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The original prefatory note to the third collection (1988)
Bapak often encouraged me to tell stories. He himself was the best story teller I know. He told stories to Ibu, to his children and grandchildren and to his sons and daughters in Subud. His stories illuminated the allegorical mysteries of the Ramayana and the holy books of West Asia, they opened our minds to new meanings of seemingly impenetrable assertions, and to the mysteries and events in our traditional lore, giving them a freshness and richness far beyond their literal value. Arjuna, Bima, the Pandavas, Ibrahim and Sarah, Abu Bakr and Ali took on palpable substance and character to which we, in our own life and time, could relate. Knotty symbols, which we had inherited from our ancestors and acknowledged as being important without necessarily understanding their significance, opened up like sunflowers yielding new colours and patterns.
But Bapak's stories and explanations never let us make the mistake of assuming that the new insights we had been given were exclusive of other and older meanings, however superficial and even 'wrong' they may have seemed to us. This taught me one of the most valuable lessons we need in order to understand the world: life is not about either/or but about and/and.
Bapak as storyteller was like a master diamond-cutter revealing hidden facets of the material he worked on, so that the value of the whole gem was enhanced and our appreciation was enriched. His stories never entrapped our minds in narrow dogma. Rather, they freed us from rigidity and from the stereotypes which divide us within and without and prevent true comprehension of reality.
Storytelling, he said, was a good way to convey truths without preaching or teaching. They served to calm the turbulence in our heads so that a fresh aspect of reality could be accepted without it adding to the turmoil in the mind. He advised me to give myself two inner 'tests' before I told a story. I was to ask myself, 'Does this story put me in front?' If it seemed likely to, it was clearly an ego trip which, rather than calming peoples' minds and communicating something of value, would only create distrust and hostility and enhance the turbulence. And, Bapak said, when I was about to tell a story, I should spread out my inner antennae (and he splayed the fingers of his right hand, directing them at an imaginary group) and sense whether it might cause offence to someone out there, either because it went against a deeply held prejudice which the listener wished to protect or because he or she was not then in a state to hear it, however 'true' and interesting it seemed to me.
Often , while telling a series of stories, I have been so caught up in them that I have failed to make this precautionary test or my antennae have been insufficiently sensitive so that I have wounded someone unintentionally. As for the first test, when I speak in front of Subud members I am really careful to say that nothing I am about to say has any authority whatever, but that I will only try to convey my own understanding of what I heard Bapak say. If anyone understands it differently, they are free to reject my version and say so without offending me in the slightest.
But speaking in front of an audience is always a perilous experience. Especially when people seem to like what is being said, the speaker is in danger. I have often felt my ego, even seen it inside my head, like a monstrous little lizard flicking its tongue out at me to taste the adulation it is receiving, puffing itself up in self-congratulation. When I become aware of this - it takes a while because the lizard and I are one - I look it straight in the eye and say, 'Drop dead, my friend,' and it obliges. At any rate, for a while. I recall Bapak summoning Sudarto, Brodjo, Prio - the three musketeers of the Old Secretariat - and me to do a latihan in the early days of Cilandak. I had a shattering half hour. I 'saw' many ugly aspects of my nature which were very different from the perceptions I had about myself.
When the latihan was over I wanted to slink quietly away to my cubicle in the guest house, put my head under the pillow and die. I was making for the nearest door when I heard Bapak calling my name from the other end of the hall. As I approached, Bapak asked, 'Why are you frightened? You are very lucky to see yourself as you are. You see that Varindra is honest, but not honest . You see that Varindra likes the truth, but tells lies. When you see yourself, you must look and not be frightened. If you are frightened and do not look, these bad things will hide in your heart and grow like toads under stones.' So I learned to look my lizard in the eye, to acknowledge its existence, so that it would not grow into a dinosaur.
Bapak's advice is in the front of my consciousness as I begin writing this third collection of Subud Stories. The possibility that my egotism will rear its head in these words is all too real. And the possibility that some of these tales, or some feature in them, might offend a reader is even more real. All I can do is to ask for pardon ahead and try to be as true as I am capable of being, hoping that what is true for me might also be true for everyone.
Why do I write these stories at all? Obviously not for the usual reason: money. No-one ever made money in the Subud book market. In my mind there is a portrait of the Subud writer as a thin man. If one of us were able to communicate our assimilated Subud experience through the medium of a popular novel as John Bunyan, CS Lewis and Doris Lessing have done with their own spiritual experiences, we might. But no one has done so until now. I tell stories because I must. That is how I express myself, how I bring forth what is in me. In that sense it is a sort of latihan for me.
Bapak used to say that writing was my purification. You may well ask why I should inflict my purification on others, especially my brothers and sisters. What shall I say to that except that no one is obliged to turn this page over and go on reading as Georges Gurdjieff's Transcaucasian Kurd did when he went on eating the burning chilli peppers he had bought, thinking they were succulent fruit, and suffering because he was determined to get his money's worth. Besides, isn't it the fate of family members to have to cope constantly with one anothers, effluence?
