Basic Sumarah Theory and Orientation

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VI

Sumarah TheoryThe Source and Substance

God

We often have problems with God in the West. We cannot seem to decide what or ifGod 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 of Sumarah

theory, 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.Kebatinanis the study of opening your eyes to letwhat 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

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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 kebatinanleader 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 thewhole. 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?Kebatinanteaches 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 isclear, I will use Tuhanto 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 kebatinangroups 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

Tuhanat 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 Tuhanfor 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.


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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 Tuhanwho's aware of me" (Dudu aku

sing eling pada Allah, ning Allah sing eling pada aku). This perspective restructuringinvolves an existential reassessment.

I am a human being, and any human being is limited and has lots of weaknesses. I

hope that Tuhanwill remind me of this. When I am wrong or irresponsible, I pray

that Tuhanhit 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'swill concerning the matter. We should ask that Tuhanmake us aware of itbecause we cannot possibly know His will; we can only know what is customary, but

Tuhan'swill 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 inthe 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?) which, depending on your

inflection, might also be translated more colloquially as "Now what?" (highlighting the

continuing moment we all are) and "Where were we?" (emphasizing the collectivecharacter of experience) respectively. 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.

Rasa

What do your senses report?

Rasais the sensing as well as the sense of being: the rasayou experience is what you

receive of reality. But rasais not something you control; rasais the shared, common

sense of being, the affective sea we are all fish in.

To some extent, what you see depends on what you let in. Basically, the clearer yourwindow, the more accurate your perspective because you can manipulate your

reception, and knowingly or unknowingly distort what reaches you. Reflecting this is a

receptivity continuum that stretches from spontaneity through various degrees of


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separation from what is here.

Clear reception is termed rasa murni, and is the ever present flow of being and

sensations that we habitually select from in defining our experiences. When you are no

longer selecting, that is rasa murni, the personal interface with reality: "When I am

here, Tuhanis not; when Tuhanis here, I am not" (Yen aku ana, Allah ora ana; yen

Allah ana, aku ora ana). The more you are controlling and determining your experience,

the farther you are from rasa murni. Babies are constantly close to rasa murnias they

spontaneously sense what comes to them. We sometimes approach this state duringperiods of extreme stress: the car spins -- crash, helter-skelter, silence -- you are still

alive, breathing deeply and feeling the heat of the sun.Rasa murniis just what is here.

This immediacy, this spontaneous receptivity and loss of separation from reality is the

goal of open psychology; this is where openness is expressed, and the ego is transcended.

This is the reality base. Sumarah teaches you how and why not to escape from reality in

forming your own version; then through the practice you study your avoidance habits

and tendencies and gradually unlearn them.

Suwondo: When you have relaxed your body, the feeling of the body is pleasant. Butdon't stop with that pleasant feeling, go deeper to the calm, neutral feeling which is

there. This feeling is neutral; if it is pleasant, it is the feeling of the body, but if it is

neutral, it is the feeling of feeling. . .

Santoso (a participant): That is empty and calm.

Suwondo: It depends on where rasa murniis at that time.

Santoso: How about a feeling of purity; is that still just an emotion?

Suwondo: It's just an emotion, and, in fact, if your feeling is not pure, that's all right

too. So the purity of the feeling is not what's important; what's important is open

reception.

Santoso: So rasa murniis just open reception.

"The feeling of feeling" -- the uncensored reception of what the senses report -- is a

clear window on now. But in principle, it is like any of the perceptions. For example, if

you hear a noise and stop what you are doing to try to identify the source, you are

placing your attention in the real situation. That means that you stop whatever you were

doing that was interfering with hearing clearly. You do not decide what is present, that

is what you find out by listening.

Of course, you do not control rasa murni, and depending on the time and place, what

you receive can vary considerably though the broader frame stabilizes experience. Thesense of smell provides a good example of this. Normally you do not smell anything; the

air is pure enough so that you do not notice it. But when a really noxious odor comes

your way, it cuts through this inattention and you register it. The practice is designed to

gradually lower the attention threshold so that you start picking up more of what is

coming in and distinguishing it more accurately.

There is a subtle intensity to the Javanese that can be very wearing to Westerners.

They are always watching. Their eyes do not glaze over as they tell you things. Their

attention does not wander; they just stay here watching your response, the feeling you

are together and the movement of rasafrom moment to moment.They are conditioned to be sensitive to subtle signals, and to avoid showing signs that

intrude on the experience of others. They are like a people who have sensitized their

hearing by always speaking to one another very softly. The idea is to avoid departing


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from the quiet flow of rasa murniand, more importantly, to avoid taking anyone with

you if you do.

If you make a big deal out of something, you distort it and blow it out of proportion

to get attention, and make it harder to see it clearly together. How often do we indulge in

such "self-expression" in the West, causing people to take sides and preventing

problems from being seen clearly until we calm down and start seeing one another

again, rather than causes. Of course, the Javanese method does have limitations when

used in contentious, confused social settings; receiving the confusion comes first whichcan be stultifying.

The Javanese are calm to start with and tend to depart only minimally from that

state: they listen, they watch. There are two fundamental concerns in being here

together: first, being what comes to you; and second, letting others be as they are. When

the conditions are not simultaneous and present, you have a problem. The Javanese

approach to this problem is to stay in the hole between and live and suffer the being into

the present. This is the rasayou share with others: the sensing of things together; the

quietly united confrontation of what disturbs and keeps us apart; the being here

together beginning and ending now.It requires a lot of respect and practice to see and be openly together. A lot of

checking goes on when the differences in our senses of being are compared and the

things that are interfering with reception are examined. Your feelings are not your

isolated property; they are part of our capacity to confront reality and part of our

problem being here with you. We share much if we feel our common sense.

The relationship between sensing the world and creating a world with your senses is

like that between hearing and talking. If you talk all the time you do not hear much, you

do not exchange with others and you do not share with them the hearing of what is here.

A brief aside: when I was studying kung fu and a Chinese instructor asked me: "If I didthis, what would you do?" He then struck out at me, but he was a little too far away to

reach. I went into a defensive position. Said he: "Wrong. Do nothing. I am too far away.

Do not commit yourself any more than you have to. Each movement limits the next."

