A dukun is, in Java, a traditional healer. There’s nothing wrong or disgraceful about being a dukun. I can remember when I lived as a kid in Cilandak, and I got a sore on my back—I had to spend several days lying face down—Pak Subuh kindly sent over a poultice, consisting of some black mixture of herbs, to help the healing. Whether he made this himself, or ordered it in, I don’t know. Whether it worked or not, I don’t know!

Inez Mahony has written some useful research reports on dukun practice:

http://www.serve.com/inside/edit75/p11-12mahony.html
http://www.murdoch.edu.au/acicis/hi/field_topics/inez.doc

According to Mahony, dukun are a normal and accepted part of Javanese society:

Dukun [are] traditionally… sorcerers and curers, predominantly male practitioners of Javanese mysticism from the various subcategories of santri, priyayi and abangan, who practice a variety of dukun specialties yet may be more skilled in a particular area. Literature suggests dukun regularly played a central role as priest, spirit contact and respected elder in the many traditional Javanese rituals and ceremonies and that dukun were generally consulted as curer and helper in alleviating physical, mental and spiritual problems.

Being a dukun is therefore consistent with Pak Subuh’s social origins and social class—priyayi—and his calling: spiritual guide.

Mahony tells us that:

…Today many dukuns mix these practices with Islamic terminology and thinking (by claiming, for instance, that whether their medicines work or not is ‘up to God’), and in one study, 50% of them didn’t want to be identified as a dukun, which they saw as associated with ‘black magic’. These dukuns prefer the term ‘orang tua’ — ‘old man’.

Among the many dukun practices is the preparation of rajah. Mahony describes the rajah thus:

The usual methods of treatment by santri [orthodox Islamic] dukun include chanting specially adapted verses from the Koran or burning rajah over glasses of water, which are then given to the client to drink.

From another source:

…a Qur’anic inscription is written on a leaf or piece of paper. The recipient soaks it in a glass of water that is drunk. This practice is undoubtedly an abangan legacy.

A rajah inscribed on a leaf. Pak Subuh’s were written on paper, which was then burned, and the ashes dissolved in water for the patient to drink.

Pak Subuh definitely prepared rajah. In one of his talks, he said: “I was surprised; I thought Mrs Subardjo must be ill. I started to collect some paper and a pen in case I needed to make a rajah.” [64 TJK 4] In another, he said: “That is why, for example, Bapak has advised you not to try, for example, to make rajahs. You may have heard that Bapak sometimes makes a rajah for people when they are sick.” [84 CDK 6]

When Pak Prio Hartono described his first encounter with Pak Subuh, he wrote, in Volume 2 of Inner Wisdom:

Suardi came to tell me that our mutual friend, Masrul Latif Pane, had arranged an appointment for me to meet a dukun (faith healer)… Masrul Latif introduced him as Pak Subuh and asked me to explain the purpose of my visit. This too annoyed me since it was not my idea to meet this dukun.

However, elsewhere Pak Subuh demurs from being called a dukun:

Bapak agrees that he is willing to give people rajahs, but sometimes there is no need to ask for one. And if Bapak were to make a habit of doing this, would you be pleased if people called Bapak a dukun (witch-doctor)? [80 CDK 1]

Mahony tells us that up to 50% of dukun do not want to be called dukun, for fear of being labelled a dukun santet: a black magician. We can see, however, that Pak Subuh thought that traditional dukun practices were helpful to people, and was not averse to preparing the occasional rajah.

This is where it gets interesting.

Medicine is not the only area in which dukun are asked for advice. According to Martin van Bruinessen, in addition to problems with illness, a dukun‘s advice is also called upon for:

• economic difficulties
• career issues
• partner problems.

Moreover, dukun are asked to name children, which ties in with Javanese beliefs with regard to the importance of a person’s name in determining their fate. Almost certainly, the story of Pak Subuh’s own name-change, as he tells it in his Autobiography, involved a dukun:

The baby was named Sukarno. However, because he was sickly, his name was changed to Muhammad Subuh by a mysterious old man that nobody knew. Grandfather accepted the change of name with a feeling of satisfaction as its meaning fitted exactly the time of the baby’s birth: dawn. Thereafter, the baby was both happy and healthy.