Once when the month of Ramadhan was over I went to bid goodbye to Bapak early in the morning. It had been a month of rich experience of ourselves. Bapak said (Muhammad Usman translating), 'Varindra, you have been through a long fast from which you have learned much. You will now be travelling in many countries and meeting Subud members. Tell them the story of this Ramadhan.' As I often did when I was in Bapak's presence, I asked a stupid question: 'Bapak, what shall I tell them?' Bapak looked at me rather surprised it seemed to me, then smiled that familiar tolerant grin, and said, 'When you sit in front of them, be quiet. Then open your mouth and wait for Bapak.'
That, brothers and sisters, is what I propose to do until this book is completed. I shall sit quietly and wait for Bapak. These stories are mostly from and about Bapak. I am humbled by this thought and I am aware that though writing is my business, the blocks and stones in my mind and in the channels of my memory will not let the stories flow as clear and true as they should. But I hope that I shall be able to convey something of the rich experience of more than 32 years in Subud. These are parables of and for our time. They are my way of understanding and remembering.
Below is a series of clips from the book
1. First few lines - on choice
2. - on rules in Subud
3. - on teaching in Subud
4. - on the Buddha
5. - on hereditary mistakes and children
6. - on death
7. - on the state of the world
8. - on life beyond ? ?
9. - on why people have come to Subud
10.- looking for proof
1. First few lines - on choice
Bapak sometimes used me as a butt to make a point obliquely for the benefit of every one present.
He once asked, 'Varindra, what is the difference between you and an animal?' By then I had learned to sense when he expected a response and when he was asking a rhetorical question, so I kept my mouth shut. He went on (Prio Hartono translating), 'An animal is controlled by its instinct, by the rules within. A tiger will never eat vegetables. An elephant will never eat meat. That is because a tiger cannot eat vegetables and an elephant cannot eat meat. But you can decide for yourself whether and when you want to eat vegetables or meat, or neither, or both . It is up to you. This is God's gift to man. Man has freedom to choose between vegetables and meat, right and wrong, good and evil. But this freedom you have been given also means responsibility. You are responsible for the consequences of your freedom.'
Unfortunately, Bapak explained, the sub-human forces in our nature, to which we are in thrall at most times, obscure this human capacity to choose between right and wrong, so that we do not use this gift of freedom. Nor are we always conscious of the responsibility of choosing what is right rather than wrong. The latihan frees us gradually from the thraldom of the lower forces and trains us to become increasingly aware of our freedom to choose, and of our responsibility to choose the right course of behaviour and action. 'This,' Bapak added with a smile, 'is testing. Inner testing.' The smile, it occurred to me, signified Bapak's indulgent awareness of the possibility, indeed, likelihood, that we would grab at this phrase 'inner testing' to justify our propensity for doing what comes natcherly.
I was delighted by Bapak's description of the latihan as a way of attaining conscientious freedom. ........................
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And now Bapak has solved the conundrum for me. Freedom and responsibility were not opposed to one another but apposed aspects of the same value. One had no meaning without the other. In fact they were the same thing. .................
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2. Another clip - on rules in Subud
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On a later occasion, a delegation of helpers from a European country visiting Cilandak to observe Ramadhan decided to improve the shining hour by asking Bapak whether they should codify 'Subud Rules' for the benefit of future generations in Subud. Bapak took this in and was silent for a full minute as though he had decided to let that one go unanswered. Then he turned towards me and Pak Usman who had come on some other business and asked, 'Varindra, how high is the floor on which you live in New York?' I said 22nd. Bapak asked 'Can the windows be opened?' I said they could. Bapak went on, 'Varindra's wife, Lestari, opens the window and looks out. Varindra looks over his newspaper and says to himself, "Hmm, Lestari is at the open window. Interesting!" And he returns his attention to his newspaper. His eldest son, who is nineteen, looks out of the window. Varindra looks over his newspaper and says, "Roosman, better be careful." His youngest son, aged eight goes to the window. Varindra says in a sharp voice, "Imran you must never again go to the open window".' Then Bapak turned to the delegation and said, 'Rules are for children.'
But we were children who felt insecure without a railing of rules to hold on to ................
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3. Another clip - on teaching in Subud
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And as time passed, I began to see that the 'sin' of teaching was imposing one's own ideas and interpretations on what another's inner self was receiving in the latihan. One cannot teach the latihan. It is possible and sometimes necessary to talk about one's own experience because it might be helpful to someone else to make sense of his own experience. But theorising about another's experience is teaching. ................
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4. Another clip - on the Buddha
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I recall being in a 'delegation' of Buddhist Subud members in Sri Lanka who were feeling a little resentful that Bapak never seemed to include the Buddha in the line of the great prophets and teachers on whose messages the great religions were founded. Bapak spoke often about Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad but never, in that context, about the Buddha. As spokesman I asked why he did not mention 'our man' as it were. Bapak in a pained tone, said 'Bapak often speaks of the Buddha.' I said I'd heard many talks of Bapak but did not remember any mention of the Buddha? Bapak said 'Oh you mean the Gautama Buddha? Don't you know as Buddhists that Gautama was the twenty-forth in a long line of Buddhas? The first was Adam. Bapak often refers to the Prophet Adam. "Buddha" means perfect Man. A man in whom both principles, male and female, are perfectly balanced. That is why in depictions of Gautama there is no sexual differentiation. One of the distinguishing marks of a Buddha, according to the scriptural tradition, is that the genitals are retracted into his body. Is that not so? Adam was both male and female - not a hermaphrodite, but Man without sexual differentiation, to symbolise perfection.
