Above: Underground Mouse, watercolor, by Roberta Hoffman
Notes from the Underground
Musings from the SICA Board: Passing the Torch
Assembled by Fayra Teeters
This month’s Musings focuses on the notion of Passing the Torch, projecting the Subud and Cultural legacy onward beyond our immediate vision.
From Lawrence Pevec:
I probably think too much about how Subud and the latihan can survive into the future when it seems that so few new people are being opened and nearly every month another long-time member passes. Those who are attracted to Subud and get opened are mostly older, which is great, but doesn’t help the issue in an apparent way.
Three to four generations have done the latihan starting with, 1. Bapak’s generation, known as the Greatest Generation, grandfather, 2. Ibu Rahayu’s generation, known as the Silent Generation, 3. my generation known as the Baby Boomers and 4. my children, now middle aged, known as Generation X. To date there are no #5s Generation Y’s, Z’s or Alphas in my family; that is, grandchildren who are opened and doing the latihan. The question becomes will the fifth and sixth successive generations, in my lineage, want to experience the contact? Will they be attracted to a spiritual path of any kind? Will maintaining the Subud organization appeal to them? Will there be support for their participation?
One way this may be realized can be found in an excerpt from a talk by Ibu Rahayu that I found in the Subud Online Library. Ibu addresses the importance of the Youth wing. Please read the whole talk:
This is the reason why Bapak wanted there to be a Subud youth association – for networking and supporting one another – to learn to feel and understand each other. The youth are tremendously important. They will continue what we have started – we’re going to die off (eventually). You need a space to figure out what is the purpose of the latihan – this is a real problem for the youth if they don’t understand before we die off. I hope that through this SYA you will be able to help yourselves, your friends and in the end to help Subud.
Don’t completely ignore the older people. Whether you like it or not, you’re here because of them. You have to pay attention to them, especially when it comes to the latihan. You’re not going to re-invent the latihan. And also, don’t forget, you won’t always be the youth – you’ll get older, have your own children. You have to look at the picture as a whole. Use common sense – test what you receive against common sense. It’s important to have a clear mind when facing life*.
Provisional Translation Code Number: 00 LAX 3 Copyright © 2007 the World Subud Association. All rights reserved. For Subud Members Only
I would dearly love to have some, if not all, of my descendants discover Subud and experience some of what I’ve experienced in the latihan. Without getting too far into my imagination about it, I was once told Bapak said the latihan and the purification process works on seven generations in the past and seven generations into the future. What an awesome concept that is.
From Fayra Teeters, SICA-USA Chair
I’ve been musing with the notion that Subud Culture is its own Legacy; that Art begets Art; that no cultural creation lives in a vacuum, but generates an ongoing outpouring of related, sympathetic works of art.
I’ve been exploring the genealogy of some of my favorite works. Plautus, the Roman playwright, wrote a comedy featuring an obnoxious matchmaker helping two star-crossed lovers. Moliere expanded on that iconic character when he created Frosine, the matchmaker, in his play The Miser. Thornton Wilder placed his Matchmaker at the center of his 1954 play which was a smash success on Broadway, followed by the musical Hello Dolly! which initially starred Carol Channing in 1955 and later morphed into the movie starring Barbra Streisand in 1969.
In the 1850’s Alexander Borodin wrote the incredibly haunting String Quartet No. 2 – Nocturne, which we now recognize as “This is My Beloved”. Borodin also wrote his Prince Igor suite, the Polovisian Dances, a section of which he entitled “Gliding Dance of the Maidens”, but which we currently recognize as “Stranger in Paradise”. In 1953 Robert Wright and George Forrest adapted these two incredible melodies adding sentimental love-induced lyrics, creating the musical Kismet. As a child of nine in 1956, the year I first knew I would become an actress, I also discovered a record my father had of Mario Lanza singing both “Stranger in Paradise” and “This is My Beloved” and I listened to it for hours at a time, fueling my childlike notions of exotic romance.
When I was organizing the creation of my theater Masque Alfresco, I knew the easiest and least expensive venues would be public parks and wineries. I noticed that the greater Portland area had six outdoor theatre companies, all performing Shakespeare. I’ve long been a fan of Moliere and Commedia dell’arte, so I organized my theatre around commedia traditions, just to get away from the glut of Shakespearian fare. Commedia was born in Italy during the dawn of the Renaissance. Itinerant troupes traveled about in wagons, arriving at city and town piazzas early morning, scouring the environs for local gossip and working those tidbits into their improvised scenarios with grand comedic aplomb. Likewise, my company of merry pranksters would weave “hot off the press!” political jokes and celebrity slams into our hour-long adaptations of Moliere and other commedia-based plays – because active ad-libbing was the order of the day. My intention was NOT to improve on the original tradition, but to render it more accessible to modern audiences.
Anytime a traditional work of art is revisited, revised, adapted, “covered” – it changes, morphs, grows into yet another genesis of the original – sometimes with added value, sometimes not – but always with the intention of Passing the Torch.
Subud in the Future – Jim O’Halloran
Almost monthly I hear someone talking about the future of Subud, often lamenting that there appears to be so few young people in Subud. I wonder the same, and have examined the subject outwardly, inwardly, and through testing, just as many, many others have.
Do I exhibit behavior that is likely to bring non-members to Subud, behavior that creates a space where other members want to return, where they feel safe, and where they feel free to practice the latihan? I know there have been times when my behavior has had the opposite effect.
What did Bapak have to say about this? If I remember correctly, it was along the lines of living in such a manner that non-members want to experience what they see manifested in the lives of Subud members.
Upon asking other members about this subject, I heard some of the following comments:
Having children is a great way to bring younger members into Subud.
Sometimes an applicant may drop out because they feel the time to be opened has not yet arrived, and they will return when it feels right.
Likewise, people who have been opened may disappear for a period then return.
For youth, who would want to have the pressure or burden of being told you are the future of Subud? Are older members inadvertently creating that feeling in younger members?
What are your thoughts and more importantly, what are your actions?
I intend to keep doing the latihan on a regular basis and creating a space of loving acceptance around myself and for myself. What is your approach? Please feel free to share in the Comment Space below . . .
I feel the latihan has a life outside of the Subud organization. Grace, like water, always finds a way through.
(CORRECTED COMMENT)
For me, this subject is inscrutable. Two questions we can ask are: ‘why do people join Subud’ and ‘why do they leave’.
I live in Montreal (in the formerly frozen North) where I was opened in 1970. In the fall of 1969 I had ‘a chance encounter’ with a bearded traveler named Ed Maurey, son of Subud member Lydia Maurey. In addition to his beard, he carried a large backpack.
I invited Ed to stay for a while in the coop where I lived with five other students. He had with him an LP record that was an interview of John Bennett that was conducted by Steve Allen. Ed preferred LSD to latihan, but he wanted to have a greeting from his mother passed on to the formidable Roseanna Wilson. (My characterization.)
A few of us listened to the interview. Only one of us visited the place at the address that Ed gave us. It was upstairs from a tavern and an Italian restaurant, on a rather seedy street that was deserted in the evening after the pawn shops had closed. I was opened three months later in a barely lit room that was suffused with a blending of beer and pizza aromas.
I had never been a spiritual seeker. I never had any experience of a ‘life within a life’. I had not read Siddhartha with any understanding. No one in my family had any interest in such things. I have no idea why I was drawn to Subud other than the fact that I was curious.
We now live in a marketing age. The new Subud Canada national committee has revamped the website after hiring some professionals to tell us how to use proven internet marketing methods to sell the latihan product, after doing market research to discover what young people need to hear to attract their fleeting attention and get them to click on “I want to know more.” Our new committee are well meaning people who want to see our active membership grow. Please forgive my skepticism.
Why do new applicants disappear and newly opened people leave our group? New members can hear of the clearly remembered experiences that our few surviving old members had in the presence of a beloved spiritual guide who insisted that he was not a teacher. This might make new people feel that they missed the boat. They might become confused after being told that Subud is not based on a teaching, but on a shelf in a large cabinet are 28 volumes of his collected talks. Next to the cabinet is a beautifully executed large bronze bust of Bapak that was executed by Montreal member Renée Grad.
If someone is looking for a guru, these days there are many to choose from. Some stop at a Subud group as a station on their guru tour. If someone wants nothing to do with gurus, Subud may not appear to be completely guru-free.
It seems that, these days, most of those who come to Subud and stay were either born to two loving and supportive parents who happened to be active Subud members or else the Subud applicant had deep spiritual experiences from an early age, with the reality of those experiences being confirmed in the latihan. (In the past, there have been some very notable exceptions sprinkled here and there. Maybe not as many these days.)