There seems to me to a strong correlation between dukun practices, and the kinds of practices that Pak Subuh undertook because he saw them as helpful to Subud members. He would prepare the occasional rajah. He offered name-change advice, and career direction advice. All of these are consistent with the beliefs of the people of his place and time.

However, we need to ask ourselves:

• Are these practices consistent with our own place and time?
• Is it good and appropriate for Subud, which aspires to be international and universal in its practice and appeal, to be the conduit for disseminating practices that are local to mid-20th century Java?

How well do we honour this promise in the way we speak? Are we speaking to people of all religions, or just one or two? In order to understand that question, we need to appreciate what are the world’s religions. The diagram below gives us a picture of the major religions.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

In looking at this chart, it’s important to realise that categories like “ethnoreligionists” (3.97%) and “neoreligionists” (1.68%) contain hundreds if not thousands of small religions. There are reportedly 30,000 sects in Christianity. Hinduism, too, contains multitudes. One estimate of the number of religions in the world is 4200, but in my view this is too low. So it’s very difficult to write or speak in such a way as to avoid bias towards one religion or the other.

However, we can see that approximately half of the world’s religions are not monotheist. Therefore, language such as “Almight God” will be meaningless, or—worse—alienating—to about half of humanity.

It’s therefore helpful to know some of the major distinctions between religions, in order to understand where one’s own beliefs lie, and where one needs to be aware of how others might see things differently.

Some useful categories:

God, or gods, or none

Polytheistic religions tend to be the oldest religions. They believe in the existence of many gods, one of whom may be king of the gods, or the creator god. Examples most of us know of are the old Greek religion, and Hinduism.

Monotheistic religions believe in just one God. Examples are Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sometimes called the Abrahamic religions, because they share a common patriarch. They represent about 54% of the world’s adherents.

Deism is a form of monotheism which believes that all religious texts are human, fallible and intrinsically unreliable, and only Nature is the indisputable, infallible word of God. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine were both Deists, and Deism helped kickstart both the American and the scientific revolutions. Zoroastrianism, which is widely considered to have influenced Christianity, believes in two gods: one good, the other evil. The idea of Satan or the Devil comes from Zoroastrianism.

Non-theist religions may acknowledge the existence of God or gods, but consider them to be optional, or not to be at the heart of the question of living.

In Mahayana Buddhism, for example, nothing is eternal, nothing is essential, except the dharmakaya, sometimes translated as ‘the Void’, from which all appearances arise. To realize the nature of reality is to realize sunyata, or the emptiness of all things, including gods and human beings. Pak Subuh’s original name for Subud (before Pak Slamet coined Susila Budhi Dharma), was Ilmu Kasunyatan (Ka-sunyata-n), or “knowledge of emptiness.”

Another non-Theist religion is Jainism, one of the world’s most ancient and influential. In Jainism one finds one of the oldest uses of the word jiva, which in Javanese becomes jiwa.

Atheism and Agnosticism existed in ancient Greece, Rome and India since early recorded history. Modern atheism emerged as a major political and philosophical movement in Europe in fairly recent times, primarily as a reaction against the excesses of Christianity theism. The word “agnostic” was coined by the biologist T. H. Huxley, grandfather of Aldous Huxley, who was at one time opened in Subud.

One world or two?

We often equate religion with the supernatural. The idea of the supernatural is that there are two worlds: natural and supernatural. The former is visible and readily at hand; the latter is invisible and accessible only by special people or through special knowledge or preparation. But not all religions subscribe to this division, which is known as dualism. The division of the world into “spiritual” and “material” is an example of dualism.

One of the most influential dualists was Plato, who wrote of a world of ideal Forms, of which our world is but a shadow. This picture came to influence Christianity, through a process known as the Hellenization of Christianity. Zoroastrianism, which gives us a picture of a world in which good is constantly battling evil, is also dualist. Even the modern distinction between mind and body arises out of earlier religious dualism.

The early Hinduism of the Vedas and the Upanishads is monist. Their world is not divided into spiritual and material. There is only consciousness, and all things happen in consciousness. Some varieties of Buddhism, notably Zen, are monist. Things are as they are: there is no fundamental division of the world. Any appearance otherwise is maya: an illusion.

Confucians don’t occupy themselves with such questions, considering them to be unimportant.

Taoists are monists, in that they believe that all apparent dualities (light/dark, male/female, sacred/profane) arise out of an underlying unity, called the Taiji. Taiji, or “existence”, itself arose of Wuji, non-existence, or the Great Emptiness.

Even the Abrahamic religions have monist aspects to them. Early Judaism, for instance, was dualist in the sense that it saw God as apart from the world. But Judaism did not believe, as other cultures, in a complex invisible world constantly interacting with the visible world. This is reflected in their afterlife beliefs, or rather absence thereof. The Jewish afterlife was called “sheol”, and was badly lit and very boring. And if one reads, for instance, the Jewish accounts of the death of Moses, one finds the story of a patriarch who dies, is buried, people grieve, they elect a new leader, and they move on. He does not ascend, re-appear, communicate, or otherwise continue to live in another world. (Even today, belief in an afterlife is considered “optional” in Judaism.)

Religious openness

These are just some of the differences among the world’s large religions. Starting just with these two dimensions of faith, we can see that:

• about half the world’s people are not monotheist: they are polytheist or non-theist; how does Subud present itself to them?

• running through many of the religions of the world is a strand of monism: that the world is one, not two; how does Subud present itself to the world’s monists?

When we first start any venture, we fall back on habit. Our habit is to think and describe things in the way we were taught when we were raised as children. Then we encounter other people, some of whom were raised very differently. To speak to “all of humanity”, we need to be able to speak to people who are monotheists, polytheists, and non-theists. We need to speak to people for whom the world is divided in two, no schism of spiritual/material, and others for whom there is no supernatural, or if there is, it is not important.

Subud literature tends to cover the monotheists and dualists fairly well, and this is understandable: Pak Subuh was both. But this language does not address “all of humanity.” So today’s question is: how do we do that?

Some further reading:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ gives good coverage of the major religions.

Google some of the smaller (but extremely influential) religions mentioned in this article: Jainism, Deism, Zoroastrianism.

For an idea of what a monist religious view of the world is like (if you don’t already have one), try these:

Buddhist: http://buddhism.about.com/library/weekly/aa120602a.htm

Hindu: http://www.realization.org/page/topics/advaita_vedanta.htm

I think there’s more Hindu monism in Pak Subuh’s upbringing than is usually talked about. One of the core stories of the religion of Java is the story of the Dewa Ruci. It was with this story that Pak Subuh chose—by ordering a wayang kulit performance—to open the 1971 World Congress at Cilandak.

The Dewa Ruci is a small Hindu god who shows Bima, one of the five heroes of the Mahabharata, that he can find the whole of the outer world inside of himself. In Advaita, this same lesson is summarised thus: Brahman (roughly: God) and Atman (roughly: your innermost self) are one.

Please use the comment boxes below to submit your suggestions and comments on more open forms of language for Subud, which address not just theists and dualists, but in fact the whole spectrum of the religions of humanity: all 100%, not the current 50% (at best).

PS: As a Buddhist sympathizer, the author believes that all forms of language are limited and illusory, and not something to get too hung up on. This blog is about better communication between religions and cultures; it is not a theology debate. In other words, this is an invitation to practice speaking to a different tradition, not an invitation to promote or defend your own.

Thanks to LP for straightening me out on several matters regarding monism and dualism. All errors remain mine.

Our Subud literature says that Pak Subuh was a Muslim.

If these statements are correct, then we would expect Subud to flourish in Islamic countries. However, the evidence seems otherwise. Subud is poorly represented in Islamic countries. In Malaysia, it has been declared a “deviant sect” of Islam.[2] In Indonesia, the country of its origin, Subud is classified by anthropologists as a kebatinan movement. Officially, it is registered at the Ministry of Education and Culture as a “faith”, along with movements such as Brahma Kumaris, Ananda Marga, and The Family.[3]

Does Subud conflict with Islam? If so, why and how? This question is important for our dealings with the Islamic world, and our dealings with Muslim members or potential members.

Pak Subuh’s Islamic faith

Pak Subuh identified himself as a Muslim, but that has to be understood in context. Islam in Indonesia is sharply divided. The division is shown on this map:

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Indonesia

“Traditional Islam” is a form of Islam unique to Java. It mixes all kinds of historical influences that have come to that island. At the base is an indigenous animism. (Animism is form of religion which sees everything as alive, even rocks and krises.) On top of the animist base is layered a later Hinduism, and then Buddhism, then Sufism, brought by the famous “Wali Sanga”, or Nine Saints, and finally mainstream Islam, brought by traders.