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5. Another clip - on hereditary mistakes and children
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Bapak has told us over and again that the only way to prevent passing on the influences of our hereditary mistakes to our children - at least to the extent that it usually is - is to receive quietly and prayerfully before we start the sexual act which might result in conceiving a child. It was a piece of advice he invariably gave to young people, especially those about to get married. I realised from my own experience and that of my friends that this advice was most often followed only in the breach. One Subud brother caused loud and prolonged laughter when he asked Bapak, 'But Bapak, suppose after we have received and been quiet in bed we no longer want to?' Bapak roared with laughter and waggled his head in sheer disbelief that the question had been asked at all.
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6. Another clip - on death
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Once during Bapak's visit to Marseilles, I asked him one of my off-the-wall questions: 'What happens to a man when he dies?' I remember being ready to be slapped down but not in quite the way it happened. 'Varindra, you as a reporter should learn to ask sharper questions,' Bapak said (again, Usman interpreting). 'What's the point of asking what happens to a man when he dies. which man? What happens to one man when he dies will be different from what happens to another man when he dies.' It was now obvious to me that my question was inane and I felt very abashed and hung my head. After a while, Bapak relented and said, 'You are not ready to receive and understand the full answer. But Bapak will tell you something you can understand .................
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7. Another clip - on the state of the world
Bapak hardly ever read a newspaper. I once saw him reading a newspaper as I entered the room, and remarked that it was the first time I'd seen him do so. He grinned, a bit embarrassed, it seemed, as though he had been caught doing something unbecoming and said (in English), "Bapak was reading the advertisements. They are all lies. But not so much lies as the news". As a newspaperman, I understood very well.
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Bapak's inner was profoundly aware of the weight and direction of political trends but he would not clutter his mind with the breathless ephemera of the daily press. He once told me of his awareness of the movements of the nuclear submarines of the US and the USSR playing deadly war games in the Indian ocean. He said their material vibrations often woke him in the early hours of the morning. He was deeply concerned at the build-up of lethal weapons and asked me what was going on in the international scene at the United Nations.
I was his Man of the World. He would often greet me with the question "So what is happening out there?"
8. Another clip - on life beyond ? ?
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But from the occasional testing Bapak did with us and from hints in his talks and conversations I came to understand that the prevalent notion that life exists only on this planet is one of those absurd enormities of human geocentricity, an arrant piece of anthropoid hubris. We look for life in outer space, in other planets and beyond but we want to 'recognise' it................
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9. Another clip - on why people have come to Subud
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People have come to Subud for all sorts of reasons and non-reasons. If you took a microphone around to each member in a group - as I have done - and asked, 'How did you come to join Subud' nearly everyone will begin, 'It was very strange...' or ' It was a funny coincidence...' In the beginning many of the people who came to Subud were 'seekers' looking for a way to live their lives with less gormlessness than they had been able to find in books and in their workaday experience. Some were refugees from religious dogma and trumpery ritualism. Others - like me - had been members of ways and systems which they had followed as far as they could, and had turned to Subud when they found themselves up against an impenetrable blank wall.
Still others came for 'faith healing'. Eva Bartok's 'miracle cure', sensationalised in the London press and in Paris Match, induced hundreds to seek the help of the Miracle Man from Java. ...........
Some others had been persuaded, prevailed upon by a friend or teacher they respected, to receive the contact in Subud. Many had read John Bennett and later, Ronimund von Bissing and Edward van Hien, the first Subud authors. The chapter on Subud in Jacob Needleman's The New Religions, published during the Maharishi explosion of the 60s, brought many Americans to the latihan. I suspect that George Lucas, the writer-producer-director of Star Wars, had derived the idea of surrendering to The Force from the Subud members he worked with. It was done tongue-in-cheek but it was respectful and knowledgeable in the same as Needleman was, though neither Lucas nor Needleman ever joined Subud.
Most people attribute the reason for there joining to coincidence - .................
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10. Another clip - looking for proof
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But our minds look for proof - apart from proof of the reality of the latihan. We look for proof in its effects on our work, and in our relationships with our families and with others in society. I have been lucky to find that evidence outside myself, since I have spent my life writing and I can detect significant changes in it over the years, which I cannot honestly attribute to biological maturescence or increasing worldly 'knowledge'. I make a simple balance sheet: what has improved in my work, I credit to the latihan. What hasn't, I charge to myself. Often Bapak has asked us to 'let it' work in our daily lives so that the latihan is reflected in the way we act and behave, and show up in our 'culture'. The key words for me are to 'let it'. And then there is outward proof of the effects of an inner process. And one day, I fervently hope, we shall be able to give the world the proof it demands .............
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For more information on the book:
A Special Assignment - A Subud trilogy by Varindra Tarzie Vittachi
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