Basic Sumarah Theory and Orientation

5/17/2015
Basic Sumarah Theory and Orientation
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VI
Sumarah Theory
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 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. 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
http://sumarah.tripod.com/sh6.htm
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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 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.
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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 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 possibly 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?) 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 collective
character 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?
Rasa is the sensing as well as the sense of being: the rasa you experience is what you
receive of reality. But rasa is not something you control; rasa is 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 your
window, 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, Tuhan is not; when Tuhan is 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 murni as they
spontaneously sense what comes to them. We sometimes approach this state during
periods of extreme stress: the car spins -- crash, helter-skelter, silence -- you are still
alive, breathing deeply and feeling the heat of the sun. Rasa murni is 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. But
don'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 murni is 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 murni is 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. The
sense 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 rasa from 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 murni and, 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 which
can 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 rasa you 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 did
this, 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 open
psychology 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 problemsolving 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
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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 have
apparently 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, as
well 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 kebatinan groups and
one 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-derangementmaturation 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, sutapa are 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 in
your 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 the
great 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 letting
others 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 the rasa divide. 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 rasa of
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 by
the 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 kris rite, we are rather more inclined to ignore
such 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 rasa so 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, we
can 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 rasa is how sensitive our rasa is. We can receive the waves of
nature with our rasa and 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 come
from 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 murni and
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 the rasa continuum, we have gone from rasa murni (which
is here) through rasa (which is close to here) and now, across the divide, we first come to
rasa bungah-susah or 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 selfhttp://sumarah.tripod.com/sh6.htm
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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 freedom
from 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 rasa of being here, rasa
murni, to the locked rasa of not being here which is most actively expressed at the
ignoble end of the continuum in golek penak ("seeking pleasure" - hedonism), when you
are eventually lost in obsessions of control of one kind or another or in senility. The
Javanese have a real fear of losing one another behind these walls of illusion. They start
to teach feet-on-the-ground humility very early. The Kancil Tales are 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 kancil and
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 kancil uses the conceit
of a dog to escape from a trap that the kancil's pride 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 use
it 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 rasa continuum, 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.
Pikiran is 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 your
feet -- 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 choose
what 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 pleasant
experiences 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 rasa divide in closed
psychology, 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 this
way, 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 the
feeling itself. Your present situation may generate a similar rasa and 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 other
door 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 of
your 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 rasa have 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 rasa continuum. They can interact with
one 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.
The Rasa and Thought Continua
1. The Rasa (Sensing) Continuum
rasa murni (direct, spontaneous receptivity)
rasa (alert sensing)
rasa bungah-susah (self-controlled emotion)
golek penak (hedonism) and locked emotion (seemingly atemporal, realityindependent, constructed emotion)
2. The Thought Continuum
rasa murni
angen-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 the rasa continuum, this part of the thought
continuum is rather off our two-horse system's map: it is beyond the rasa divide. We
have pikiran which is a tool for solving problems through examination in a kind of
context-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-angen which 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-angen the way you purposely employ pikiran to solve
a problem: you wait with the problem for angen-angen to come to you. Pikiran is active
and directional and noisy. Angen-angen is 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 being
here 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 rasa divide. 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 selfabsorbed and noisy and assertive to receive the quiet voice of Tuhan within 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 section
on 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 but
Bima 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 congratulating
Bima 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 strong
but 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. Once
the 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 revelation
that the water of life is everywhere, suffusing all being.
Ego
It becomes meaningless to treat rasa as 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 rasa and 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 in
fighting 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't
just 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 nothing
to 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 sutapa quest. 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 read
about 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 why
you 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 being
spontaneous 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 your
own 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, the
terrifying 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 with
him, the expression of Tuhan's concern within. Bima
can now go back to his responsibilities knowing that
Nature, Tuhan, reality, is inside and outside: the everchanging 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 rasa apart 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 with
accurate perception and open receptivity.
First, rasa: rasa, the sensing of being, and perception are intimately connected. What
you perceive influences the tone of rasa, and the tone of rasa influences 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-yearolds 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 placing
attention. 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 reality
reference, 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 does
not 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 murni and the antagonism between the real situation and the constructed one is a
continual 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 hate
are 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
EreboVFoV, 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 is
pathogenic.
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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Basic Sumarah Theory and Orientation

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