God and divine being considered

Dear Roger and the Gentlemen of Theologos,
You have asked what there is in kebatinan that might be of interest to the likes of you. By way of précis of the areas of common concern between us, I submit the following fundamental definition of the divine for your consideration:

*********************

The Source and Substance

   God
    We often have problems with God in the West. We cannot seem to decide what or if God is. God and Santa Claus have a lot in common among our "thinkers": they are concepts useful for managing and manipulating the behavior of the uninitiated. We generally feel uncomfortable even discussing the subject and "believers" are apt to be considered unrealistic and unscientific.
    But God is very simple in Java. God is everything. God is nature is energy is life is death is mind is matter is feeling is thinking is existence is good is evil is all that is. There is nothing else. As Suwondo, who is cited throughout this presentation, so clearly states:

You cannot be outside the power of Tuhan (God, Nature, Reality). Whether you study Sumarah or not, whether you are aware of it or not, you cannot do, feel or think anything which is not contained in the Laws and Will of Tuhan. (Kerten 3/10/80)

Your job is not to define existence, but to open to it and get to know it as it is. Defining, denying or even believing in God is foolish: it is like trying to see by closing your eyes. Kebatinan is the study of opening your eyes to let what there is be seen. The great problem of existence never goes anywhere: it is always right here; we frequently are not.
    There is a famous story about one of the Wali Sanga, the nine Sufi holy men who brought Islam to Java. Seh Siti Jenar was summoned to a council. When he received the summons he told the messengers, "Know, you two, that Siti Jenar does not exist, now it is Allah who appears; report this." He later told the head of the council, "There is no Friday, there is no mosque, only Allah exists. There is nothing other which now has existence." For expressing this Seh Siti Jenar was put to death, but his heresy remains Javanese orthodoxy. His death continues to serve as a reminder of what should always be obvious: you can never be alone; we are here together, small bits of the totality, more or less conscious of what we are about.
   When I first arrived in Java, I was trying to determine the limits of my research; I asked a kebatinan leader from another group some questions. General Harnopidjati looked at me quietly and said, "You'll understand better after you've practiced and gotten some experience." In retrospect, the situation reminds me of trying to learn about swimming by interviewing a swimmer; no matter how much you may intellectually understand about the activity, there is a point you cannot go beyond without getting wet.
    One day Suwondo was asked about God and he threw the question back. The questioner said that God is the light of total love and goodness. Suwondo said that view was all right, but that the practice shows God to be total, not just the good part, but the whole. What is food? Food is what nourishes, not only what tastes good.
    God has many names in Java -- Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, Gusti Allah, Maha Adil, Kang Murbeng Alam, Maha Pendidik, etc. -- but names are just words: experience is primary; words are just for giving and receiving directions. Words can easily confuse: have you ever tried to describe snow to a child from the tropics or the noise and confusion of the city to one from the country. Kebatinan teaches how to open to new experiences and how to receive them accurately. We are going to die here, so we do well to get to know the place as well as possible while we have the chance. In as much as "God" is a confused jumble of meanings and associations in the West, and the meaning we want is clear, I will use Tuhan to refer to it.
    The acceptance of the direct reception of reality, or Tuhan, as a goal is the first step in the practice. Allowing something to be beyond you is an important tool for relaxing and releasing the fearful, self-important control and separation of the ego. We pretend we are alone and block out great parts of experience to maintain the illusion. You accept, you relax and it affects your health. You pretend your situation less and can pay more attention to the real needs that are present both inside and outside you. Initially you mostly discover how tense you keep yourself, and how much you hurt yourself to demonstrate your power over experience.
    In this opening process, heavy emphasis is placed on "service" (leladi) in Sumarah and the other kebatinan groups in Java. The leaders do not receive material benefits for their time and efforts, though their real contribution is deeply appreciated and "value for value" is always practiced relative to their service. There is status associated with leadership but if you find pleasure in it you are showing your immaturity. Service should not have such coloration. When it does, you are trying to serve your ego and Tuhan at the same time. Knowingly or unknowingly you are asking for things -- position, wisdom, rectitude, comfort.

