is a zero sum game, so anyone who had more than anyone else must have stolen it from them, against the capitalists who believed that nobody should tamper with greed since that is what creates wealth. Now there are the greens who believe that international business is evil and if it isn't stopped now it will turn the whole planet into a giant car park while half of humanity starves. Of course each view has some truth in it and could contribute useful insights to the others, if the people who hold them could talk rationally to each other. The reality, however, is that on the whole they can't, and the animosities and mutual incomprehension between them still threaten the peace and prosperity of the world, no less than all the nationalisms and racisms and other human psychoses.

What can we contribute? I think the spiritual dimension - the idea that human culture can take control of the material world and use it to benefit life on earth - is the only thing that can bring harmony to these conflicting ideologies, and bring hope of a humane prosperity that is not exclusive and does not destroy the quality of life.

But can we prove that it works? To be credible we have to start by demonstrating that we can make this culture work on a small scale, in our lives and our businesses. Do we already have something to show? This year we had a workshop of Subud educators. By coming together and sharing the experiences of four Subud schools we saw evidence that pioneers doing the latihan can bring something quite extraordinary to education; it was real, it could be discussed and understood. If some of our successful entrepreneurs came together like that to examine their experience in business, would we learn something new - would we detect a different quality, or just business as usual?

Actually there are many entrepreneurs in Subud. Besides the interesting stories that we've read about in The Entrepreneur, there are many young Subud members who have started businesses. I would like to see them coming together more, networking more, perhaps through the efforts of SES, and trying to articulate how they're different. I'd like to see them more involved with the Subud organisation - not just supporting it financially but also helping it to become more entrepreneurial. I'd like to see SES as more of a catalyst in this process, being more aggressive in providing services to enterprises that already exist, becoming more like a Subud chamber of commerce.

So I end where I began. Yes, the Subud organisation needs money. If it doesn't get it, Subud will not disappear, but it probably won't grow much either. For Subud to grow, there need to be adequate budgets for Subud houses, wings activities, helper travel, and the work and travel of committee people at the international, zone and national level, who are the glue that holds our community together. My guess is that an annual budget to start Subud growing would be one million dollars each for ISC and MSF annually. With a lot of creaking our membership is supporting ISC to the tune of $200,000 or so today. We will never reach the higher figure without the financial support of enterprises.