Subud Voice October 2011   -  Max's selection
see   -  http://www.subudvoice.net/
Complete contents:

•	EDITORIAL - Why we have changed Subud Voice again**
•	WELCOMING YOUR FEEDBACK AND APPRECIATION**
•	JENKINS AND THE STONES - Peter Jenkins and the Rolling Stones**
•	SNAKES ALIVE!.. Mansur Geiger in Kalimantan Part 2**
•	YUM IN JAVA - Olvia Reksodipoetro on the history of YUM**
•	GUITAR HERO - Interview with Top Topham**
•	DAWN OF A NEW AGE - Rachman Mitchell on Bapak**
•	FAVOURITE PHOTO - A happy accident
•	FINANCE FOR SUBUD'S INITIATIVES IN KALIMANTAN - by Leonard van Hien**
•	LETTER FROM CHRISTCHURCH - from Maynard MacDonald**
•	DISAPPOINTING MICK JAGGER - By Maya Korzybska
•	LIFE - A Review of Keith Richards' autobiography
•	MICK JAGGER AND SUBUD - A final word from Latifah
•	GOD THE THERAPIST - Husain Chung's autobiography
•	DANCING THE ROUNDS - Rasunah's poems
•	AFTER SUMMERHILL - New book by Hussein Lucas**
•	INSIDE STORY - Picture-poems exhibition online
•	SOLSTICE 2011 - Poem by Sharifin Gardiner
•	OBITUARY: RUKMAN KARSTEN HUNDEIDE - Keeping the Flame Alive**
•	OBITUARY: MIRIAM KARIN - An unforgettable sister**
•	BAPAK TALKS ABOUT TALENT AND ENTERPRISE - Sydney 1982**
•	WHAT IS SUBUD?
•	VIDEO ABOUT SUBUD - View it now right here
•	CONTACT US
•	ADVERTISEMENTS

** In this selection

EDITORIAL - Why we have changed Subud Voice again 

As from this issue, October 2011, Subud Voice goes back to being free to the whole world.
Bit of a shock? Those who have already subscribed may well be thinking, "But I paid! Why should I be supporting all those freeloaders?"
Think of it as supporting the mission of Subud, part of which is to make ourselves available to "all of mankind". Not to advertise, not to evangelise, but at least to make it possible for people to find us.
But if any subscriber feels hardly done by, please email me at editor@subudvoice.net and I will happily refund your sub. I know that many of our subscribers will want to contribute to the continuation of Subud Voice. You will still get all the value you paid for, but you will be helping a lot of other people get it too.
When I lived in America, I used to watch the Public Broadcast TV channel. It was so much better with its excellent dramas and documentaries than the commercial pap.
Every so often, in the middle of a program someone would come on air and say, "We're desperate. Send money right now! Please subscribe!" You got the feeling that unless you sent some money right then the channel would go off air and disappear before your eyes.
I subscribed. I did not mind that millions of other people who watched, did not subscribe. I was glad that my subscription kept it going and that I was helping to make it available to "all of mankind". I was happy to do it. It felt good.
I am hoping that those wonderful people who have recently subscribed to Subud Voice will feel the same - 
Why?
Why the change back to free? We didn't get enough subscribers. Not enough people are interested in paying to follow the unfolding chronicle of the development of Subud. There is no point in us doing all the work of producing Subud Voice for about 100 people. Past experience shows that if it is free a lot of people come to it (about 10,000 a month).
Thank God, that the wonderful Guerrand Hermes Foundation for Peace who once again came to the party with sponsorship – otherwise we would not be able to continue at all. And thank you to that wonderful band of people who did subscribe and who combined with the Foundation will enable us to continue.
Nowadays, I live in Melbourne and I subscribe to several non-commercial radio stations that provide niche broadcasting in things I am interested in, things I value, things I am glad that they are there. One is a classical music station, the other plays jazz, blues etc.
I am happy that I help support them to go out to everyone. I do not mind that I am helping a lot of people to get it for free. I feel no resentment about that. I feel joy.
And these days, through the internet these little radio stations in Melbourne do go out to THE WHOLE WORLD. People in Vladivostok listen to them. People in Singapore, people everywhere.
I hope you'll feel; like doing he same for Subud Voice.