The Javanese apply this same principle to behavior in general. Maximum capacity to

respond to any situation demands complete attention which is this relaxed watchfulness.

This "continuous plateau of intensity" has caused interpretational problems for

Westerners coming from a closed psychological perspective (see Chapter 2). Bateson and

Mead went so far as to attribute a "schizoid" component to Balinese character.

However, beyond noting this problem in interpreting Javanese, Balinese and openpsychology in general (the inscrutable orientals, etc.), let's look at some real differences

between their perspective and ours in precisely this sense.

When I went to Java, my research was designed to test a hypothesis coming out of

research in the States, Culture and Schizophrenia: A Consideration of Ignorance and

Information. In short, that work argues "that 'schizophrenia' is founded in problem-

solving behavior."

In conclusion, these examples and discussions of temporal isolation, episodes,

searches, the predictive self, driven response, and affect approximation are intended

to highlight aspects of the problem-solving process. This process, when activated,

can either solve the problem that triggered it or become a problem itself.

Schizophrenia is a reaction characteristic of this latter situation in Western Society

and in groups using the information system Western Society has built up. It may be
http://sumarah.tripod.com/cs.htm


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that a group which carries more accurate information concerning this process - what

to expect and how to react - would effectively obviate some if not all of the problems

with problems.

It was just as well that I did not get a chance to do a focused study on Javanese

psychopathology: Javanese psychology proved a great deal deeper than I had expected.

However, there was ample evidence to support the hypothesis. One of the things

associated with problem-solving problems is "unusual" or "uncommon" experiences,sensations you can neither really explain nor find a response to.

It helps to focus on the history of the "uncommon" experiences. There are four

variables which are important indicators: first, chronicity -- how long has the person

experienced their expression; second, frequency -- has their occurance been

continuous or intermittent; third, amplitude -- how attention engaging or powerful

are these experiences; fourth, distance -- how "far" are they from the common

range, i.e., how bizarre and unusual are they?

The place where the people of Java and Bali show the clearest difference is in their"common range" itself. They live in a much bigger world than we do -- one which we

tend to associate with the fantasies of childhood. It is a world with gods and demons,

people who are invulnerable -- they bounce cannon balls they throw in the air off their

heads, they apply a red hot knife to their tongue, they savagely slice themselves with a

sharp knife and do not even show a scratch -- people who see spirits, who can foresee the

future, and people who can share your experience with you. These are examples from

people who I knew or knew of directly. More important, the Javanese have people close

to them who have had such experiences -- usually a relative. This discipline, these

capacities, this awful wonder is just a part of life, a part of life that we in the West haveapparently tried to amputate.

As a result of allowing more to be here, they have much greater flexibility. They can

let what we would consider frightfully bizarre experiences come and go with very little

to-do. It does not make all that much difference if your uncle can astral travel or your

grandfather was able to read your thoughts -- you live with it. They did the best they

could; your job is simple -- you do the best you can too, and wait and see what comes of

it. Perhaps the most telling example of this was a much more mundane one.

The Surakarta Justice Department was having an independence day party. The men

and women from the office were celebrating the occasion with their families by making

speeches, playing games, eating and talking a lot. One of the officers was obviously very

nervous when he made his speech. He was shaking and his voice kept cracking

throughout the presentation. But he bore with it and carried on to the end with no

pretension or shirking: just the honest agony of someone doing something that they do

not like and not liking the way they are doing it. It was one of the bravest things I have

seen in a long time.

He was not the only nervous performer, just the most obvious; but the reaction of the

"Justice Family" was stunning. They received him (and one another's nervous speeches

in general) the way we might if our own child were doing it, bearing his fear and doing

his honest best. They did not turn away or fuss; they just listened respectfully, and when

he had finished, the next speaker came out.

The common terms of address in some Western countries for older/younger

relationships are uncle or aunt to niece or nephew. In Java they are nuclear family


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relationships -- father or mother to son or daughter, older brother or sister to younger

brother or sister. These are not empty terms. One consequence of this "family" tightness

is a measure of mutual acceptance that we reserve for these relationships per se. As a

result, incidents like the one at the party do not stand out either for the speaker or the

spectators -- "You are one of us. Remember that we care for you and that we try hard

too."

A recent World Health Organization study found that schizophrenics suffered milder

episodes and had quicker recovery rates in traditional than in industrialized societies, aswell as emphasizing the importance of family and milieu in the course of the problem. In

Java at any rate, I would also emphaze a difference in labeling -- to the Javanese, these

intense, uncommon experiences are clearly connected with psychological and spiritual

maturation. I encountered many examples of this.

Suwondo suffered from a phobic mental disturbance for many years (as will be

discussed further in the next chapter). He frequently finds it a useful window for seeing

others clearly and a source of illustrations. As he often says, "Bitter experiences can be

good. You add to your experience and your capacity to understand others."

Pak Subuh is the founder of Subud, one of the largest Javanese kebatinangroups andone of the few with international chapters. He went through a period of over a year of

withdrawal and strange behavior and experience before coming out to found the group

with the message and knowledge he had received.

No stigma was attached in either case. This openness-suffering-derangement-

maturation process is a part of the Hindic (and Sufi Islamic) tradition. The sutapa,

hermit monks, go off into the wild to find strength and wisdom and guidance by

exposing themselves to reality without the cushion of community. As well as the

tradition, sutapaare also superman-type comic book heroes for Javanese boys, with the

difference that you too can find wisdom and strength and help to set things straight inyour own way as have so many before you. It is an attainable dream with dedication,

discipline and self-abnegation, so profoundly unlike our comic book heroes.

This secluded practice of tapa(fasts and abstinences) still goes on, though less than it

once did. Solo used to be called "the city that never sleeps" as a result of all these

activities, and at night some still meditate in graveyards or immersed in springs or

rivers. Others seclude themselves in caves with the help of locals who bring them a bit of

rice and water every day.

The Javanese take good care. They take good care of their bodies, their neighbors,

their community and their rasa. We have come to where we can begin to examine thegreat divide between maturation and ego psychology, between the open and the closed,

using the didactic heuristic the Javanese have given us. If we return to the chariot and

the four horses, we might understand the situation better than if we try to stretch any of

our behavior models to the task.

