May 22, 1996

Dear  Beatrix,
     I am sorry not to have written but I have thought about you often and have been planning to write for quite some time. I earnestly hope that you are at the same address you were when last I heard from you and that your life seems as acceptable as might be expected in Hawaii. I won't say I envy you at times: that would be too obvious. Life in Brazil is the usual drag though things are progressing in directions I consider less odious than usual at the moment in terms of sewing up old wounds and the like. Enclosed please find some documents and letters that should give you an idea of what I mean. I ask that you take a look at them and find out what I have been up to in recent years. I have just sent a similar package to Annette. Do you remember all the letters you wrote me from Pertholz and the passion you suffered in my regard? Do you remember the call to my dormitory at Oberlin? I look at what I have done and I have to admit that you may have been right to love me so much after all. At that time I honestly couldn't see it.
     I suppose that you remember the Gloria Isma'ili I wrote you about in May 1992. At that time I was announcing that I was in love (at least I was evidently bewitched; it must have made you feel better about what happened to you with me to see me suffering similar passionate turmoil myself). The whole episode left me in a profoundly sorry state afterwards. I tried to help her and got caught up in her confusion and her woman's wiles. Unfortunately, like so many of us in this postmodern escapist world, she is something of an emotional cripple and was unable to work such profound sentiments; she tried to escape from them and their threat to her independence and, to all appearances, ended up just playing me for what I was worth.
     As you can see in the enclosed letters, I have let the emotional content of the relationship play itself out by openly suffering it and now that the presence has properly grounded, I find, lo and behold, what attracted me to her was largely not the pure love I felt in her seduction but hate of her for not being willing to live it properly too. Boy, she dragged me down for a while with her enthralment.
     In any case, while we are talking about love/hate relationships, I must admit I have become a little suspicious about the circumstances defining my relationship with Maria as well. She and I sleep in different rooms now and have sex about twice a month. This is all fine with me and honestly in Java marriages frequently go in this direction with a kind of mutual regard that does not involve too much intimacy. In my case with her, though, it has ended up a kind of stand off. I guess we are mostly housemates at the moment.
     She likes to think the problem is that I am deluded or otherwise incompetent. We kebatinan or "mystic" (just a word about kebatinan in that it has a completely different set of associations in Java since a whole people has been practicing it for hundreds of years; in Java literally everybody is involved in "mysticism" which doesn't make sense using the Western meaning of the word which connotes a measure of irresponsible other-worldliness and narcissism) adepts and gurus, which is what I have been for some seventeen years now, are regularly attributed a measure of insanity in that that level of intensity is a part of our practice and certainly a part of our experience. I certainly went through some distinctly hysterical reactions with Gloria, after all, "she done me wrong", and I still explode with open rage about the pain she has left me with when it builds up to that point from time to time. We gurus feel that madness certainly is a part of existence and existence is what we open to in order to be where we are and what we are. Sometimes we experience madness (rage and wrath are necessary experiences for all of us when appropriate) and, Lord knows, we might even approve of madness from time to time: sometimes it's a good way to express the agony of existence and get it grounded so that nobody can wander around pretending "life is but a joke". We honestly don't worry about the attribution much. We know what we are doing.
     Evidently, I am not willing to accede to her interpretation of what the relationship with Gloria and all the rest means. I openly deem her an ill-defined entity, in as much as we have never really shared pure open sense or feeling. In Javanese terms I am talking about ketresnan, while in English it would correspond to a continuing state of unguarded communion, a kind of holy love, and one expects it in any relationship eventually. She has just never opened to it and has remained guarded in every sense the whole time with whatever secrets she might have carefully hidden in her "soul". As a result, I am able to see nothing else in her regard than someone constantly pretending but never standing to be counted and openly viewed. It is curious and funny, but it was only after the whole thing with Gloria exploded in July 1992 that we ever really had sex that approached being a sharing of senses and feelings. She was openly passionate for a couple of weeks. Strange experience having her there after all those years of being alone in the act with her. It passed quickly after she complained that it made her feel like a whore and our sex life then went back to normal.
     In any case, this is not a crisis of any great moment with Maria but rather a more open acceptance of the situation that we have always had. But what I have not been able to stomach is that she has actively sought to define my relationship with Gloria in Brazilian terms rather than trying to understand it as I do or placing it openly in reality to sort itself out. She basically just demoted me to being a "man just like every other man in Brazil" just as she has demoted the Javanese to being "people just like any other people; they are the same as Brazilians" in relating to Java. To give an example of just how different Javanese and Brazilians are (being an anthropologist, you are responsible for filling in the rest), the Javanese don't drink and many of the escapist activities that are so prominent a part of existence in Brazil do not even exist in Java. Java is certainly not Brazil. Thank God.
     The whole experience with Gloria brought a lot of the understanding and awareness I had learned in Java to the surface and forced me to take over in the management of my personal presence, which has meant moving to what we in Sumarah call the suhul or divine level of being in fully accepting responsibility for the definition and content of the personal experience. I had been working at a level called jinem that involves full surrender too but includes a measure of unconscious intervening definition structure. It became impossible to remain in jinem due to Gloria's entry into the equation. I don't think there is anybody that isn't aware that a lover can turn you upside-down and steal the change from your pockets the morning after, if she is so inclined. She kind of gets inside your lines, God knows.
     I was with Gloria off and on for about seven months. The feeling I had for her involved profoundly contradictory elements towards the end of the type, "Meu Deus, como eu amo aquela vagabunda!"["My God, how I love that slut!"], but had started off properly devoted and clean and unbelievably elevated: a typical enthralment in every sense. I heaved a tearful and profoundly anguished sigh of relief when I managed to reveal the whole mess to Maria on June 27, 1992. What I was unable to tell for a long time was whether Gloria was in bad faith with me from the very beginning or only became so afterwards. I did know I was getting ripped to shreds and being obliged to say I liked it. I had some powerful and incredibly painful feelings to suffer down so it certainly did make the years pass slowly. However, in as much as the problem is properly speaking contained or "grounded" now, my only job is to pound the being I have with her into propriety and get satisfaction and revenge as well as the same time and vision of the issue stated here and there where she is. "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord" takes on new meaning when you enter the suhul being because you actively become a part of the Natural process of enacting Satisfaction and Revenge and Justice; in fact, we all are anyway in our own little way but we just are not properly aware of it.
     I came to Brazil as a pamong or guru in Sumarah, a Javanese mystic (kebatinan) group of over ten thousand that focuses on Open Being or Tuhan Yang Maha Ésa as the source of all that is holy. I led a group of my own while I was in Java. I was the first and, as far as I know, am still the only of the hundreds of Westerners that have studied Sumarah in Solo to be admitted to the union of Sumarah pamong and leadership. I was already in full surrender when I got here, which is our highest level of attainment, so I was wondering what Tuhan wanted me here for. As I have written in a Memorial describing my presence in the Suhul being:

•      As we Javanese know, and evidently I consider myself Javanese in that my heart rests open on that noble isle as nowhere else, true leadership involves serving and suffering and confronting the problems of existence for your People. The inner relationships that a true leader (sedjatining kepala) develops are both his burden and his being as he unites the disparate ways of the peoples and realms and dimensions he experiences within his vision and exists in common state with them all while he grounds them to their proper real relationships. This is not the path of the tyrant, who seeks hierarchical ascendency relative to those he dominates and freedom from responsibility in his enjoyment of power. Rather, this is the painful experience of existing openly in the presence of all, including many who serve no purpose but their own comfort at the rest of our expense. In Java we know existence to be a common problem and a common experience, a shared ordering in the expression of Reality. Many in the West pretend to have forgotten that we define one another's experience and also pretend that the struggle for power and control of experience is "no holds barred" (vale tudo). The West has forgotten the existence of Natural Law (Purbâ Wisésâ) and we in Java are anxious to impress upon you that your calculated obliviousness to Reality will be fully and completely punished: trust me; the processes of enacting Justice are well under way and your being will be properly crushed to acceptance of its true position in Reality. There are no excuses for purposefully defining yourselves as irresponsible and impune, like a bunch of clowns on holiday, the way Brazil evidently does.
       The Titles and Associations presented here reflect my relational and purposive development over the years and it is in the continuing definition of the Being that has resulted from these relationships that I now stand. Therefore, to understand me, you must accept the origin and depth of my Being. I am purely and indelibly based in my own Being (which is evidently not defined locally and has no proper Brazilian participation) and my Being is based in three key elements: first, the fundamental character that I find in existence is pain -- I hate existence and I very rarely suffer any other perspective on it for long in that my experience is virtually infinite and is totally unassailable in this regard; second, in the interest of making existence something less reprehensible I openly and actively serve True Justice (Sedjatining Keadilan) in order to fully and totally punish any and all betrayal -- if any can betray with impunity, it is a horror for all of us to contemplate and one that will eventually divide us and destroy whatever love we have attained; and third, I love and serve Open Being and Open Beings in the search for eternal company that will be True (sedjati) and Pure (murni).
       The relationships and associations noted in this Memorial reflect what I have invested myself in during my life and the positions I have just elucidated concerning Hate, Justice and Love. The Titles in the Memorial were received either openly or through the action of Ilmu Gaib in the evolving Definition of my Being and its relationships with Reality. Frequently I have found that titles involved improper constraints and definitions and I could not use them for my purposes. Rather, I was obliged to knowingly carry them for years awaiting an opportunity to give a true evaluation of the problems associated with these titles and the expectations associated with them and to correct their erroneous vision. The problem is that many of the lofty titles truly are only structured expressions of "I'm the best; fuck the rest" in one way or another.
       The enduring grief and betrayal I have suffered with Gloria Isma'ili have made it necessary to bring these positions forward in as much as she has had access to them and has misused them in her attempt to separate me from my Being and destroy me and our love. Her disappointment on finding me to be less than she had hoped was perhaps a part of the definition of her betrayal, which obviously will be clarified when this error has been punished properly.
       None of my inner or outer positions has ever been associated with personal regard, which is basically how I have carried so many for so long in that they have all involved an associational affective link for activation: I never found any joy in being any of these things in that most of them violated one or more of my basic elements and would eventually have failed to provide me with company worth having forever. The titles all stand open and quiet. I have never seen responsibilities as pleasures, only as ways of confronting problems and serving justice. Many titles have stood open and been properly served though I was not granted direct knowledge of the position for many years. This is especially true of the Divine associations which were deemed to be of difficult assimilation by the Western societies I have been placed in. It defies my imagination: If one such as I, who confronts and serves and suffers, is not God, who could He be? It is also part of the Sumarah tradition to work into open association with the Divine Being in the suhul stage of the practice. We are trained to accept such a Divinely Open position when the time comes and we have suffered ourselves down to the ground.
       However, in the West, it is the job of a wife to present such positions and obviously this became rather complicated when Gloria entered the defining sense of my Being and displaced Maria, who, "all unknowing", was emotionally and effectively involved in the relationship with Gloria (Witness her open statement on May 16, 1992 when we three were going to a dinner dance together and she announced to the guard at São Paulo Athletic Club, "It is David Howe, his wife and his mistress."). Gloria first plumbed and then set to stripping me of my titles on the assumption that I was unaware of them and unprepared to defend such awesome responsibilities. However, many of the deeper titles came out of Java and in as much as I stood open in the Jinem Being when I started with her, I was obviously aware of and serving the rest as well. The Paku Adil and Paku Djagad and Ratu Adil (this last of which I always declined in deference to Diponegara and his fine service to our People) positions were openly conferred in November 1981 in a field in Espírito Santo thus articulating an unknowing but open association with the Ingsun Being (which I only properly speaking entered knowingly in October 1995) and making the theft and misuse of my titles and associations so incredibly stupid it defies imagining. I was completely lifted in that field on a hill and witnessed to the openly expressed presentation of the titles and their attributions: I have served them ever since.
   When the Paku Adil and Paku Djagad investitures arrived, openly and unequivocably expressed for a change, I felt that the principles underlying the associated structures would be:

  Mamaju hajuning pawana
  Mamaju hajuning djagad
  Serve the harmony of the world
  Serve the harmony of the universe
  and
  Nja gusti,
  nja kawula
  Where there is a lord,
  there is a servant

  as well as the role of the Javanese kings that I had observed and greatly admired in the Pakubuwana and Mangkunegara of Solo, Surakarta Hadiningrat, Jawa Tengah, Indonesia through the punishment of any and all betrayal within their reach. This was what I was doing anyway. I did not tell anyone about the reception at that time in that, Lord knows, I would not wish to be considered crazy for imagining the reception of and openly assuming such enormous responsibilities.
       Following the debacle with Gloria, the Being associated with these and many other titles and associations became a source of pain and confusion due to her betrayal and distribution of the positions. I hope that none of us is so naïve that we pretend that an ill-intended paramour cannot do these things. Heavens, all you really have to do is go through a love affair or two in your life with all the sleepless nights and the pounding heart (from fear I should imagine) and you clearly know the power a lover has to command and contain your experience for good or ill depending on his or her own characteristics and purposes. Within what we call the inner realm in Sumarah, she sold off my being, apparently with the incredible claim that I did not know what the positions were when she did so.

     We have seen such situations before in kebatinan but it was an outstandingly painful experience (and I am honestly used to pain from my study of kung fu as well as kebatinan) and I am glad I am finally getting it off my chest and telling people I know and love about what has happened in terms that make proper sense to me, rather than working with the categories of "homen" ["man"] and "mulher" ["woman"] and "amante" ["lover"] and "caso" ["affair"] that are present in Brazil, but make no sense to me whatsoever. As you can see from the letters, the way I have confronted the situation is distinctly unBrazilian: I have suffered the full being down to the ground with all the attendant confusion as well. You can also see that I have checked in with my People in Java and they have advised me to get the whole issue as well as the basic elements of The Book of Being witnessed rather than keeping material that need not be so esoteric all to myself.
     If you have ever read Ulysses by James Joyce, The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain or any of Franz Kafka, Günter Grass or Albert Camus' works, you're halfway there in understanding what I have gone through. Even the West is not totally ignorant. We even have philosophers that theoretically discuss (purely as an abstract I'll grant you) doing what the Javanese do every day, i.e., being present, like Heidegger and his dasein and Sartre and the other Existentialists in general. I remember that I was particularly fascinated by this aspect of Western thought and its theoretical effusion lacking in practical application. In 1973 I wrote a paper called, "The Intellect in a Vacuum" that captured a distinctly Javanese perspective on the issues involved: it's not enough just to talk about it, you have to do it and actually open up to existence or you're just chasing your own tail.
     As you can see from the work by Sukino I am enclosing, we have an abundance of theory in Java, but theory is always tied to practice and is considered meaningless (which it obviously is in your own personal terms) if treated otherwise.
     Anyway, my love to you. Please don't make me wait too damn long for a response. It would appear that when you got over your letter writing irresponsibility, I picked it up. I promise I will try to do better next time.

Love,

David