All of these religious influences co-exist in Java’s “Traditional Islam”. Scholars call Java’s Traditional Islam a “syncretic” religion: a religion that mixes many other religions together.

In the 19th C., people from the archipelago started to travel to Mecca to fulfil their Muslim obligation to do so. They found there that Islam in the rest of the Islamic world was not like the Islam of the Indonesian archipelago. Out of this discovery grew a movement within Indonesia to move to a purer form of Islam, without the syncretic influences. This relatively new (to them) form of Islam became known as “Modernist Islam”.

This split is the major fault line in the Indonesian religious landscape: between Traditional Islam, also known as “Kejawen”, “Agama Jawa”, or “Abangan Islam”; and Modernist Islam, also called “Santri Islam”.

Santri Islam is similar in form and belief to the Islam practiced by the rest of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims. Abangan Islam is a uniquely Javanese invention, marked by its mixing in of animist, Hindu, Buddhist and Sufi influences.

In this light, it’s easy to understand Islam’s distance from Subud. Pak Subuh’s talks mix animist (e.g. life forces, ancestral influences), Hindu-Buddhist (e.g. jiva, sukma, susila, buddhi, dharma) and Sufi (e.g. tarekat, shariat, hakekat, marifat) influences with his Islam. To the majority of Muslims outside of Java, Javanese Islam—and Pak Subuh’s talks—look (ironically) like “mixing”.

Some specific differences

If I were writing an article for Subud Vision, I would set out many pages of differences, with explanations and citations. But the purpose of this blog is to lay out some pointers, and encourage you to do some of your own research, which is now possible, using google. In each of the sections below, I introduce a topic, and then suggest some search terms. These terms are enclosed in angle brackets: <>.

• <search string> means put the words search and string (without quote marks) in the google search box.

• <”search string”> means put the phrase “search string” (with the quote marks) in the google search box. The quote marks force google to search for the exact phrase.

If you search on Indonesian words like <wahyu>, you will come across many, many Indonesian sites. It’s better to mix the search with an English word, such as <wahyu javanese>, in order to return English sites.

My suggestions are only starters. As you find relevant pages and articles, use phrases and words from those to construct new searches.

Here are some of the specific differences between mainstream Islam, and the religion of Java in which Pak Subuh was raised:

No contact with the dead

In Islam, when someone dies, there is no possibility of further contact with them. For this reason, Islamic culture and religion is largely free of stories of apparitions. In this, it is very different from the religion of Java, which teaches of a world populated by spirits of the dead. Accounts of spirits and ghosts (“hantu”) are commonplace, even forming the basis for popular TV serials.

Along the same lines, the Javanese practice the selamatan cycle of ritual feasts and prayers after someone has died, to assist them on their journey. This has no place in Islam, where—once a person has died—they are solely in the hands of Allah. The Santri Muslims of Indonesia are opposed to the selamatan practice.

Some google terms to start:

<selamatan cycle>
<Muslim after death beliefs>
<tension santri abangan>

Take care in reading Christian sites on Islam. Some are accurate, some less so.

A good site on Kejawen (Abangan Islam) is this one:

http://www.joglosemar.co.id/kejawen/index.html

Children born pure

In Islam, all children are born pure, in a state called “al-fitra“. They are not tainted by “ancestral influences”. The theology that Pak Subuh uses, in which burdensome ancestral influences are passed down through generations, and later generations assist the after-death progress of dead ancestors through spiritual practice, comes out of the religion of Java.

Google:

<Islam children born pure>
<children born al-fitra>
<animism Javanese>

For example:
http://haram.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/the-original-sin-in-islam/
“Unlike Christianity, which teaches that all the children of Adam are sinful for Adam’s sin, Islam teaches that all humans are innocent by birth and they become sinful only when they consciously commit a sin… Another important point to bear in mind about the Islamic concept of sin is that one man’s sin cannot be transferred to another; nor can the reward due to a person be transferred either. Every individual is responsible only for his or her actions, for God is never unjust.”

Mohammed the last prophet

In Islam, Mohammed is the last prophet, the last to receive wahy—revelation. In Java, on the other hand, wahyu (the Indonesian form of the Arabic word, also meaning “revelation”) is still descending on a wide variety of people. However, as Santri Islam gains the upper hand over Abangan Islam, that’s changing. An Indonesian guru, Lia Aminuddin, who claimed to receive wahyu, was recently jailed for apostasy.