New Format
I know that many people still long for the days of getting the Voice in the post, but those days are gone. This is the way the world is moving and I believe that we are offering more and better than ever before.
You will have already found that this month's Subud Voice has a new and much better online format. Many people complained about the size of the .PDF as taking to long to download, downloading badly etc, so our new system solves that. 
Also makes it easier for you to read and print out the articles of particular interest to you rather than having to print out the whole thing and use up your colour cartridge (another frequent complaint!). We can publish more content than ever before and display photographs more powerfully.
Our new format also carries a lot more interconnectivity so the vast resources of the internet are made available. Click here www.subud.com  and you go instantly to the site. Click here editor@subudvoice.net and you get an email to me (saying how much you like Subud Voice and how happy you are not to want your subscription back).
The new format also gives us the capacity to carry video and audio right here as part of the magazine. For example, here is a video clip in keeping with the rock 'n roll tone of this issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YuKTYqiU8o
To read all about Borneo Productions International and see more of their films go to www.borneoproductionsinternational.com

The Talks
Being free to the world means that we cannot publish Bapak and Ibu talks anymore as these are "for Subud members only". We know that in the old print days people always liked to get their talk in Subud Voice and we used to be an important conduit for the talks. 
But no longer so. There are now many ways the talks can be accessed. SPI prints many volumes of them and regularly emails talks And then we have Subud Library, a vast treasure house of, I think, almost every talk ever given. New talks by Ibu come out by email as soon as they available and are often available on video within days of having been given (at Subud Library www.subudlibrary.net).
We will select a talk which perhaps has some special relevance to articles in the issue of SV. You will have noticed in the September issue, when we had material about Sri Lanka, we published a talk from Colombo. 
In this issue there is a bit of an emphasis on talent, so we suggest a talk touching on talent. We publish a brief extract from the talk and suggest you go to Subud Library to read the rest if you wish.

In This Issue
We might call this the "Rock and Roll" issue of Subud Voice as there are several articles touching on Subud members' experience in the music industry. But of course there is much more besides -  the solid gold of the ongoing interviews with Mansur Geiger on Kalimantan and Olvia on YUM, for example, and others too numerous to mention.
Love to all
 Harris (and Yo-Yo) for The Subud Voice Team


WELCOMING YOUR FEEDBACK AND APPRECIATION 
 
We would love to have your response to Subud Voice.
Were there any articles in particular in this or recent editions that resonated with you? Were there any that particularity entertained, informed or enlightened you? Were there any that made a difference to your life, brought new insights or valuable ideas and feelings? Were there any that caused you to reflect on aspects of your own life?
We are interested in building a community of like-minded souls, of people who like to communicate and share experiences, both their inner spiritual experience and how this plays out in their daily lives – in their work, their relationships and so on.
Do you approve of the general direction in which we are going of opening Subud Voice up more to the diversity of experience in Subud and the diversity of experience in the world? Do you find it strange, odd or even disconcerting to find articles about rock'n'roll in Subud Voice (complete with video clips) or do you understand and applaud a greater openness and variety of experience? Does it open some windows and let some fresh air in?
Or what did you think of Sudarto's book which you got as a gift with the September issue? Was it full of interesting and illuminating things, just as relevant as when he wrote them 50 years ago? Did it excite you, open your understanding, get you thinking, or was it all "ho-hum"?
We are trying to reflect the diversity of Subud and the diversity of life. The September issue was a real "return to the pure source of Subud" with articles about the recent Subud gatherings in Wisma Subud and Rungan Sari. October issue is more of the other side of things, the energy and colour of the outer life. I guess these are the poles between which all of us swing, inner and outer life, the interplay between spiritual and material experience.
Not just for Subud members but to bring Subud in all its variety and vitality to the whole world.

