Worshipping God
Worshipping God has always been for me a difficult subject. I have always felt respect for the Prophets and the Messengers of God, for the Avatars and for all their writings. At the same time I could never put myself with the ‘religious’ or the ‘pious’.
When I have to go to Church, and that is not often, when I have to go to Church for a Wedding or a Funeral I feel a sort of embarrassment. I listen to the words of the service and I feel their nobility. Who can fail to be moved by the vows that a young couple make when they are about to live together? Who can fail to be moved by the words of the priest when he talks about the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life Everlasting?
At funerals there is always a lot of emotion and a lot of grief and crying. Sometimes indeed I myself feel a bit weepy, but that is because the grief is contagious. On the whole I feel desperately separate, as if I have no feelings at all. And all the time through the hubbub, because there is a real hubbub, I am trying to feel what I’m really feeling, not what I am supposed to feel.
The truth is that for the most part I am glad that the given person has died. At the last funeral I attended the poor man had had kidney failure and was on dialysis, which is no fun at all for someone who had been active all his life. So I was glad for him that he had gone, that his suffering on this earth was finished and I hoped and prayed that his life on earth had been such that he would enjoy his life in the hereafter. If there was grief and sorrow it was for the survivors, for the wife and children, who had lost either a partner in life or a father and friend. Grief is for the living.
Even when a great man dies, even when a Saint on earth, even when a true Spiritual Guide passes on, I cannot feel anything other than a personal grief, that is to say my loss. On the other hand I hope and believe that when a good man passes on, when a truly spiritual man passes away, then is he welcomed at the Gates of Heaven. Why should we be sad at that?
Now if my friend Raymond, who is my brother, or Abdurrahman who is the friend of my soul, or Peter Norman the impecunious, or Husayn or Rachman or Emmanuel or Ridwan Aitken or Penseney or Ronald Leask passed away, yes, I would be sad because in this life there are not too many people with whom one can share an understanding, I would be sad for myself, but not for them. I would not be sad for them, because one and all to a greater or lesser degree have devoted themselves to the Great Search, to the Great Search for Truth. Every single one of them has delved into the great mysteries. So I feel for them as my brothers and when they are gone then I will feel sadness for myself. But I will not feel sad for them. On the contrary I will hope that the Good Lord will receive them as Knights Templars in His Kingdom.
And if my wife should go before I go I will remember her instincts, her natural goodness. I will remember her as a mother. I will remember her as a natural leader of other women, someone to whom they turned and whom they admired. I will remember that everyone loved her, and that the Indonesians referred to her as Tony’s beautiful wife. And if sometimes we differed in our views on this and that, that is but a trifling matter. Undoubtedly I will feel sorrow, I will certainly feel lonely as I do when she is away just for a few days. I will be sorry for myself, but I will not be sorry for her. On the contrary I will rejoice that she will be with that Divine Love that passes all understanding.
But I have digressed, because the worship that is done in Churches simply leaves me cold. Oh the words are magnificent, but there is present a contradiction. It is as if the priest says the words, but has no idea of their real meaning or content, though he or she may strive earnestly so to do. But this understanding does not come by earnestness alone. The Love of God does not come by declaration. Everything that the priest says is right, but there is that terrible dichotomy that can be sensed. Somehow everything inside me ices up and I cannot feel what I feel.
Then only today I was looking up a telephone number of Pak Haryono in Indonesia in my volume of the World Subud Council of 1995, when out should fall a slip of paper on which I had typed some of my favourite sayings of Bapak Muhammad Subuh. And the first one was headed Bapak on the meaning of man’s worship to the one God.
Man’s worship, or your worship, is not like worshipping a person who is higher in rank than you are. The true worship is when you use everything that is in you, that is, all your members and organs, following God’s will as created in every member…
In carrying out your obligation to worship the One God, and to act in harmony with your inner being, it is necessary for you to know and to be aware of the awakening of the inner feeling that is within your real self. Before you received the awakening of your real self, everything in you was closed up…
(This excerpt comes from the talk that Bapak gave at Coombe Springs on the 12th December 1957.)
“The true worship is when you use everything that is in you, that is all your members and organs, following God’s will as created in each individual member.” Now here was a definition of worship that is totally different to the common understanding, and reading that again, made me incredibly happy all day long. It meant that my toes could worship God, that my arms and my hands could worship God, that my voice could worship God, that I could write a thesis and worship God, that I could even play golf and that at the same time I could rejoice and I could worship God. And just understanding even the drift of what Bapak said all those years ago made me rejoice inside and feel incredibly happy. Even when I went to the Supermarket to buy provisions, this feeling of rejoicing never left me. “How does the heart feel when it is full of the love of God ?” such was a test that Bapak did with my old friend Peter Norman Kermode many, many years ago when Peter was at Cilandak.
And I was thinking to myself ‘Why do I still go to the latihan, nearly fifty years on?’ because the truth is that I have not been nearly as regular as some, but I am still going. So why do I go? Actually I have my own answer to this. Or I should say that sometimes I feel the answer and sometimes I do not. And when I do feel the answer, when I feel that guidance that results, then I know for sure why I am still going.
For when I am close to the latihan I feel it most when I am writing. I can feel when it is heavy, because I feel that it is heavy and cumbersome. But when on the contrary the words, the phrases appear, when there is a happy juxtaposition of ideas, then I feel that I am accompanied by something infinitely greater than I can imagine.
Now Mangoendjaja was asked this question while he was exercising, and though this excerpt appears in my book, I shall include it here.
“My first extract comes from a wonderful little book by Mangoendjaja. “Why do you do the latihan?” the voice persisted. It is a question, surely, that we all need to ask.
Extract 1 from “My Inner Guidance” by K. Mangoendjaja:
showAfter latihans I used to pray, asking God for His protection, and to provide for our daily needs. One night the inner self corrected me. “Mangoen, don’t ask God for anything. He knows your needs better than you do. He will give you what you need, not what you ask, because He knows what is good for you.”
At the next latihan, the voice asked, “Mangoen, why do you do the latihan?” Startled, I confessed I didn’t really know. “If you don’t know the purpose of the latihan,” the voice said, “then it has no meaning for you. Why do you do the latihan?” the voice persisted.
I couldn’t answer, but the question was repeated over and over. Suddenly I thought it might be the devil, or some lower force, that was interrogating me. I was quickly disabused of this thought. “Now you are in doubt again,” the voice observed. “I’ll you who I am.”
Instantly my breathing stopped. I nearly choked before air entered my lungs again. This happened several times. I had no control over my respiratory organs. The voice continued to question me. “Why do you do the latihan?” I had to answer that I did not know, and each time my breathing was stopped. “Mangoen,” the voice said, “the latihan has a purpose. The purpose of our latihan is to worship God.”
Why couldn’t you have said so in the first place? I thought, rather ruefully, still weak and shaking.”
Now though I had included this excerpt in my book because it is charming in the extreme, nevertheless the ending still worried me. The purpose of the latihan is to worship God. All my old feelings of revolt against the holy-holy, the sanctimonious, the special voice the clergy so often use, arose in me even if distantly. Even now in Subud I am unhappy if Helpers speak in non-natural voices. In my memory Bapak always spoke out loud and clear, with an innate reverence yes, but not with a hushed or holy voice.
But now re-reading that short paragraph of Bapak’s the whole meaning of Mangoen’s piece becomes clear. He is not talking about ‘worshipping a person of higher rank’; rather, he is talking of that true worship when you use everything that is in you, that is, all your members and organs, following God’s Will as created in each individual member.
Now that is something that I could understand, that is something to which I could relate. The worship of God that Bapak talks about is something other. Oh yes it is holy, but it is not, emphatically not, holy-holy. It only makes sense because it is the latihan itself that is bringing to life our various members. The purpose of the latihan is to worship God. Yes, Bapak, yes – the purpose of the latihan is to bring us to life and that is worship and that can I comprehend.
Anthony Bright-Paul May 17th 2006.
Author of "My Stairway to Subud."