Try:

<Mohammed the last prophet>
<Mohammed prophet wahy>
<Lia Aminuddin>
<wahyu power>
<wahyu javanese>

A set of references on wahyu appear in Note 1, at the end of this article: History and Myth.

Throughout your researches, try combinations of words other than the ones I’ve suggested. If you find articles of interest, post links to them in the comment boxes below. And feel free to write me, by posting in the comment boxes, at any time. I’ll try to respond to all comments.

Notes

[1] ‘Many Paths to God and Modernity: Of Sufism, Syncretism and Universalism in Cosmopolitan Indonesian Islam’, Julia Day Howell. Griffith University, Australia, in L’islam dans les rythmes du temps mondial, edited by Patrick Haenni and Olivier Roy

[2] http://pmr.penerangan.gov.my/?action=ajaran%20sesat.htm
The text “Ajaran sesat yang dikenali dengan ajaran SUBUD yang disebarkan dalam tahun 1950an dan ajaran Martabat Tujuh. Ajaran SUBUD hampir hilang tetapi ajaran Martabat Tujuh dipercayai masih hidup, bukan sahaja di Kelantan tetapi di negeri-negeri lain.” translates as “In Kelantan the deviant sects we have knowledge of are the SUBUD teaching, which spread in the 1950s, and the Seven Levels Teaching (Ajaran Martabat Tujuh). The SUBUD teaching has nearly disappeared, but we believe the Seven Levels Teaching still lives on, not only in Kelantan, but in other states as well.

[3] http://www.cesnur.org/2003/vil2003_howell.htm

Whereas the main Subud Vision site holds long articles which articulate an author’s point of view, the main purpose of Exploring Subud is to help you—the reader—undertake your own exploration and questioning of Subud.

Each short article will examine an aspect of Subud language, history, culture or belief. Each article will contain links to other sites and sources, so that you can undertake your own journey to find out the history and context of these ideas.

Examples of topics that will be examined:

• zat, sifat, asma, af’al
• all of mankind
• meditation
• teachings vs explanations
• harmony
• susila, buddhi and dharma
• testing

For me, there are three reasons to investigate the historical roots of Subud language, beliefs and culture.

The first is about relating to other human beings. We may have come to take for granted the elements of Subud culture and belief, but our neighbours haven’t. In order to explain ourselves, we need to be able to relate to different ways of seeing the world. For instance:

• The word ‘dharma’ doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to the Indic tradition, and it has its own meaning, established over thousands of years, and understood by billions of people. If you’re talking to anyone from the Indic tradition about ‘dharma’, you’d better know what it means to them.
• The concept of ‘asma’ is central to Islam, and if you’re talking to a Muslim, you might want to know what ‘asma’ means.
• We see in Subud constant referent to ‘all of mankind’ (or ‘all of humanity’ as we might now say), but with little apparent understanding that 50% of humanity’s religious traditions are not monotheistic, and have no apparent interest in being converted. So, unless we are in the business of religious conversion, we need to be aware of that.

In other words, in order to connect with the world, we need to understand and connect with the language and beliefs of others.

The second reason is practical. Many Subud beliefs (such as the belief in ‘harmony’) have become so habitual, that it becomes difficult to explore the territory around them. As we reflect on our communal history, successes, failings and limitations, we need to be able to question that status quo that brought to where we are.

One of my favourite phrases is from Ludwig Wittgenstein:

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

When we do not understand the language and concepts which bind our way of seeing, we may run in circles, unable to see the rope that ties us to a central stake.

The third is personal. Some describe Subud as a mystical path. Pak Subuh described it as ‘beyond heart and mind’, a description which sits well within the mystical tradition. One of the names of the mystical path, in the Western tradition, is “The Way of Unknowing”.

I find that if I am bound by any belief, any pattern of thought, then I am restricted in following the way. I do not want to be too attached or captured by what is in the realm of the heart and mind. All beliefs lie within that realm. I find that knowing the history and background of the concepts that inform the Subud community helps weaken the hold that concepts have on me, and thus—perhaps paradoxically—helps me in my unknowing.

Have fun with this site.

David W.

Subud Vision