The Mission of Subud Voice
I take Subud Voice quite seriously. I really believe we have a purpose and a mission.
For me, Subud Voice is based on a talk that Bapak gave in 1984 which has since become a guiding light in my life. People are always saying listen to Bapak's talks and pay attention to what he says. Well, I may have failed to listen to many of them (I was probably asleep at the time), but at least I heard one and have tried to put it into practice in my life. 
I took this to heart and produced a book and several since. I do not delude myself that I have produced the book Bapak was talking about. It remains a goal to which one constantly aspires, and constantly falls short of. But as we say in Australia, aim for the stars and you might hit the back fence.
To me, Subud Voice is like a book, a quite vast book, which has been unfolding for 25 years; millions of words, a vast compendium of Subud experience in all its aspects. In the talk which Bapak gave in March 1984 – in his house, delivered to a fairly small group of people who had been attending meetings in Wisma Subud – he urged that someone should write a book about Subud for the general public. 
It is clear that he is talking about a book which focuses on Subud members' visible activities – enterprises, social welfare, culture etc.He said that the book should show "the proof, the evidence and the reality" and that "Subud has every kind of thing in it". In this talk he also talked in general about how SICA could play a really important part in attracting people to Subud.
This is the spirit in which we are producing Subud Voice. Not a book of course, but a periodical – a book in serial form – but we think the same message from Bapak applies. Of course it still goes mostly to Subud members but gradually we hope that it will also reach the general public. 
Here is a quotation transcribed by Muchtar Martins from that talk - 
The world at the moment is looking for a way out, a way by which a limit or constraint can be placed on man's passions, the expansion of man's passions. Everyone is wondering about this and looking for a way that it can be done.
And we have a way, a way that can relieve people of their anxiety, their depression when they survey the state of the world today. The book Bapak is talking about is what is happening now. It contains proofs, realities, evidence, which demonstrates the scope or scale of Subud. There is every kind of thing in it. It is very broad and wide.
It is a book about the way Subud has developed and what it is. As Bapak is talking, Bapak can see pictures of this book in front of him that he wishes to convey to you.
...the book..embraces all aspects of Subud - Is one that speaks about reality. It describes what has happened, what is happening and the direction things are actually going - 
Very best wishes and hoping to hear from you, 
Harris Smart, Editor Subud Voice


JENKINS AND THE STONES - Peter Jenkins and the Rolling Stones 
 
It is not generally known that Peter Jenkins, founder of the YES Quest,  was once offered the opportunity to manage The Rolling Stones. This is the story - 
It was the early 'Sixties, the dawn of 'Swinging London', and Jenkins was a young man making his way in the world, seeking fame and fortune in publicity and promotions around show biz and the media.
One day he was invited to go and look at the new decor of a club called "THE SCENE", which was owned by his friend and client, Ronan O'Rahilly, the man who started the pirate radio station Radio Caroline.
The club was in a cellar and the decor seemed designed to render the effect of a subterranean cavern, an interior of fake rocks covered with silver paper.  The cubicles where people sat to drink their coffee were made to look like little caves.
"What do you think of it?"  Ronan asked.
"It looks like Santa's grotto," Jenkins said.
While Ronan was digesting this remark and figuring out if it was a good thing or not, a large, untidy figure came looming out of the shadows saying, 'Hey, baby, I like the way you think -  we can work together."
This man was Giorgio Gomelsky. He was about 30 years old and very good-looking in a dark, rumpled, cavalier, fashion. He looked like one of the three musketeers gone to seed. He was surrounded by a cloud of fumes from the Gauloise cigarettes he smoked incessantly and he kept spilling ash down his suit as he gestured wildly with his hands.
He and Jenkins hit it off instantly and they went to have a drink together, leaving Ronan to contemplate his grotto.  They exchanged life stories.  Giorgio was originally a Russian, from Georgia, but he'd been brought up in a little village in Italy.  He'd come to England about ten years before which accounted for his sometimes erratic English. He'd been a film editor, but now he was moving into managing rock groups and producing records.
He was very enthusiastic about one of his groups in particular. "Going to be the biggest  group in the whole world, baby," he kept on saying.
The name of this group was The Rolling Stones. Jenkins had never heard of them. However, he allowed Giorgio to persuade him to come along and see them perform at his Crawdaddy Club at the Station Hotel in Richmond where they played every Sunday night.
When Jenkins arrived at the hotel, the  Stones were already playing.  Giorgio was on the door collecting money. 
"Go on, baby. Go on in,'" Giorgio urged him, and so he went inside.
There were about twenty rather bored-looking people in the room and this five-man group playing up on the stage.  Jenkins doesn't remember exactly what number they were playing.  It was some rhythm and blues thing, might've been "I'm a King Bee, Baby" or "Walking the Dog" or "Little Red Rooster". Jenkins took the scene in at a glance and went outside again.
"Well, what do you think of them?"  Giorgio asked.
"I can see why you sit outside," Jenkins said.
"No, baby, seriously.  Can't you see the  potential? They're going to be the biggest group in the world."
Sure enough, the audience grew and grew and  Giorgio's Crawdaddy Club moved to the much larger Richmond Athletic Club where a huge queue formed before each performance.
Because he and Giorgio became good friends and worked together for a number of years, he had quite a bit to do with The Stones.  They had a nickname for him.  They called him 'Scarlet'.  Why they called him 'Scarlet', and whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, he never knew.

