Personal experiences
The following is a collection of anecdotes and personal experiences written by people in Subud. Links to longer articles can be found at the end of this page.
Ralph Nimmann, Cambridge, UK: A kind of soul connection ...
I found my way to the Subud group in September 1997. At my first meeting I sensed a kind of soul connection with some members. Half the group is involved in music, singing and creativity. My first latihan was quite overwhelming and left me flooded in tears. I got a glimpse of complete freedom, which was exciting and scary at the same time. I realised that I do not have to practice a certain mantra, or do special postures; I don't have to do anything at all - I am free!
Read more about Ralph's latihan experiences in Subud at http://www.cam.net.uk/home/subud/myexperience.htm#ralph
Rasjad Johnson, Australia: Lightness and closeness to God's love ...
I joined Subud in 1971 after migrating to Australia from the UK. I heard about Subud from a friend just before leaving in 1970. It all sounded pretty weird to me and I thought no more about it. Then I started feeling dissatisfied with my life and wrote to my friend asking how his experience with Subud had gone. Somewhere in his reply was a single sentence that said Subud works 100%. I was so intrigued that I sought it out for myself. I found the whole concept of my own direct link with God amazing. I was convinced that this was something special and all I'd have to do is leave it all to God. Later, I realised that I have a part to play in the process and I need to also make some effort. After all this time (much longer than I thought in 1971) I am starting to feel a small difference in how I am and act. I am less intense and not so angry so often, and there are moments of lightness and closeness to God's Love. A while ago, I had the opportunity to travel for Subud. It was then that I appreciated just how wide Subud is and how it can encompass all cultures and religions and ways of life, from a Muslim goat farmer in Java to a Christian executive in Sydney. We can all be as one in our worship through the spiritual exercise of Subud.
Amalia Inger Holm, Denmark & Indonesia: Subud found me ...
I did not come to Subud, but Subud found me. One and a half years ago, a dear friend of mine abroad who I had not seen for over ten years, dreamt about me, and contacted me to say that he had to tell me about Subud. What he told me resonated in my heart. I thought this was what I had always been looking for, searching for a spiritual way. Having left the Protestant church very young, I had searched for not only spiritual ways, but ways of action in this life. Six years before I started doing the latihan, I had a kind of vision which I could not forget, and in that vision, I both 'saw' a child and harp falling down from Heaven, and I 'saw' Christ and an Asian man who I could not identify. I painted that, and wondered who he was and what he represented until the day I first saw photos of Bapak, the very first to receive the Subud latihan. I acted on my vision and went to Nicaragua to work with children through music and art. Some years after, Subud came to me. Now I have been doing the latihan for almost a year, and amazing things are happening in my life. In latihan I am gently and sometimes not so gently being relieved of many burdens, both mental and physical, I am being healed from physical weaknesses and sort of 'cleansed inside. For me, Subud is a way to go and there is no going backwards now, wherever this will lead. I am getting help from a source I always knew about and which was always inside of me, but which I had been looking for in the outside, material world. I had a lot of fear. Now the fear is gone. It's a journey in a sometimes unknown land which without the latihan I would not have dared to enter. Now I can go 'where only the angels can walk', and the surprising thing is, it's not so difficult, and I am walking along with many brothers and sisters from all around the world.
Rozak Tatebe, Japan: Subud brought me many benefits ...
When I was a university student I was given an unexpected spiritual experience and knew that God really exists. This filled me with tremendous joy and gave me a completely new outlook of life. But this uplifted state gradually faded away and I found myself still full of impurities and dirtiness. I earnestly looked for something and encountered Subud. I felt nothing in the first few latihans. Then I had a strong reaction accompanied with a feeling of freedom and the conviction that my soul was being liberated by the working of the Power of God. I have now been in Subud for 46 years. My life in Subud was a journey towards inner transformation, which was sometimes intense and painful, requiring a lot of patience, but it also brought me many benefits like peace, happiness, harmony and spiritual awareness. My latihan still keeps going ahead and I am rather sure that it will continue even in the hereafter, as it is part of myself.
Salamah Pope, Australia: Shopping for God ...
I grew up hearing a lot about the non-existence of God from my parents, and a lot about the existence of God in various school and social activities - although there was never any proof of what religious people took for granted. 'God is like Father Christmas' my intelligent, well-educated parents told me, 'you grow out of it when you get older'. That seemed right, because I couldn't feel or experience this thing called 'God', least of all in church. But at the same time I was aware there was a dark and empty chasm inside me, the existential vacuum, which the believers just didn't seem to have. So when I left school I went shopping - for God. I must have tried everything going in London at the time - every religion, every cult, every secular society. And a few years later I found Subud, and God, or perhaps Subud - and God? - found me. And gradually that yawning vacuum was filled, as the Subud spiritual training brought me a living contact with my own unconscious and with the universe out there, too. So the experience of God, as a gentle Energy working within me, proved my parents wrong: but as they had had no such experience I have been grateful ever since for their honesty, because without that I would never have gone looking for God.
Articles
Articles from Subud Britain's bi-monthly publication, the journal, describing Subud members' experiences of the latihan in their lives.
An experience of Subud from Antidote - Experience of a spiritual energy - Salamah Pope (editor): Stephen (UK): Writing About Myself
I was there when Subud was brought to England. I was there when on 23 May 1957 Bapak arrived, and so, being in the right place at the right time, I was opened. I received my contact with the Power of God. I was enabled to take the first step into the spiritual world while still living.
People to whom this blessing has been given do not normally talk much about it or of what Subud has done for them. I think this is right. To verbalise a gift from God is perhaps to reduce it to the level of our own minds. Yet it is very natural for others to ask: what is the dividend? Where's the pay-off? I find progress in the spiritual life is clearly recognisable by actual results. There is nothing vague nor airy-fairy about it. Things either happen to you or they don't. You either receive from Almighty God or you don't. It's no good pretending, no good imagining, no good indulging in wishful thinking. The reality of spiritual experience is unmistakable.
I believe that from the moment of the opening we experience the miraculous; something happens to us, which is beyond the limits of daily human experience. Every time we do latihan and move not in the ordinary way but by being made to move or shout or sing or cry by the Power of God - that, to me, is a miracle. The latihan is an utterly natural phenomenon yet every time we submit a question to God in the 'testing' and receive a true answer, that is another miracle. These are not small things - even though after more than 30 years in Subud I treat them as commonplace. And perhaps it is as well that I do, because otherwise I might think I was very special. I am not special; I have simply been unbelievably blessed.
Naturally, there is the inevitable Department of Signs and Wonders in Subud. I know very little of these things, but many other Subud members have spoken privately of truly wonderful experiences which transcend all logic, all known natural laws, and all conceivable expectation or likelihood. Such experiences serve to remind us who are still in the shallows that the grace that can be given to one person truly and completely surrendered to God is not dependent on the length of time he or she has been opened in Subud. But, being by nature and upbringing a rather limited, 'stuck' sort of person, I can recount nothing like this. Perhaps I can give you a hint of it, though, with two little stories.
I was walking one morning down London's noisy, crowded Regent Street, minding my own business, probably thinking such sublime thoughts as what I was going to have for lunch or where I could buy a pair of socks, when the noise of all the traffic and the clip-clopping of those hundreds of shoes on the pavement was suddenly silenced. All I could hear was the distant sound of one single set of footsteps on the other side of the wide street. I crossed over, for that seemed to be what I was being guided to do, and I heard those footsteps approaching me. I came face to face then with someone I hadn't seen for 20 years. He was in a bit of trouble, and I could help, that was all. It gave me my first staggering realisation that through the latihan I could be guided through life in very ordinary, humdrum ways - as well as perhaps later in greater ways.
Then one day my left hand came to life. By that I mean that my hand suddenly acquired an independent life of its own. It started to be able, for instance, of its own accord to open a book, any book, however thick, at precisely the page I needed. I could go to a card index and it would pick out the required card without my looking. Whenever it did that, (which was never if I thought about it) I started laughing. People thought I was somewhat peculiar. But in fact I was laughing -for joy - that through the latihan one small part of me had become aware of the true life that exists within our ordinary life, and could act in obedience to the will of God for it.
Over the years in Subud I have learnt the essential attributes of being patient, to accept that the process of my purification will, in my case, take probably a very long time. Is there ever instant salvation? We seem never to be given more than our innate capacity to take. Our spiritual Romes are not built in a day or even 1,000 days (as Bapak's was). Nor does a tree fruit before it has grown large enough to bear the fruit. Yet I have found along the way I have become gradually aware that I am being guided, sometimes without realising it till afterwards; it happens in all sorts of amazing ways, large or small, through a power, a little voice, a nudge, a something inside that has its origin beyond this earth.
And the comforting thing is that on this long journey I have been given little presents from time to time to keep me going. I, who could never sing a note in tune or indeed at all, can now sing without people moving away. I can go to sleep at times seeing colours around me, such vivid arrays of light and colour that I seem to be in another world. Or I can go to a Subud meeting feeling tired and irritable and emerge totally happy and full of beans. I even remember one lazy siesta afternoon in Wisma Subud my long-dead father coming to me and telling me he was now at peace.
And so I could go on. I could mention the dawn of peace of mind, the beginning of the loss of my fear of death. I could mention even marriage (others will) and the transformation which the latihan can bring about in the relationship between a man and a woman. Mary and I are so close these days it's ridiculous. We hardly ever need to open our mouths. We too often say what the other was just thinking. This may sound dull: believe me, it isn't. Human love has many mansions.
In the end, I still think that the best way to describe what Subud has done for me is to recall, if I dare, what I was like before; to remember my privileged arrogance, my unkindness to others, my total atheist estrangement from God, my conceit, my fears and dreads, my profound ignorance of the purpose of my life, and my lack of moral fibre. I won't be foolish enough to pretend it has all gone. But I know with a certainty, which nothing in this world can destroy that, with care and watchfulness of my own behaviour, I can live the rest of my life within the protection of Almighty God. Can anyone conceivably ask for more?
From Antidote - Experience of a spiritual energy - Salamah Pope (editor)
ISBN 1 869822 03 X
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