Subud meets Religion

With love
Sharif

In the last week of November I travelled to Amman in Jordan. I was privileged to have been invited, in my role as Chairman of the World Subud Association, to participate in the Seventh World Assembly of the World Conference on Religion and Peace. My aim, as chairman, to make Subud known and to explain the work we are doing in the world. I was invited mainly due to the good offices of Simon Guerrand-Hermès, who is the treasurer of the WCRP, and another Subud member, Patrice Brodeur, who has for years been deeply involved with its active youth wing.

To give some background:

The WCRP is a multi-faith assembly of 'Religions for Peace' and is open to all religious communities. Its purpose is to:

• identify threats to the comprehensive realisation of peace
• promote the sharing among religions of their respective traditions, principles and values that can relate to the building of peace, and the awareness of the similarities within religions' commitment to peace
• from all this to help realise action that can build peace.

• to be work and practical issues oriented
• to involve the highest or most senior level of the various religions, as being the fastest route to action.

The Conference

The assembly was opened by King Abdullah of Jordan with his beautiful wife and was hosted by his uncle Prince Hassan, who is deeply committed to interfaith understanding. President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia happens to be also a president of the WCRP and kept his promise to attend the meeting in spite of his heavy new responsibilities. In his keynote speech he spoke with characteristic humour and humility of his difficult times under the former regime in Indonesia, and used the occasion to announce that, while Indonesia continues fully to support the PLO, she would now open trade with Israel.

This emphasis on high level activism distinguishes the WCRP from some other multi-faith assemblies, who come together much more at the grass-roots level, or who focus more on theological issues. The organisation has an Assembly every five years, and six Standing Commissions that work between assemblies. These Commissions encompass every aspect of peace, from action for the child and family, through action for conflict transformation, development and ecology, disarmament, human rights, to peace education.

The most important thing about this Assembly is that it meets to instigate action, and feedback from action. So in Amman the mornings were plenary sessions, when people gave speeches or presentations, some of which were outstanding. A Chinese professor, for instance, gave a talk on Confucianism, which was like a checklist for the human condition. There were also presentations that gave an insight into two of the major success stories of the WCRP.

The first, called "Political and Religious Visions of Human Polity" was a series of talks given by representatives of the four main religious communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is, the Muslim, Jewish, Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Roman Catholic Church. These four religious bodies had achieved the amazing feat of bringing together the warring factions in Bosnia and beginning to create some sort of accord from which peace could emerge.

The second was a presentation by a group from Sierra Leone, including the country's President, about how there had been this incredibly bloody rebellion, with atrocities being committed right across the country; and how, step by step, the leaders of the religions, being united, had come together and really cajoled the two sides until a peace agreement was signed. And this between people who had had their families horribly slaughtered by the rebels and the rebels themselves, who were persuaded to lay down their arms and become reconciled with their communities. And the preliminary framework for peace was worked out by the people themselves, through the work of this religious group. It was very moving.

The afternoons were given over to the business of the six Standing Commissions, and it was within the auspices of the Peace Education commission that I came into the picture. It was suggested that the best way to present Subud would be to join this particular commission, which was having a four-day workshop before the assembly. There was a sub-section called 'Education towards violence free communication and conflict resolution', and another, 'Environmental education and education for socio-economic development', and we felt that Colegio Amor fitted both these categories and that making a presentation about this school centred project would allow me to explain what Subud was, as the organisation behind it.

My aim in all this was not to make converts, but to reassure the people I met when they asked the inevitable ' what is Subud?'. I would try always to answer by explaining that Subud provides something universal and available for everyone. It is a world-wide spiritual community, and that what we share is a common experience of a contact with a higher power that we receive as a physical and inner reality. I also explained that we are not a religion, but we support religions, because people who may be looking for this reality and have not found it, can make contact with it through Subud without leaving their faith, and without separating themselves from their religion. I also had the sense I should be very open and stress that Subud is open to everybody, and that there is nothing secret or complicated about it. If people haven't heard of it, its not because we're secretive, but because we're not yet very good at explaining what it is.

In almost every case when I gave this explanation I got a positive response from the people I was talking to - both when I presented it to the Peace Education Commission, and when talking to individuals. For me it was real proof of how the world has changed in the forty years since Bapak told us not to make claims for Subud, in case we incurred the wrath of the religions.

I'm not saying we should now go out and proselytise; in fact that was one of the points I made to people, that we don't. But the sense of hostility or ridicule from the mainstream religions towards anyone who professes the action of God's power as a 'here and now' reality seems to be less today than it may have been in the fifties. The majority of the people I talked to clearly realised there is a tremendous need for the spiritual content to be realised in religion, and that that is the source of peace, not discussions, arguments and intellectual agreements.

Many of the people who heard my presentation came to me afterwards, and said they would like to tell me their experience, and they obviously felt we were talking about the same thing. There were three or four senior Muslims present when I gave my talk. I was quite nervous about them because I am a Muslim, and here I was talking about something that is not mentioned anywhere in the Quran; in the past I'd been given a rough time when I've talked about Subud in places like Saudi Arabia. But interestingly, each one came up to me later and said, 'Actually, I have the same experience, because I've been a Sufi and I know this and this, and this is how we do it', and so on.

Having what I was saying to people so warmly received helped me too. I felt I became better at presenting Subud as I got more practice at doing it, and gained confidence from the positive feedback. I was even asked by the group that co-ordinates the Peace Education Commission if I would be willing to keep in touch with them and work with them in the future.

I found this week a very touching experience. I met so many people who are truly committed to action in the world for peace; people who have a deep faith and a deep inner reality, which they are trying to express, through their religion, in practical action. Among them was Bill Vendley, General Secretary of the WCRP. Trained as a molecular biologist, he spent years in a Zen Buddhist monastery and then studied theology to try and make sense of his experiences. He and his small team of volunteers seemed to work around the clock with real attention to different people's needs and a deft grasp of commonalities and differences among their guests.

It was a glimpse into another world; one that is important, and one that I think Subud needs to have more contact with. If we are going to do things in the world we can benefit from knowing and co-operating with people who have already worked on these things, often for decades. Really what I took away from this experience is this: that Subud, if we do the things that Bapak told us to do in the world, is actually part of the mainstream of the world today. We're not out on a limb somewhere, having to work almost in secret. We can become part of that mainstream, and we're supposed to become part of that mainstream. We don't have to do it in isolation. And that's why I hope to keep up the contact with the people I met; and I suggest that whoever is then WSA Chair goes to the next WCRP Assembly and keep this contact alive.