Let's simplify the four horses. They are the four aspects of our relationship with

existence in a total sense: first, "taking" (aluamah), the desires associated with keeping

your body fed and comfortable; second, "disputing" (amarah), the problem of keeping

track of what affects you and letting sources of disturbance know about their influence

in one way or another; third, "cooperating" (supiah), being with others and lettingothers be with you without trying to control or define them; and fourth, "giving"

(mutmainah), serving without reservations, trying to help and return some of the bounty

you have been granted.

These are the four horses: taking, disputing, cooperating and giving. They are all just


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as necessary to a healthy group as they are to a healthy individual. The big difference

between open and closed psychology, between Java and the West, is that all four aspects

of our existential situation are obvious in Java, while in Western society we generally

only see the taking and the disputing. This is therasadivide. As a result, the game

theory-like ideas of interaction and existence that come from a locked, disputing

perspective do not work in interpreting groups with all four horses actively working

together; however, their four-horse perspective can certainly comment on our

circumstances.

In a social situation where the expression of the two broader desires becomes

excessively painful and prejudicial, they atrophy and emphasis goes onto the two aspects

that can at least still be partially controlled: taking and disputing. You cannot control

the cooperation or the giving of others, but you can fill your stomach and argue with

anyone who interferes with your creature comforts. When this happens, two predictable

sets of problems come out.

The first problems come from the other side, the open side of the divide: the rasaof

common sense does not fit into the disputive perspective of the bumper sticker: "I'm the

best, fuck the rest." The barrier between the closed and open perspective is locked bythe disputive aspect: "Nothing exists that I cannot control and if I cannot control it then

it does not really exist." This is the general Western response to such inexplicable

phenomena as the Balinese Barong ceremony where the trance-state dancers turn their

kris, their daggers, against their chests and strain to drive the point in, but only succeed

in bowing the blade with their efforts. This is a traditional village cleansing rite

throughout Bali, not a circus performance of legerdemain. It is still done, though not

very willingly with tourists present. Westerners cannot accept such things. We cannot do

them, do not really want to try and even though Bateson and Mead made a movie of the

Barong ceremony which includes the krisrite, we are rather more inclined to ignoresuch things than to try to explain why we cannot explain them.

Such things provide a kind of cult fascination for some Westerners -- the thrill of

extrasensory perception, the crystal ball, UFO's and the supernatural -- just deciding

you believe in them is a protest, an assertion of your right to be eccentric.

The Javanese do not pretend such things. The minute you start believing, you lose the

capacity to be open to what is here.

We meditate to sensitize the rasaso that it will be sensitive and receive. Sometimes

what we receive disturbs us, but that's all right. So feel a contact with you don't

know what and it disturbs you. But later when you're used to it, it's no problem.

(Grogol 6/1/79)

The idea of the "supernatural" does not make any sense. There are things about Nature

that we understand and there are things about Nature that we do not understand: that

does not make any of it supernatural. Even if you can walk on burning coals, sleep on

nails, stop your heart from beating and levitate: so what? Our basic problem remains

the same and too many people have had experiences like that in Java for anybody to get

excited about them.

Sukandar: I was lying down to sleep but I wanted to meditate first. It was already

late. The TV had signed off after the badminton match. It was already one o'clock

when I got into bed and meditated before going to sleep. Then I envisioned an

offering in the center of a three-way intersection. I was being awaited. They were


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waiting for me to invite me to meditate. Then in the meditation I found myself

slipping backwards. But then I realized it with a kind of vibration, then this

vibration got more subtle and then stopped and I went out, like flying above

everything. But then suddenly I remembered Pak Wondo -- oops, Pak Wondo -- so I

remembered your telling me that this sort of thing is not good. I had to return to

Solo, so I came back.

Wondo: What did you find out? I sort of learned something when I did that, did

you?

Sukandar: How do you make sure you don't take off like that?

Wondo: Well, you've already experienced it, so if you just don't intend it in the

future it would be best... Just don't strive for that; but even if it happens it's no big

deal. It's no big deal. (Grogol 6/1/79)

While some of the groups do teach ngraga sukma (astral travel), Sumarah emphasizes

other things and such experiences are regarded much as are emotions -- a part of reality

to be accepted and received accurately, but not to be indulged in or distracted by.

In meditation like this we can make use of or receive the waves of nature. Thus, wecan receive the waves of nature and we can cause waves to vibrate in nature around

us. Nature also records waves. But, on the other hand, we can also record or receive

the recordings of nature. It depends on our sensitivity towards the vibrations. What

I mean when I refer to rasais how sensitive our rasais. We can receive the waves of

nature with our rasaand we can also cause waves to vibrate outside ourselves.

(Grogol 6/1/79)

The second problem comes from this side, the closed side of the divide. Over there are

all the monsters we do not want to recognize; over here we have the monsters that comefrom not recognizing them. Specifically, the biggest problems come from the perversion

of the energies associated with cooperating and giving. In individuals or groups whose

confusion and unhappiness with their situation cuts them off from rasa murniand

reality, the two denied horses have characteristic modes and media for expression.

Cooperation comes out in an overemphasis on sex, whether in forbidding or exalting it,

it is distorted and used as an escape. Sex is the aspect of the tools associated with

cooperation that can most easily be manipulated. Giving comes out in fanaticism

connected with the body, whether in destroying it through neglect or abuse (the use of

drugs and other pick-me-ups can come in here), or in using it to destroy others for their

"own good", of course, through fanaticism or because some "higher purpose" demands

it. The body is the most manageable and manipulable of the tools of giving.

Moving away from here on therasacontinuum, we have gone fromrasa murni(which

is here) through rasa(which is close to here) and now, across the divide, we first come to

rasa bungah-susahor emosi. These are our manipulated emotions with their attendant

ups and downs, and rasa bungah-susah means precisely that, "feeling happy-sad." This

is where trying to decide if feelings are honest or not becomes a real problem. This is

where we contemplate and calculate and manipulate our feeling state until we are likely

to forget that honest feelings exist.

Is the vengeance coming from reality or is it based on your own version of it?

They're different. If I plan revenge then I am the one that is wrong and it comes

back to me. But if I respond with vengeance because I don't have enough self-


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control, it just comes out spontaneously. (Grogol 6/1/79)

One of the ways our versions of reality come back to us is that we get stuck with our

own knowing or unknowing lies. They do not release. They are never allowed to sort

themselves out and be the way they really are. Such unfaced material is a source of

tension. Situations that touch on it excite it and bring back the tone and the tension and

the self-justification. Unreleased intense material that is frequently excited is a source of

illness.As a matter of fact, I like tennis and because of that I unconsciously forced my body

to serve my pleasure to the point where even though my body was exhausted, I made

it continue and I got sick. This body is a tool and I continued with my hobby

unaware that I was forcing this tool to go on until it got sick. In fact, it's the same

thing. Take a look at it. Your intention is to hate your father and you forced your

psyche to work like crazy to go along with your hate to the point where your nerves

just gave out. (Kerten 6/4/79)

With old age, this unfaced material can become a very serious problem. The freedomfrom reality that you gave to your lies gives them an independence that can overpower

you. You no longer have the youthful energy needed to push yourself into the present.

Your senility takes you away into your version of things, never changing, never real and

never here: you come to be the slave of your unfaced lies, confusion and fears and

burden the people around you with the same dreary stories over and over again.

This isolated rasa completes the continuum that went from the rasaof being here, rasa

murni, to the locked rasaof not being here which is most actively expressed at the

ignoble end of the continuum ingolek penak("seeking pleasure" - hedonism), when you

are eventually lost in obsessions of control of one kind or another or in senility. TheJavanese have a real fear of losing one another behind these walls of illusion. They start

to teach feet-on-the-ground humility very early. TheKancil Talesare a part of this vital

education. They are Uncle Remus-type stories that center on a kancil, a mouse deer. The

two basic stances of open and closed psychology are alternatively taken by the kanciland

then by the other protagonists. Whoever is closed, proud and disputive in the story

always comes to grief and proves himself a fool. In one story the kanciluses the conceit

of a dog to escape from a trap that the kancil'spride got him into. In the next a

community of snails teach him a lesson in humility by (apparently) defeating him in a

race. His pride got him into the contest and their cooperation outwitted and defeated

him.

This is one of the first lessons Javanese children learn: when you make much of

yourself, you become a fool, seeing only your own lies in the mirror of your pride and/or

evil and lost in believing them.

Thought

Cogito, ergo sum.

Blather.

We have enshrined thought in the West. We use it to manipulate our feelings; we useit to manipulate the world; we try to control our experience to our pleasure by thinking.

We do not understand very much about thought in the West simply because we think

too much. The kind of thought you experience is connected with the rasacontinuum, and

it is in this connection that the influence of how far you are removed from the present


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becomes obvious. The Western notion of thinking is fundamentally removed. How much

thinking can you do if you are really paying attention? How much is thought present?

Let's begin with what we are most familiar with -- our kind of thinking,pikiran.

Pikiranis properly time spent absorbed in examining and trying to solve some problem.

If you do it all the time, then it becomes a problem itself and it is one you cannot think

your way out of.

Beginning from the outside, relax your body, relax it fully. From your head to yourfeet -- relax. Lessen your activity. Generally the thinking is what's difficult. Reduce

your thought activity. Thought is the hardest activity to reduce and especially to

stop. It's very difficult. The theory is easy -- just don't think about anything -- but

the practice is hard. That's because it has become a habit to always have some

thinking going on, (Grogol 6/1/79)

What are we doing when we are thinking and there is really nothing to be thinking

about? Thought is one of the tools we use to control what we see and feel. In part we just

keep ourselves busy creating and living behind a kind of thought screen. We do not

relate to the world; we relate to the world we create. Thus, we have the power to choosewhat we see and do not see to some extent. But if this is done in excess you cut yourself

off from reality. This picking and choosing means that we do not see what is here clearly.

We are alone, playing with ourselves, and afraid to be here simple and plain. Our

fantasies would be exposed and our control lost.

Recent Western art and literature largely reflect this. The benumbed horror of this

isolation turns into the deeper fear that we might actually succeed in cutting ourselves

off, or worse yet, that there really is nothing real and substantial out there, and that life

"all a dream -- a grotesque and foolish dream".

The hedonism (golek penak) that underlies this problem involves harboring pleasantexperiences and denying unpleasant ones. Mechanically, you place your energy and

attention in pleasant associations and return to them again and again. At the same time

you remove energy and attention from the present situation and unpleasant experiences

in general and do not go back to them unless you have to. In either case you distort these

experiences and remove them from their real context -- you never face them and let

them be.

In a real sense these experiences have become problems, and the mechanisms for

examining them -- both by thinking about and feeling them again -- start to work on

these holes to bring them into the present. If you are beyond the rasadivide in closedpsychology, you probably do not want to either lose the control that you have over your

present experience by selecting where your attention is going to be, or to confront the

experiences honestly and thus lose control over them altogether as they disappear into

reality. Getting your triumphs and tragedies into real perspective is not pleasant work to

start with, and you lose the option of playing with them when you do. The thrill is gone,

if you will, and you cannot go back and wallow in them: they are already here.

If you have this habit, you have to keep moving from one personal distortion to

another. If you stay at a "party" too long, the reality denied in calling it up begins to

assert itself and the feeling goes bad. You can use positive or negative experiences in thisway, it does not much matter -- your intention is not to accept them for what they are in

any case.

When you get frightened like this it's in your own imagination, isn't it? You used to


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be like that, but you've gradually gotten better. Don't keep going over and over

things; it limits your ability to progress.

This brings out the two directions you can go from this common predicament. You

can face the experiences and let them be as they are ("make your peace" as the old

expression advises in preparing for death), or you can devote yourself to defending the

distortions through self-justification or auto-flagellation of one kind or another.

You can get to these experiences either through thinking about them or through thefeeling itself. Your present situation may generate a similar rasaand evoke recollections

and ideas and generate behavior based on previous, undigested experiences. You may

also think yourself into an associated feeling state irrespective of the current situation.

Whether the former or the latter be the case, you are among the missing when this

happens: "When I am thinking, I am not here; when I am here, I am not thinking."

Anger gives another good, common example of this problem. Someone does something

that angers you, you remember other things they have done before that rubbed you

wrong, and you come back to the present situation angrier still. The anger-present feeds

on the anger-past and it works itself into a kind of firestorm. You can go in the otherdoor as well. You recall something that made you angry, your heart starts to race again,

and you go through a fantasized, generally devastating and satisfying, response. In

either case you are locked in the response and are not going to the source with the

intention of confronting the problem and actually solving it. It is out of proportion and it

is rather fun being angry: it lets you feel righteous and gets your circulation going. The

problem is that the problem itself remains untouched and you have become a part of it

with an interest in keeping it unsolved. Later on the mechanisms involved in properly

resolving such situations come clear, but initially the issue is bringing them into the

present and letting them be what they are.

Another place where this tandem relationship frequently comes out is in sexual

contacts. Sexual fantasies are powerful stuff. There is an awful lot of energy there to be

played with. The power of simple sexual attraction itself can become a distraction and

fog your windows.

One of the things that causes one to be unclean is lack of sex. It's really kind of...

pardon the expression, I myself, my sex drive is still strong, so when I approach a

woman whose -- how do you say it -- whose sex drive is strong, I receive the

vibrations. That means I'm unclean if I am influenced by the sexual vibrations.

That's what's dangerous. Later if you are not strong it can influence the purity ofyour feeling. It can become an emotion and then although you haven't done

anything, your feeling is twisted. External laws may not have been violated but the

laws of rasahave been... [So you should] be neutral. Then there's a change in your

tools. So later it changes itself and your reaction itself changes. Then you look at the

beauty of a woman and you see her beauty but you aren't influenced by it. It's like

looking at a landscape. When you look at beautiful scenery, it's beautiful but it

doesn't influence or attract you. Yes, it's truly beautiful but it doesn't cause you to

start imagining things like being in love does. (Grogol 6/1/79)

Becoming open does not mean that you no longer feel anger or hunger or sexual

desire. It does mean that you learn not to get absorbed in fantasizing about things, and

that your responses become more honest and present. You also learn that you hurt

yourself in many ways that you were unaware of when you were drifting off in your


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vapors.

For example, if I hate Mr A, grrr, I hate him a lot. So this comes out and I express it,

but then it is gone. But then if I see him again the same thing happens again. So I

promise myself that I will not hate Mr A because that's just the way Mr A is. If I

hate Mr A and Mr A doesn't change his attitudes, who is it that suffers? (Kerten

6/4/79)

So the thought continuum is parallel to the rasacontinuum. They can interact withone another, interfere with one another and sometimes get so tangled up together that

honest reception and reality itself become a murky memory you are not really interested

in recalling more clearly. There are locked emotions associated with compulsive thought,

or locked emotions associated with thought's loss of the power to influence feeling. The

associated pathological conditions -- obsession, manic episodes, depression,

schizophrenia, senility, etc. -- are all connected with problems of not being here. They

have inspired a lot of people to study open psychology in Java.

TheRasaand Thought Continua1. TheRasa (Sensing) Continuum

rasa murni(direct, spontaneous receptivity)

rasa(alert sensing)

rasa bungah-susah(self-controlled emotion)

golek penak(hedonism) and locked emotion (seemingly atemporal, reality-

independent, constructed emotion)

2. The Thought Continuum

rasa murniangen-angen(autochthonous understanding arising when a feeling and the present

reception are brought together)

pikiran(self-directed thought)

compulsive thought (acontextual, reality-independent thought)

Let's now go the other direction. What happens to our kind of thought,pikiran, when

you come towards rather than withdraw from the present? What happens to thinking as

you get closer to here and now? As with therasacontinuum, this part of the thought

continuum is rather off our two-horse system's map: it is beyond the rasadivide. We

havepikiran which is a tool for solving problems through examination in a kind ofcontext-free isolation. When this tool is abused we get a kind of confused tangle of

thought and feeling and the loss of reality reference that we just discussed.

On the other side of the divide, we first come to angen-angenwhich is thought that

comes out of the hole that separates a position from the present. You hold a confusion

here quietly and information comes -- it is not controlled or linear or predictable -- out

of the silence. This is the stuff of inspiration. If you try to write a poem or do creative

work in general, you start with a feeling and you let the felling find and bring out the

words of its own expression. You do not write a poem, you are present and participate in

its writing. If you force it, it may be clever but it is no longer poetry.

Angen-angen is also the thoughts that come to you as you let go and are falling asleep,

and the thoughts that come to you and awaken you while you are sleeping. When it

comes, it arises from outside your knowledge, an answer to a question you feel, but an


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answer that comes from accepting the problem to be beyond you, opening to it and

letting it find its own expression.

You do not set out to find angen-angenthe way you purposely employpikiranto solve

a problem: you wait with the problem for angen-angento come to you.Pikiranis active

and directional and noisy.Angen-angenis passive and patient and quiet. Evidently, this

is what Hecate is referring to in saying: "How is it that we think? It's by facing a

problem and letting a solution come to us out of reality". You do not pretend to truly

know the problem, nor do you pretend to delimit or define the natural result of beinghere with it. This sounds rather romantic but its application is rigorous and scientific.

This is the science of intuition, but more, it is the science of receptivity and the study of

rasa.

This is the first level of thought on the open side of the rasadivide. There are many

more beyond it as you gradually approach here. As we will see later, this is where many

interactive kinds of information become available including some mentioned above such

as "the Inner Voice," "checking" and "the True Teacher."

For now we will content ourselves with a look at the True Teacher, in part to

introduce you to a fundamental perspective on existence in open psychology in general,and in part to orient you to the tone, direction and pace of the study.

"The True Teacher" (guru sejati) is similar to Christianity's Holy Ghost except that

the True Teacher does not come and go; the True Teacher is always here, your link with

the Nature's totality. The problem is that you come and go. You are often too self-

absorbed and noisy and assertive to receive the quiet voice of Tuhanwithin you.

The story of Dewaruci is a Javanese addition to the Mahabharata. Dewaruci is

another of the True Teacher's many names and the story is about maturation. The

central character is Bima, one of the princes of the Pandawa family. First we will tell the

story, based on Paul Stange's presentation, and will only examine it in the next sectionon ego.

