June is here again, and soon there will be birthday parties for Bapak in many Subud groups. Every year there are more and more people attending these parties who never met Bapak, and some of them may have a question or two in the back of their minds.  They may wonder at the reverence and awe with which Bapak is spoken of by those who knew him.

Having no doubt been told that in Subud we don't follow a human teacher but are taught by God's
power, they may wonder what is Bapak's significance for them personally.   Should they take at face value the many wonderful stories people tell of their experiences with him? They may feel moved to do so, but that could raise another question:  if contact with Bapak was such a crucial factor in their friends' inner growth, does it mean their own inner journey will be limited by the fact that they can no longer meet him in person?

These are reasonable questions, and I'm going to share a couple of experiences with you in the hope that they might help you to resolve them. But please remember that these are simply my experiences - if they don't ring true or seem fanciful, just let them go, and rely on your own intuition.

You may have heard people talk of 'the physical Bapak' and wondered what they meant.  It corresponded to a real experience that many of us who knew Bapak share: there really seemed to be two Bapaks - the one you saw (the physical Bapak) and the one you (or at least I) didn't, which we called 'the other Bapak'. I'll give you my version of this experience. My first contact with Bapak was in 1959 when he arrived in Coombe Springs just before the first Subud world congress.  A group of us were waiting for him in the reception hall of the main house at Coombe, and I had strolled outside the front door just as the cars arrived from the airport. I quickly tried to get back inside - where we were supposed to be - but was too late. I was pinned to the wall in the narrow vestibule as Bapak walked past, very close to me.  As he passed, I had the strangest sensation, as if there was nobody there.  This isn't easy to describe, so please bear with me.

Normally, when someone passes very close to you, you feel a certain kind of force from them and with famous or important people this force is sometimes stronger.  But with Bapak there was nothing. The impression I got was that Bapak's  physical being was like a suit of clothes or a screen covering some other reality.  This strange impression was augmented a couple of weeks later when a friend of mine, an actor, dragged me towards a wall covered with photos for sale, mostly of Bapak and his party, taken by two talented photographers who had been covering the visit.   'Look here,' he said excitedly, pointing at one picture of Bapak after the other, 'do you see?  

Here's Bapak looking like an old man, nearly a hundred years old, making an effort to stand up straight, just managing to smile. And then here he is, a man in the prime of life, in his late thirties, exuding energy. And Mr. Bennett is a very large man, a lot bigger than Bapak, right?  So how come that here they are standing next to each other, and Bapak looks bigger.'  He went on to explain to me that bringing about this kind of metamorphosis is every actor's dream, 'but before Bapak I've never actually seen anyone do it.’ 

I also later noticed this fluidity about Bapak's presence, not just his movements and his appearance, but his whole being.  He had a kind of freedom about him that I've never seen in any other human being, least of all in the 'big shots' I've met.  A part of this was that he was the most relaxed person I've ever seen.  As the years passed, my life - like that of several of my friends at Coombe - was gradually drawn into a closer and closer orbit around Bapak. We each had our own orbit - there was Varindra Vittachi, fiery and spectacular like Halley's comet, appearing in Cilandak for a day or two before disappearing into the void, while I ended up in close orbit, as Bapak's interpreter, part-time secretary and a sort of somewhat incompetent valet.

I came to be comfortable with 'the physical Bapak', accustomed to his wisdom, humor and infinite kindness, but there always remained a distance between us, due to my constant awareness of 'the other Bapak'.  I don't think in this my experience was so different from that of all my friends who made up our world at Wisma Subud - the force of attraction that kept us there came from that other Bapak, the one behind the one we saw. And who was that? I have never been able to think of this 'other Bapak' as a person, more like a window, a window to another world. The physical Bapak was to me like a curtain to make this window less disconcerting for us ordinary people to deal with. 

Even so it was disconcerting enough. Sometimes there was the embarrassment of sitting near Bapak and feeling my own dirt inside me like vomit that I didn't dare to let out - to use Varindra's graphic description. There were other times I would come into a room where Bapak was and feel as if I had come close to the center of the universe, into a place of total security and complete peace. And another time feeling Bapak's touch on my arm followed by a sensation of love, like golden lava spreading through my body. 

So here is your source of that awe and reverence you detect in our voices as we speak about Bapak. It was spontaneous and irresistible. Nor did the 'physical Bapak' encourage it; it was more as if he endured it, like an unavoidable nuisance. From his side he always tried to appear ordinary and to put people at their ease.  I guess perhaps I came to understand a tiny piece - corresponding to my own undeveloped stage – of what it means when God picks a human being to become His messenger.  That person has to surrender most of everything he is, so he can be used as a conduit for something infinitely greater. 

So here it is: for me 'the other Bapak' and where the latihan comes from are one and the same. That's why I believe Bapak's talks, which certainly came from the other Bapak, are actually of the same stuff as the latihan. Why else did they by-pass our mind - putting us into a deep sleep, if necessary, to do it - and search out our soul?  So, did our proximity to 'the physical Bapak' confer a spiritual advantage? I don't know. I don't think so.  Not everybody could be close to the physical Bapak, but it is the other Bapak where spiritual advantage comes from, and that one was and will always remain accessible to all Subud members - our distance depending only on our willingness to come close.*