A Living Tradition of the Americas

In 1925, on the island of Java, a twenty-four-year-old Javanese bookkeeper named Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo was walking at night when a ball of light descended from the sky and entered the crown of his head. His body began to vibrate. He felt a force moving through him — not his own will, not his imagination, but something that used his body as its instrument. The experience recurred over the following nights, becoming more intense: his body moved spontaneously, his voice produced sounds he did not intend, and he understood, with a certainty that required no confirmation, that what was moving through him was the power of God — not a metaphor for psychological release, not an archetype, not an energy, but the direct, unmediated action of the divine upon a human being who had surrendered his own will.

For the next thirty years, Subuh — who came to be called Bapak, an Indonesian honorific meaning "father" — practiced this experience privately and shared it with a small circle of Javanese followers. The practice was called the latihan kejiwaan — the "spiritual exercise" — and its method was breathtaking in its simplicity: stand, close your eyes, surrender your will to God, and let whatever happens happen. No mantra. No visualization. No technique. No teacher. Just surrender — and the force that moved through Bapak would, if God willed it, move through you. In 1957, through an unlikely chain of connections involving a British Gurdjieff student, the latihan crossed the ocean, and Subud became one of the strangest, most unclassifiable spiritual movements of the twentieth century.

I. Bapak — The Man Who Received

Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo (1901–1987) was born in Semarang, Central Java, into a Javanese Muslim family of modest means. Java's religious landscape was — and remains — extraordinary in its layering: Islam arrived in the fifteenth century and became the majority religion, but it overlaid a deep stratum of Hindu-Buddhist culture (the temples of Borobudur and Prambanan are Javanese), which itself overlaid an even older layer of indigenous Javanese mysticism — the kebatinan tradition, a rich interior spiritual practice centered on meditation, surrender, and contact with the unseen world.

Bapak was formed by all of these layers. He was a practicing Muslim — he prayed, fasted, and honored the Islamic calendar. But his spiritual sensibility was thoroughly Javanese: he understood the spiritual world as immediately present, he regarded inner experience as the primary mode of religious knowing, and he had no difficulty accepting that God's power could manifest directly in a human body.

The 1925 experience was not Bapak's first encounter with the spiritual. He had studied with several Javanese spiritual teachers — practitioners of kebatinan who taught meditation, ascetic practices, and methods of spiritual development. But the experience of the descending light was qualitatively different from anything his teachers had offered: it was not the result of technique but of grace. He had not sought it, had not prepared for it, had not earned it. It came.

Over the following years, Bapak discovered that the experience could be transmitted — or, more precisely, that when a person stood in his presence with an attitude of surrender, the same force that moved through him would begin to move through them. This was not teaching, not initiation in the conventional sense, and not the result of any technique. It was what Bapak called "opening" — the moment at which the latihan first occurs in a new person. The opening required only two things: the new person's willingness to receive, and the presence of someone already "opened" to serve as a channel.

II. The Latihan — Surrender and the Spontaneous

The latihan kejiwaan (Indonesian: "spiritual exercise" or "inner training") is Subud's sole practice. There is no other.

The latihan is performed in a group, typically two to three times per week, for approximately thirty minutes. Men and women practice separately. The session begins when the helper (a more experienced member) says "begin" — and ends when the helper says "stop." In between, the participants stand with their eyes closed and surrender their will.

What happens next varies enormously. Some people experience subtle inner stillness. Others begin to move — swaying, walking, turning, raising their arms. Some produce sounds — singing, crying, laughing, shouting, speaking in unfamiliar patterns. Some fall to the floor. Some stand perfectly still. The movements and sounds are not deliberate — the participant is not choosing to move or speak. They arise spontaneously, from a source the participant typically cannot identify with their own conscious will.

Bapak's explanation was simple: the latihan is the action of the great life force — the power of God — upon the human being who has surrendered. The movements, sounds, and experiences are the expression of this force as it cleanses, purifies, and develops the inner self. The process is not understood through the mind but experienced through the whole being — body, feeling, and soul.