Bima was relaxing in one of the gardens of the palace. He was not good at

relaxing. He was very good at fighting but relaxing was not his forte. He had

recently heard about tirta marta, "the waters of eternal life," and he called the palace

tutor to him.

The tutor came grumbling. At best Bima was a disinterested student, and was

disconcertingly informal and direct with his elders. He was very different from his

polished and refined brothers like Arjuna. Using low Javanese as always, Bima

asked his question. The tutor adjusted his robe carefully to hide his reaction. He was

excited. Here was a chance to give Bima a real lesson or perhaps to be rid of him

altogether. "If you wish to find tirta marta, you should first know that it is a very

dangerous quest. Not everyone is ready for it. But if you are one of the few, then you

must first climb that high mountain."

Bima left without comment. Here was something interesting to do and as for being

one of the few, nobody was different enough from anybody else to make a difference

anyway. Besides, the tutor said things that made no sense as often as not. He climbed

the mountain with the sun hot and the sweat trickling down his back. Near the top

he was suddenly attacked by two remarkably ugly demons. Each was strong butBima was stronger. However, together they were formidable and were wearing Bima

down by attacking one after the other. Bima would fight and knock one out and the

other would rest and watch. Then the rested one would fight, and so it went, from


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one to the other and back again.

Growing tired, Bima decided to try to bring them together and get it over with one

way or the other. They all struggled and Bima caught their heads in his hands and

crushed them together. There was a loud clap and they did not get up again. But

where was the water of eternal life? This was a mountain not a lake. He went back to

the palace to find out what game the tutor had been playing.

Bima entered and the tutor looked up from his writing. Oh dear, he is not easy to

get on with at the best of times. The tutor made a show of greeting congratulatingBima on having successfully completed the first step on the path to tirta marta. Bima

was mollified by the tutors reception, but let's get on with it. If this was the first step,

what is the next?

The tutor pointed to the sea. "You must walk down into the depths of the ocean. It

is dangerous but if you are as strong as you seem, you might survive." Bima liked

the challenge and left without a word.

Bima got to the sea and kept walking -- down, down, down into the cool waters.

He walked for a long time. The fish had begun to thin out at this depth and

suddenly he was attacked by a gigantic serpent. The serpent was fantastically strongbut Bima gave himself to the struggle. They fought and fought, but no one won.

They arrived at a kind of understanding. Bima found he could not eliminate the

serpent and the serpent found that he could not consume Bima. He left to look for

something easier to get down. Alone again, filled with the peace of exhaustion, Bima

went on.

Bima continued without resistance into the depths of the sea. As he progressed the

waters around him became calm and peaceful, the life around him tranquil and

harmonious. At the bottom of the ocean he encountered a dwarf. Not recognizing the

thumb-sized being as a miniature of himself, Bima addressed him scornfully. Oncethe dwarf, named Dewaruci, started blithely telling Bima all about himself, Bima

quickly realized that he was dealing with a god rather than an ordinary being, so he

asked for help in his search for the water of eternal life. Dewaruci responded by

telling Bima to enter his left ear. Although balking momentarily, Bima did after

Dewaruci assured him that the whole cosmos lay inside -- so Bima should have little

trouble fitting in. Having entered, Bima was disoriented at first, he lost all sense of

direction and the space seemed totally empty. Gradually everything returned to

view, although in a somewhat different light. Finally Dewaruci himself reappeared

and launched into a long explication of esoteric doctrine -- including the revelationthat the water of life is everywhere, suffusing all being.

Ego

It becomes meaningless to treat rasaas separate from thought as separate from ego as

you approach the present. They become one faculty with various aspects united in

receiving reality and confronting problems. Thought arises from rasaand the acuity and

accuracy of thought reflect the tone and receptivity of the rasa. Ego acts as a bridge

between the two allowing them to work together in the present.

We have spent a lot of time on the chariot's four horses, but what about the driver?The driver is most prominent when the horses are not cooperating. He must apply the

whip to first one and then another just to keep moving. Hard work and very attention

consuming for all concerned.


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If the team is working together, then the relationship changes. The driver no longer

tries to dominate; he watches for problems among and around them and takes as good

care of their condition as possible.

The first role is active and basically destructive: you control by spending your energy

and attention breaking the horses rather than going anywhere or seeing anything

around you. The fight absorbs the fighters and they have little time for anything else.

The second role is passive and conservative: you work with the team, attend to their

needs and the needs of your circumstances, and in as much as they are not absorbed infighting you or each other, they too can give attention to what comes to them. There is

time to spare for everyone to help take care.

If the ego abuses its position, it can find itself in serious trouble. The horses pay no

attention to the driver or to anything else except fighting against further abuse.

When it's like that the ego gets separated from the other tools; it can't be active

because it has no support from the other tools... So the main thing is the ego -- how is

the ego first of all. What is to be corrected is the ego. The ego can go in a positive or

a negative direction. It's like that. You have to know the rules. The ego shouldn'tjust manipulate the other tools but should be united together with them and aimed

towards the goal. Then later you can find out about the rules of living because we

study the art of living so that life can be faced. The ego for the most part is still wild;

it doesn't know about the way of life. (Grogol 6/1/79)

Let's go back now and examine Bima's journey to openness. We start in the palace, the

palace of the ego where the ego has its walls to protect it, lots of rooms and gardens and

places to wander and dream and remember. There are unpleasant places in the palace

too, but they are partitioned off and you need not go there very often. There is another

unpleasant aspect to the palace which Bima brings out clearly -- there is really nothingto do there. You have to be pretty confused not to recognize that reality is outside the

walls, and you are trapped inside where very little that does not suit you happens, in

fact, not much happens at all that you do not determine.

Bima goes on the sutapaquest. he leaves behind the comforting walls of the palace and

his familiar associations to confront reality alone. He accepts the tutor's dubious counsel

as anyone must to go on the quest. He is guided by wisdom beyond his own experience; it

is basically hearsay and still has the tone of leading in a painful direction without being

worth the pain. The counsel is empty, theoretical, a fine idea to dream about, but getting

out and doing it is very different. The tutor never sought tirta marta. He probably readabout it in a book.

Bima climbs the mountain and is attacked by the two demons. The mountain can be

seen as the leavings, the refuse of his thoughts and dreams and complaints and

confusions: conflicting desires suspended in arguments of "should" and "shouldn't," the

two demons of the undecided. Both sides of the argument have some weight and reality

to them, but no matter which side prevails, the other is waiting for things to go wrong.

"Should I smoke?"

"Yes, I want a cigarette. I'm nervous."

"But it's not good for me."

"I know ,but one does't do much harm."

"One is not the issue, if I smoke I keep smoking. It hurts my wind and my health

and maybe I end up with emphysema or cancer."


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"So I'm not going to die if I don't smoke, eh? That's interesting. I'll probably eat

more and die of that."

"True, but I'll worry about that later."

"Nah, have a cigarette and forget about it."

The never ending argument of justifying what you do. This is the stuff the walls of the

palace are made of. The reasons and opinions and justifications that allow the

suspension of spontaneity. They give you the freedom to go over and over what and whyyou do what you do in isolation. This continuous argument goes from one subject to the

next; the ego is the kingpin, the decision-maker choosing between and among the

desires, and playing one off against another to maintain authority.

The only way out is through cracking the two heads of argument together in

spontaneity. You stop running off into a room in the depths of the palace to make

decisions, you bring problems out into the open, examine them in the light of the sun,

weigh them, and try to let reality, rather than opinion in isolation, guide your behavior.

You do not think a decision eternally right and righteous. Tomorrow the balance may

shift, and it may be proper to do what was not proper today. The problem is beingspontaneous enough, being present enough to be able to feel and see the situation clearly

from moment to moment.

Confronting the thousands of reasons and arguments and lies and good intentions and

confusions you have left behind you is not pleasant work. Cleaning up your mountain of

refuse is one of the most confused and confusing jobs imaginable. One of the most

difficult aspects of it is the lack of a reality reference that results from the ego being the

source, the purpose, the substance and the consequence of the mess. It is a locked

system: you cannot argue your way out of arguing.

The next part of the journey is after Bima has come more into the present and become

quieter and more spontaneous. He is less cerebral and more physically attentive. Bima

returns to the palace for orientation, but the palace has not changed. It is a place of

stories and flattery and lies, and Bima hurries on to the next step. There is no real rest in

confusion -- Bima just found that out atop a mountain of it.

Then Bima is enveloped by Nature's sea. In a palace or sweating your way up a

mountain, you might be able to forget you presence in Nature and Nature's in you; but it

is not easy to do that when you are under the water and the fish swim up to you and look

you in the eye. Bima's next lesson is learning that beyond the confusion, he is still not

properly aligned with his own condition or with Nature. The arguments are gone, but

the monster of his neglected real being remains. he has been denying and ignoring it for

a long time behind the walls and under the refuse, and now it can come out to complain

and receive the attention it has been wanting.

At the same time this real attention opens up the possibility of seeing and feeling

others as more than just puppets in your hedonistic struggle. This sense of others born

of shared experience and shared pain is called tepa slira.

A bitter experience, one that's not at all pleasant, can change your attitudes. It kind

of gives you training. When you belittle something and then someone complains

about it you think, "Well really, why are you making such a fuss?" But if it's yourown body, say your own breathing is like that, it causes tepa slira to arise. Sometimes

it's like that. Sometimes bad experiences for the feeling in your body are good for

your psyche, for the character of the ego. Generally we believe that if the ego likes


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something it's good for us, but it isn't always that way. Sometimes we don't like

something despite the fact that it's good for us. (Grogol 6/1/79)

So a part of the serpent's power came from Bima's habitual neglect of his actual

condition, and another part from the unleashed power of the unqualified desires and his

lack of understanding of them. A third aspect of the power comes from seeing the reality

he has been hiding from and ignoring behind the walls of argument for all these years. A

fourth aspect of the serpent's power comes from the sheer horror of existence, theterrifying problem of being itself. In the argument about smoking above, death was

mentioned, but it was death far away -- statistical, theoretical, not really my problem. In

the struggle with the serpent, death ceases to be removed. You are going to die: face it;

live it; prepare for it here and now.

Bima and the serpent come to an understanding: he succeeds in "conforming to the

real nature of the desires" (ngruntutake hawa napsu).

He is left with the peace of being what he is. The quiet

that arises out of this is the source of the union with

Dewaruci, the True Teacher now allowed to be withhim, the expression of Tuhan'sconcern within. Bima

can now go back to his responsibilities knowing that

Nature, Tuhan, reality, is inside and outside: the ever-

changing constant.

The realization that you are a part helps your

understanding of what you are a part of, but you

were always that way and it does not change your

basic circumstances. Expanded and diminished,

sundered and united, Bima has arrived at the point

where he can finally do the best he can. He is an attentive part of our common problem,

and maybe now that he is here he can do more good than harm for a change.

Perception

We have seen how it becomes impossible to treat rasaapart from thought apart from

ego. As you come closer to the present, they are convergent aspects of relating to,

receiving and perceiving reality. Now we will relate these to perception itself, and

perception to maturation.

The active, "wild" ego does a lot of looking but sees very little. The problem is

selection versus reception and the active ego tends to see what it likes. A model is applied

to guiding perception in Sumarah, but, in short, the passive, open ego does a lot of quiet

watching and sees a great deal.

You don't understand your eyes. They should be like this [arms spread wide], not

like this [eyes focused on one fingertip]. Try it. You're always focused on one point.

Focus your attention on a broad frame. Eventually you learn to have your attention

not right in front, but spread out. It's relaxing. (6/1/79)

Let's look at how the various tools we have considered can interfere or assist withaccurate perception and open receptivity.

First, rasa: rasa, the sensing of being, and perception are intimately connected. What

you perceive influences the tone ofrasa, and the tone of rasainfluences what you

perceive. If you are practicing a hedonistic rasa bungah-susah, you must control what


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you see carefully. That is why it is called "feeling happy-sad," the one condition

prepares the way for the other. When you are happy you block out what causes

discomfort and remain more or less oblivious to that part of reality. Eventually, though,

the ignored part of your existence asserts itself, and you go into the sad phase of the

cycle which is an over-focus on the disturbances in order to prepare the way for another

upswing. As rasa becomes quieter and more accepting, you censor perception less and

have fewer preconceptions about what you will see or feel, and correspondingly fewer

ups and downs.If you are seeing things in perspective, they generally do not change much in short

periods of time: the basic character of existence does not change -- we live, we take, we

dispute, we cooperate, we give, we die. In that frame there are not many surprises day to

day. Your situation may or may not be pleasant, but in seeing it clearly, you are

basically stuck with it as your point of reference. This does not mean that you cannot

ameliorate it, in fact, the more clearly you see it, the more real options you have in

confronting it.

Second, thought: have you ever found that you could not think about something

without you windows steaming up and you drifting off. It could be some one you love,someone you hate, somewhere you would like to be, or even just a hobby. Further, have

you ever seen something that made you turn away and start thinking or talking about

something else? It could be something or someone that has hurt you and you never want

to see or consider again; it could be just a deformed beggar sitting on the street.

We use thought to see or avoid seeing, to feel or avoid feeling, rather like five-year-

olds dreaming about Christmas or their birthdays in the former instance, or hiding their

eyes in the climax of the movie and asking if the hero is all right in the latter. We are

sometimes a bit more subtle.

Third, ego: you have got to be somewhere. One of the ego's capacities is placingattention. This is not as simple as it seems. Properly this allows you to focus attention on

sources of disturbance in order to perceive the situation with more detail and accuracy.

When there is no disturbance your attention pans and spreads to receive what is here

inside and out, and watch and wait for the next problem calling for focused attention.

When you are practicing hedonism, this capacity for identifying, examining and

cleaning up messes becomes a source of confusion. Just as you cannot think your way

out of thinking too much, you cannot focus your way out of focusing too much. You

make much of little by looking at it all the time, and ignore or at least distort the rest.

Perceptual selection is part of the same locked acontextuality, the same lack of realityreference, the same problem of isolation considered in connection with rasa, thought and

ego.

Mechanically the problem is that the big, colored sources of perception are located in

the front of the body -- the forebrain, the eyes, the mouth, the chest, the abdomen, the

genetals. This is where the ego can place attention for hedonistic purposes and where the

enormous amounts of perceptual information both past and present can consume you.

You can float away in concentration, imaginings, passions, fancies, desires: the many

ways we pretend things that are not here to be present. Sometimes these little excursions

can help you solve problems (as in concentration) or give you a place to release tensions(as in fantasies); however, if the capacity is abused it can become psycho- and

physiopathogenic -- you neglect your real situation and eventually pay for it.

The practice designed for the problems of front focusing involves trying to avoid:

losing track of where tension you are releasing is coming from; losing reality reference


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as you drift off; and getting locked in the habit of drifting off itself. Sumarah teaches

placing the attention in the back and extremities of the body. Try to drift off and forget

where you are while feeling your back and your seat in the chair and your feet on the

ground. It is not easy. The back and extremities are basically neutral, uncolored sources

of perception. They do not provide happiness, gratification or excitement, so they do not

consume your attention. When your attention is in the back, the neutral tone helps you

assimilate what comes from the frontal areas and gives you the perspective and distance

necessary to absorb (and not be absorbed by) the hotter sources of sensation. This doesnot mean that you should only locate your attention in the back, but that this can help

you avoid the problems of over-focusing.

Learn to be balanced. Don't just use your forebrain; use this too [indicates back of

head] and then your notes will be clearer and you'll be able to read for a long time

without getting tired. Just try it... If you use heavy concentration you tire easily, and

when you're tired it affects your powers of memory so that you can't recall what

you've studied... While you're studying you think you understand, but in a short

time you forget. (Grogol 6/1/79) The imaginings of a child are generally spontaneous and born of being here -- their

richness and relevance reflect their source and place of expression: the present.

Hedonistic drifting, on the other hand, is based on previously identified sources of

pleasure or pain. Memories of pleasure that are not supported by your present

circumstances get pretty stale if you keep returning to them.

Thus, the more intense and prolonged an affective response, the more perceptual

selection and censoring is involved in maintaining it and the more confusion and tension

it may foster. The actual perceptions received are selected from the open response of

rasa murniand the antagonism between the real situation and the constructed one is acontinual source of tension. The tone of the affective state, whether it be positive or

negative, is not considered material to this process. The critical factor is the intensity of

the response as is discussed in the following:

Questioner: So hate and disappointment enter into the same class.

Wondo: Oh yes. Love is like that too. Yes, the same class. It's just the same. When

you're in love you can't sleep and you're apt to get deranged. When you hate

someone you're apt to get deranged too. It's the same thing. (Kerten 6/4/79)

Just to avoid any unnecessary confusion, Suwondo is not saying that love and hateare the same thing. He is hightlighting the fact that they may both be overwhelming

passions that can toss the experience of the ego around in a similar fashion. There are

more than ten words for love in Javanese that contemplate the various aspects of the

wish to be with the other in some way. The one that is closest to our romantic love is

sayang, which also means to sorrow, 'regret' or pity; the Javanese often make fun of

this semi-pathological condition and the disturbances it can cause as the afflicted finds

they are definitely not in control of their own experience and the rest of us find that

getting in the middle of such a raw bond can be disquieting for us as well.

Hate can be outstandingly inconvenient in this same sense too as the effort to exact

revenge and enact the pain for pain of justice similarly involves us all. As in En

EreboV FoV, the Javanese wont is to bear the agony of hate openly until it defines its

own path of expression, much to the sorrow of the subjects of the bad feelings eventual


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emergence in physical form.

Excessive drifting and excessive perceptual selection in general make being here more

difficult. To be here you must pay attention or, more pragmatically stated, your health

depends on how well you take care of yourself. There are many psycho- and

physiopathological conditions directly provoked by a lack of attention. The most obvious

are those like ulcers, headaches, backaches, etc., but the Type A personality studies

discuss this problem in much the same sense as Sumarah does: accumulated tension ispathogenic.

Your attention should be spread throughout your whole body. You should be aware

of your whole body in order to locate the places where there is tension. You should

feel your whole body or at least as much as you can make yourself aware of; not just

part of it, but all of it. When you can observe very widely, this in itself will affect the

health of your body. When you relax frequently your body will get more healthy.

(Grogol 6/1/79)

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Documents

Basic Sumarah Theory and Orientation