In time, when you are able to surrender, you will know that when you ask for things, that's not proper. When you ask Tuhan for things it's wrong. . . . It's not service to Tuhan. In fact, what is asked for is service. In time this becomes clear although it's not accepted at first; eventually it becomes clear that that's the way it is.

This highlights another emphasis in the practice: you only truly learn from your own experience. It is like any other complex skill -- playing an instrument, speaking a language, driving, typing -- you only really master it when you no longer separate and think about it, when it is simply done and you just watch for things needing correction.
This joining with rather than separation from what is demands making the ego permeable, which essentially involves your stepping back so that the rest of existence can get in: "It's not me that's aware of Tuhan, but Tuhan who's aware of me" (Dudu aku sing eling pada Allah, ning Allah sing eling pada aku). This perspective restructuring involves an existential reassessment.

I am a human being, and any human being is limited and has lots of weaknesses. I hope that Tuhan will remind me of this. When I am wrong or irresponsible, I pray that Tuhan hit me on the head until I see it. That's the responsibility. The ego must take responsibility for itself in order to be evaluated by Tuhan. Even so, in reality we can't always do that. We feel that we are accepting responsibility, but in fact we're not. So when we request something of Tuhan, we may request it but don't forget Tuhan's will concerning the matter. We should ask that Tuhan make us aware of it because we cannot possible know His will; we can only know what is customary, but Tuhan's will has nothing to do with our customs.

You are a little bit of close to nothing. In the practice you learn to cooperate, to serve, to surrender to the totality: Tuhan. Once surrender has arrived, the relationship becomes more active. The awareness comes from the activity itself, not from you somehow separate. This awareness constitutes a kind of support or succor, "aware within protective shelter" (eling dalem pangayoman).
The process of opening to reality eventually develops into surrender (sumarah) to what you have opened to. This evolution in perspective is viewed as a process inherent in the activity itself: learning how to swim will work wonders on your fear of the water.
Your life becomes a prayer, a constant prayer that reflects your relationship with existence. The closer you get to "me first," the less proper your prayer becomes. The process of opening reveals the beauty of what you are opening to and this in turn changes your attitude toward existence itself. The relationship that finally comes out in surrender is a return to a childlike, "What is Thy will?" (Panjenengan kersa menapa?) or "What must I do?" (Kedahipun kula kados pundi?). In this you are open: it is the attitude of surrender and the only one that does not separate you from reality and bury you in illusions.

******************************

As you can see, our definition of God simplifies the problem of relating to Divine Being altogether. While Christians are given to abstracted speculation and argument in the contemplation of God as something (someone) outside themselves, our divine premise gives us the opportunity to open to and join with Divine Being through the gradual accretion of awareness inherent in the opening process.

A second issue that should be of interest to you is that this definition and its practical application reveal, in no uncertain terms, that any being that is based on the promotion of any subset of the totality as an end or purpose in and of itself is, by definition, demonic. Divine being is, again by definition, only that which concerns and is concerned with all of existence. Thus, Christianity is a demonic union seeking to benefit a smaller group at the expense of the rest of us. An unprejudiced look at the history of the Church over the years more than adequately illustrates this demonic element. Christians do have a tendency to exhibit "selective memory syndrome" but the centuries of terror of the Holy Inquisition, with the heretic and witch persecutions, tortures and burnings (not only in the RCC by any means), decrees of excommunication and interdiction, the formerly separated legal, tax and judicial system as well as the most outstanding characteristic of Christianity which is intolerance give an ample idea of where to look to find what the Church and Christianity really have been. To get a grip on it, I would suggest renting The Name of the Rose.

One final point: in fact, the truth does not set you free. Rather, the truth reveals your responsibilities in an indisputable fashion as well as the relational bonds that underlie them.

Yours truly,
David Gordon Howe

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws