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.)
NOTES ON THE FUTURE OF SUBUD
Rashad Pollard
January 2025
SUMMARY
Bapak left us with a vision concerning the future of Subud in the world; how it is that the lower forces that belong to this world (material, vegetable, animal and human) have led the world astray and how this is to be put right by the great gift of the latihan that Bapak received and passed on to us; a gift that allows us to become the masters of these forces rather than they having the mastery over us. So, thanks to the latihan and through an attitude of patience, submission and surrender towards the latihan we may become a people of a truly noble character.
This nobility of character can show itself through the nobility of the works of Subud members in the world. The signposts that Bapak gave us through the projects that he, himself, initiatednstressed that while demonstrating the works of the individual Subud membership was certainly something special, if Subud was truly to grow and the results of the latihan to be truly and clearly seen in the world then we need to undertake somewhat larger and collective outer works that the Subud Association, itself, would nurture.
Of course, each individual Subud member works in the world. This is how we fulfill our own needs in life. But, as Bapak stated, if those of us who have received the latihan look after our own self-interest and ignore the needs of the Brotherhood as a whole (that is to nurture the collective works of our Association), then Subud will always be seen as something trivial in the world. So, it is the Association, itself, that needs to harness these skilled resources within the Subud membership to establish welfare projects and enterprises that are broader and wider in scope. To accomplish this the Wings and Affiliates were formed and given the task of creating databases of experts that can be called upon to volunteer to support the establishment of these projects on behalf of our Association.
However, since Bapak’s passing, the Wings and Affiliates have largely focused on support to the projects of the individual membership, and so Bapak’s vision to create collective Subud enterprises to support collective Subud welfare projects has largely been lost, as has the institutionalization of the efforts to create these projects within our Association, as Bapak described and actually put into practice through the international enterprises that Bapak created (including those focused on the development of Central Kalimantan).
At the World Congress in New Zealand in 2010 the delegates proposed that the Association relaunch the work of SESI and tasked them with understand what Bapak’s vision was for its purpose and how to implement it. SESI made a detailed report that was approved by the WSC and then formally approved as policy of the Association by the delegates at the following World Congress in Mexico. But the SESI Board appointed at that Congress refused to implement it. This was reported to the delegates at the next World Congress, in Freiburg, and they then unanimously voted to reintroduce Bapak’s guidance regarding the establishment of collective Subud welfare projects supported by dedicated Subud enterprises. But, again, the institutionalization of this proposal was modest to say the least.
The full paper explores in more detail how it is that very few Subud members seem to have been informed about what Bapak’s model was for the development of these outer works in the world that would lead to Subud being known and respected; how it is that most of these efforts failed, and why, and to suggest that as most of these matters are already the policies of the World Subud Association it is well worth considering how a start may be made towards their implementation.
One notable example was that we held the recent World Congress in Kalimantan yet was little thought given to the original policies of the Association, under Bapak’s guidance concerning the policy of the Association to create collective wekfare projects there supported by for-profit enterprises. works there. Originally we had more than six Working Parties of over thirty volunteers engaged in a systematic and coordinated program to develop Central Kalimantan. Yet, today, after more than 40 years, all these projects are largely stalled or on hold.
It appears that the World Congress would have been an excellent opportunity for our Association to explore past experiences and rededicate itself to a more systematic, coordinated and collective development program in Kalimantan of our whole Association rather than continue to wait for the individual membership as is presently the case.
The same considerations may also be given to explore similar issues relative to the development of other welfare projects and enterprises developments to support them that may be considered as the projects of our collective Association at the international level as well as at National and Center levels of our Association.
Of course this cannot all suddenly happen overnight. But it may well be important that the members of our International Association (Subud countries) and international and national affiliates and wings are reminded of its importance so that, for Subud to grow and sustain itself in the future we will not have to reinvent the wheel.
The complete document originally created by Bapak’s Guidance Task Force prior to the 2024 World Congress can be obtained from Rashad at pollardrr@outlook.com