There is no technique. This is the most radical aspect of the latihan and the most difficult for seekers accustomed to other spiritual traditions to accept. There is no breathing method, no posture, no mantra, no object of concentration. The instruction is entirely negative: do not use your thinking, do not use your imagination, do not try to make anything happen. The only positive instruction is: surrender.

The latihan cannot be practiced alone by a new member — at least not initially. The presence of other opened members is considered necessary to provide the spiritual atmosphere in which the force can be received. Over time, members may practice at home as well, but the group latihan remains the primary practice.

III. The Opening — How One Enters

A person cannot simply walk into a Subud group and participate in the latihan. There is a waiting period — typically three months — during which the prospective member attends talks, meets with helpers, and is encouraged to consider seriously whether they wish to be opened.

The waiting period is not a test and not a screening process — Subud does not evaluate applicants for worthiness or readiness. It is, rather, a cooling-off period: the organization wants to ensure that the person is coming from genuine inner calling rather than curiosity, emotional crisis, or the influence of a charismatic friend. The latihan, Subud teaches, is powerful and not always comfortable — the process of inner purification can bring suppressed emotions, memories, and psychological material to the surface, and the organization does not want people to enter without understanding what they may encounter.

The opening itself is brief. The new member stands with two or three helpers, closes their eyes, and is told to surrender. The helpers do nothing visible — they do not touch the new member, do not speak, do not perform any ritual. They simply stand, in their own latihan, and the force that moves through them, if God wills, begins to move through the new member.

Most people experience something at their opening — a feeling of movement, warmth, lightness, emotion. Some experience very little. Some experience something overwhelming. The range is enormous, and Subud is careful not to create expectations: whatever happens (or does not happen) at the opening is the right beginning for that individual.

IV. The Arrival in the West — Bennett and the Gurdjieff Connection

Subud's emergence from Java into the Western world is one of the more improbable stories in modern religious history, and it runs directly through the Fourth Way.

John Godolphin Bennett (1897–1974) was a British mathematician, intelligence officer, and — most consequentially — a student of Gurdjieff. Bennett had met Gurdjieff in Constantinople in 1920, studied with Ouspensky in London through the 1930s and 1940s, and after Gurdjieff's death in 1949, became one of the most prominent independent teachers of the Fourth Way in England. He operated a center called Coombe Springs, a large house in Kingston upon Thames, where groups studied Gurdjieff's methods.

In the mid-1950s, Bennett encountered reports of Bapak and the latihan through a chain of contacts in the international spiritual network. Bennett traveled to Java, met Bapak, was opened — and was transformed. He described the experience as the fulfillment of what Gurdjieff had been pointing toward: a direct contact with higher forces that required no technique, no effort, no system. He invited Bapak to England.

Bapak arrived at Coombe Springs in 1957, and the effect was volcanic. Within weeks, hundreds of people were being opened — not just Bennett's Gurdjieff students, but artists, intellectuals, journalists, and seekers who had heard about the phenomenon through London's spiritual grapevine. The latihan sessions at Coombe Springs were loud, dramatic, and — for many participants — the most intense spiritual experience of their lives.

The Gurdjieff community was split. Some Fourth Way students embraced Subud as the culmination of their years of work. Others regarded it as a deviation — a surrender practice that was antithetical to Gurdjieff's emphasis on conscious effort and self-remembering. Bennett himself eventually moved beyond Subud (he later became involved with Idries Shah and Sufism, and was received into the Catholic Church before his death), but the initial transmission through his network gave Subud its foothold in the English-speaking world.

From England, Subud spread rapidly — to the United States, Germany, Australia, and eventually to more than eighty countries. The speed of the expansion was remarkable for a movement with no advertising, no proselytizing, and no charismatic public presence. The latihan, it seemed, was its own advertisement: people who experienced it told others, who came and were opened, who told others.

V. The Structure — Helpers, Enterprise, and the Absence of Doctrine

Subud's organizational structure reflects its theological minimalism.

There are no teachers in Subud. Bapak was not a guru, not a master, not a priest — he was, in his own understanding, simply the first person to receive the latihan in this era, and the channel through which it was initially transmitted. After his death in 1987, no successor was appointed and no succession was needed: the latihan does not require a living founder to continue. Anyone who has been opened can serve as a channel for opening others.

Helpers are experienced members who assist with openings, facilitate latihan sessions, and provide guidance to newer members. They are not ordained, not specially trained, and not elevated in status — they are simply members who have practiced long enough to be trusted with the supportive role. The helper function is understood as a service, not an authority.

Doctrine is essentially absent. Subud has no creed, no catechism, no required beliefs. Bapak gave thousands of talks over his lifetime — recorded and transcribed, they fill many volumes — but these talks are understood as his personal understanding and experience, not as scripture. Members are encouraged to listen to the talks but not required to accept them. The latihan is the only thing Subud offers, and the latihan requires no belief system to function.

This absence of doctrine is both Subud's most distinctive feature and its greatest organizational challenge. Movements without doctrine tend to lack the ideological cohesion that holds religious organizations together over time. Subud has survived for nearly a century, but its membership has remained small — estimates range from ten to fifteen thousand active members worldwide — and its public profile is negligible. It is, perhaps, the spiritual movement most perfectly designed to resist growth: it does not advertise, does not proselytize, does not make public claims, and does not offer anything except the latihan itself, which cannot be described in words and must be experienced to be understood.

Susila Dharma and Subud Enterprise represent the movement's engagement with the material world. Bapak encouraged members to create cooperative businesses as a form of spiritual practice — the idea being that the latihan should transform not only the inner life but also one's relationship to work, money, and social responsibility. Some of these enterprises have been successful; many have not. The pattern — visionary beginnings, practical difficulties, mixed results — is common to spiritual movements that attempt to bridge contemplation and commerce.

VI. Subud and the Aquarian Phenomenon

Subud is the Aquarian movement that most completely resists the Aquarian temptation.

The temptation — visible across the New Age landscape — is to systematize, commodify, and market spiritual experience. The Aquarian era has produced meditation apps, enlightenment workshops, yoga teacher certifications, shamanic journey weekends, and an entire industry of spiritual products and services. Subud offers none of this. It cannot be packaged because there is nothing to package — no technique to teach, no method to certify, no product to sell. The latihan is free. The meetings are free. The helpers are unpaid. The organization charges modest dues to cover building costs and administration. There is no Subud book on the bestseller list, no Subud celebrity endorsement, no Subud brand.

This purity has a cost. Subud is nearly invisible. Most people interested in contemporary spirituality have never heard of it. Among those who have, many find the waiting period off-putting (three months before you can try the practice?) or the absence of explanation unsatisfying (what exactly happens in the latihan, and why?). Subud's answer — come, be opened, and find out — is not a marketing strategy.

But for those who have experienced the latihan, the absence of technique is not a limitation but a liberation. Every other spiritual practice requires doing something — sitting, breathing, chanting, visualizing, concentrating. The latihan requires doing nothing — or, more precisely, requires the most difficult thing of all: not doing. The surrender that the latihan demands is more radical than any technique, because technique gives the ego something to hold onto (I am meditating, I am making progress, I am getting better at this), while surrender gives the ego nothing. You stand, you close your eyes, you let go. What happens is not yours.

In this radical passivity, Subud connects to the deepest currents of the mystical traditions it does not claim: the Quaker waiting, the Orthodox hesychasm, the Sufi tawakkul, the Daoist wu wei. The latihan is, in essence, the practice of not-practicing — the spiritual exercise of letting God exercise. It is the simplest and the hardest thing in the world.

Colophon

This ethnographic profile was researched and composed for the Good Work Library's Living Traditions series in March 2026. Sources consulted include Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo (Bapak), Autobiography (Subud Publications International, 1990) and selected talks; J. G. Bennett, Concerning Subud (Hodder and Stoughton, 1958); Husein Rofé, The Path of Subud (Rider, 1959); Matthew Barry Sullivan, Living Religion in Subud (Subud Publications International, 1991); Julia Day Howell, "Sufism and the Indonesian Islamic Revival," Journal of Asian Studies 60:3 (2001); Antoon Geels, Subud and the Javanese Mystical Tradition (Curzon Press, 1997); and the publications of the World Subud Association.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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