The Management Contract
With all this success it was time for Giorgio to sign a formal management contract with his group. So one day Giorgio and Jenkins went to the Rolling Stones' flat in Edith Grove Fulham, contract in hand. Giorgio noticed a little red plastic bucket on the doorstep.  This was his little red plastic bucket which he had loaned to The Stones on a temporary basis for them to use when they went around pasting up notices about their forthcoming performances.
The bucket was full of congealed paste on top of which some mould had grown and other disgusting objects had been  deliberately added to the mix to create the foulest possible concoction.
This was a terrible affront to Giorgio's sensibilities. "These nincomidiots", he protested, "have been cultivating growths in my plastic bucket. I will not sign a contract with nincomidiots". He turned on his heel and stalked off.
As they walked towards Giorgio's car, a sudden thought came to him. "Jenkins", he said, "you don't have a group, do you".
It was the shameful truth. Jenkins did not have a group. Not even one. He hung his head.
"What about the Stones, Jenkins? How much will you give me for the Stones?"
Jenkins thought quickly. He really ought to have a group. Everyone else did. "Ok Giorgio, I'll give you two hundred pounds."
"Oooooh Jenkins. They may be nincomidiots, but they are good boys. two hundred pounds is not enough."
So they left it at that and a couple of months later, Andrew Oldham picked up the contract. The rest, is history.

Jenkins Emigrated
Jenkins eventually emigrated to Australia where, at the time he told me this story, he was living on a hill in Dapto near Wollongong. He once told me that he'd had one hundred and twenty jobs in his life and been fired from sixty of them.  He could also name a number of jobs for which he'd applied and not been accepted and these include street sweeper and tram conductor.
On the other hand, he'd had a number of very good jobs. He had been Promotions Manager with Rupert Murdoch's organisation, and Publicity Director for the Festival of Sydney, but he'd retired from all of that now to his house on the hill in Dapto with his wife and three children and the fourth one on the way.  He'd become a mature-age student at the University of Wollongong, right at the leading edge of the post-industrial society, a pioneer in the land of the education/leisure nexus, a toiler in the vineyard of the social impact of the new technology.  In other words, a drop-out.
Did he ever feel a twinge of pain when he read in the newspaper that The Rolling Stones have just grossed another $200 million from their  tour?  That a good chunk of that money would have been his? Did he ever wonder if he made the right decision?
If he had regrets, he hid them well.  High on his hill above Wollongong, he could afford to be philosophical.  In the evening, as the sun went down behind the escarpment and the kangaroos hopped through his front yard, he could reflect that money isn't everything after all. Surrounded by wife and children, secure in hearth and home, content after his day of honest toil writing essays, he could conclude that he had a very narrow squeak with destiny indeed.
Think of the sheer hell his life might've been, the unrelieved torment of it all, the endless counting of the money, the squabbles, the needles and the alcohol, the suicides and the overdoses, the interminable watching of cricket with Mick Jagger, the frenetic activity, the absolute boredom. The unendurable ennui and grinding toil of ploughing through the endless queues of  panting groupies. The stress, the tension, the temptations. Ah no, a narrow squeak indeed.
Giorgio went on to manage other groups, including the Yardbirds, and on their record, "Still I'm Sad' can be heard supplying a kind of Gregorian chant background in a rich bass voice.

A NOTE FROM PETER: 45 YEARS ON - 
Around twenty years ago, Harris Smart interviewed me about my time in  the music industry in London in the sixties, and wrote several articles about my experiences with the pirate radio Station, Caroline, Polydor Records and this one about the Stones. Two of them were published by Billy Blue magazine and we shared the money.
These events were all happening around the time I joined Subud. In those early days of latihan I could hardly remember who I was or which way was up and which way down.
Shortly after the Stones episode, I scored a lucrative five year contract with Ronan O'Rahilly to run  'Caroline Promotions Pty Ltd', the merchandising arm of Radio Caroline. But after a few months it was all too much, so I got a job sweeping leaves in Kensington Gardens.
Giorgio turned up at the Gardens one day and said, "Jenkins - ..I've got a job for you".
I said, "Leave me here with the leaves, Giorgio. I'm happy."
He said, "I'll pay you whatever you want". So I left leaf sweeping to join him in Paragon Publicity, a company financed by Polydor Records to promote their product, which included the Track and Atlantic labels with Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding. I struggled to balance the initial round of Subud purification and the fast lane, but most days I went home at 2pm, laying down on the back seat of a taxi.
"Jenkins was one of the brightest young men in London," Giorgo told a friend some years later, "And then he joined Subud."
When I got my Subud name from Bapak, I decided to cut off all contact with my old friends and my old life. Not long afterwards, another letter from Bapak sent me to Australia, where for seven years the only work I could manage was cleaning, gardening and very basic clerical jobs.
But a couple of years ago, I felt an urge to make contact with Giorgio again, after a gap of 38 years.
It wasn't too hard. I got onto Google and followed his career in the music industry from London to Paris for a number of years, and then New York.
It was lovely. We chatted on-line and Giorgio, who had just celebrated his seventy fifth birthday, suggested we write a memoir of those days together, as an email conversation.
I wrote several episodes and Giorgio loved them. He has promised to provide his contribution soon, but I am still waiting.
The urge to contact Giorgio and the resulting exchange was strangely satisfying, drawing a line under an earlier life.


SNAKES ALIVE!.. Mansur Geiger in Kalimantan Part 2 

Harris: You talked about an experience with a python. What about encounters with poisonous snakes? 
Mansur: One of the worst was in the Katingan River which runs through to the west of the Kahayan River, way, way up river, actually where Bapak told us to live. This was one of those jungle latihan experiences.
We were going off to work along a jungle path, and we had a young guide who was our out-front guy. I had wandered off the path and he turned around and called me. And as he did that, not looking where he was going, he trod on this huge king cobra. It was about four meters long and I was next in line. 
It was one of those moments that just went into sort of freeze frame. I've seen it in the movies, but this was real life. The snake was raised to strike, and this was a tiny little guy, the snake was literally taller than him striking down at him. He was trying to avoid it with kung fu-type moves; they all know a kind of martial art defence.
So he's brushing it off, and everyone else ran away, and then the snake looked around and there I was. I instinctively turned to run, but managed to fall in a hole and completely dislocated my back. I couldn't move. And as I fell I thought, "Oh dear, here it is! Death, by King Cobra!" In my mind's eye, I could see this fanged thing coming cheek-to-cheek with me in the next five seconds. 
I had a big mandau knife that I always used to carry for cleaning the pathways and stuff. I thought, do I want to go arm-to-arm with this bugger? And I thought, there's no point, l ain't going to win. So I just went completely limp. The thing sure enough came up and pretty well kissed me on the nose with his huge, long, flicking tongue and looked at me as if to say, "OK. Yeah, you're not that interesting." And went away. The strange thing was I felt entirely calm through this whole encounter.
 Harris: Wow!
Mansur: I gathered myself together. I managed to stand up, but I realized something really bad had happened to my back. There were about five of us who had all scattered, and we came back together and walked down to the river about 50 meters away where I found the young kid on the riverbank. He was sitting there very calmly and he said, "I've been bitten", and there were these two enormous puncture marks in his groin.
Then the interesting thing that happened was that we all instantly went into prayer. And this kid was completely calm. And then my original guide, Pak Sumbin, disappeared into the forest and came back about two minutes later with a chunk of wood which was oozing white sap, its called a pohon kupang. So we tried to wash the wound and then rub this sap on. You couldn't cut the bite, it was right in his groin, and you couldn't tourniquet it.
I pulled Pak Sumbin aside and asked, "So what's the story?" And he said, "Well, if he's conscious in 20 minutes, that's a good sign. And if he isn't dead in three hours, he might well make it." We were days from anywhere. We had no means of calling up a big company helicopter for support or evacuation. I went back to the little kid and he said, "Yeah. Well don't let me be a bother to you. You need to go on about your busy day I'll just lay here and die." These people have a remarkably surrendered nature.
I went back to the others and said, "Listen, I'm not capable of watching someone die from a king cobra bite." It destroys the nervous system and you just suffocate as your lungs don't operate anymore. "So I'm going off. Let's make a stretcher and take him back to camp, make him comfortable. And I'm just staying away for three hours. You know better than I what to do with this. Use some of your local magic and remedies, guys, because I sure ain't got any." 
But that's not the end of the story because when they looped the stretcher and put him on it, and we're going to carry him out, we walked past this huge clamp of roots, one of these big Baringin trees. The snake had gone in there. So we all walked by it, and then the snake came straight up and went lunging at the same guy on the stretcher.
Harris: The same guy again?
Mansur: Same guy. I didn't know why it didn't bother with anyone else, but he was just pissed with that guy. Maybe because he was the one who had trodden on it? They must have some kind of primitive memory.
A real memory bank like, "You're the bugger who trod on me. I'm not interested in that big guy." Cobras are very concerned about the use of their poison. A cobra doesn't have the most deadly poison but it will surely kill you, it has the most volume. It has enough to kill 33 grown men. I've done a little research on snakes over the years
Harris: But you mean it doesn't like to waste it?
Mansur: Yeah. They look after it. Anyway, I went on with work, but I couldn't think about anything else but this guy dying, and there was this horrible day of wondering what was going on. I went back to the camp in the late afternoon and the kid was sitting up eating a bowl of noodles. He had a very swollen leg, and a big smile in his face and someone said, "Oh, yeah, he's probably OK." 
So the next day we took him straight down to find a hospital, and I was realizing more and more that something was really wrong with my back. By the time I got back to Jakarta I was really in a bad way, I couldn't move, and I ended up having horrendous back problems for a year. 
Harris: And the boy survived?
Mansur: Yeah, he came back about two months later and said, "I want to go back to work." And we all looked at each other and said, "Well OK." And he came back but every day we walked up a river I noticed that if he was in the front, we'd meet a snake. So we ended up calling him Snake-Bait. "Okay, Snake-Bait if you're coming with us today, you go way up front. We will follow way behind." Eventually, we found some other work for him to do. 
But the closure to that whole story was almost exactly a year later, about 200 meters from that spot. I was still in pain from my back although it had got a lot better to the extent that I could sort of walk. So one afternoon we were out in the jungle looking at different rocks. And I was climbing up a really steep cliff and it was getting dark. 
And the camp was just over the back of this steep ridge. There was one guy gone ahead of me who was cutting a basic path through the vegetation which was mostly small saplings on the jungle floor. I was crawling up this big chunk of roots. And as I pulled myself over the top of the ridge and there right in my face was this cobra poised to strike.
I spontaneously threw myself backwards and I must have gone down quite a long way. I was sailing through the air backwards thinking, "Oh dear. I'm going to stake myself on one of the saplings", because they cut them with a real spear point at the end of them.
Fortunately I landed on my two feet and screamed out, "Snake!" All the guys shot off in every direction. And then this little bugger of a snake came down from three or four meters up the cliff and chased me.
I got a super blast of adrenalin and ran up the hill and beat every bush Dayak going to escape the snake. Exhausted, I stumbled back to camp, fell in the river, cleaned up and went to bed. And then the next morning, I woke up sleeping on a little mattress and said, "Oh, something is really different. What is it?" And the ache in my back that had been particularly acute in the morning had gone.
Harris: How amazing! 

Working with the Dayaks
Mansur: Yeah, so all the Dayaks were joking, they love these kinds of situations, "Oh, you know, so it was the big snake's little brother who came to fix you up." For them life is constantly under threat and the way they cope with it is to joke about the extraordinary circumstances under which they live. They're the most self-entertaining people I've ever met.
They're not yet disturbed by the material forces and wanting new hand phones or TVs or whatever. They are just totally accepting of their situation, "This is what we've got, let's have fun."
And we used to have a lot of fun while we worked hard and they work really, really well. Many times over the years, people from different mining companies would ask me, "How on earth do you get these guys to work? We have a nightmare. We just can't keep them there. They sign on and five days later they disappear and go home." 
And I said, "Well, do you have a kind of typical white men professional, authoritarian, procedural-based program in place?" And of course most of them said, "Yeah." I said, "Well, you got to realize these guys have never worked in that way."
"And do you think they just accept your authority, and acting like a big boss telling them, 'Listen here you dumb little bugger. Grab this thing and carry it up the hill otherwise you're fired." And are you surprised when they say, 'Well fine. Goodbye?'" 
So I was always on the same level with them. I don't know how I learned the trick. I mean it was very easy because I lived my life in their houses, ate their food and travelled in their canoes, they were my exploration team.
So we were all on equal terms and I certainly never had the kind of managerial systems in place to be clocking in and clocking out, but we've managed it very much on that basis and now here we are wanting to start again and haven't had anyone at work for four years other than our core team, but they're all flooding back and all keen to work again. These people are black and white. They either love you or hate you; they don't know our world of compromise.
Bapak once said to me, "The important thing with these people is that you feed them really well and treat them well and then they'll do anything for you." I mean we all still have to learn and adapt on both sides, and gradually of course we have brought them up to safety regulations, for example. I mean early on they wouldn't want to wear shoes or a safety helmet. 
Gradually we've introduced these things and they're very quick to learn. But again, it's simply the way of delivery. If you talk it to them not in an authoritarian way but actually say "please" they will do anything for you. I always used to say to these companies and different people, "Did you ever try using 'Please?'" 
Oh yeah, they'd say, "But that's kind of odd. As the boss of exploration, why would I ask my employees with please?" 
I said, "Well, I think you'll find you'll get a lot better result." 

Kalimantan Kids Club
Harris: And from the earliest days of the mining there was always an informal kind of social welfare aspect, wasn't there? You always used to do things like helping with their education, didn't you? So, it wasn't like there was a big community liaison program in place but you spontaneously tried to help.
Mansur: Those really early years were quite a dilemma for me, being the first guy going up the river. It was like, "Oh-oh, here I am Mr. Coca Cola." Because they started asking for things like watches, and I used to think about that – what is it that we can do to really help these people into a future that's destined to come?
I mean, there's going to be development whether anyone likes it or not. Frankly I knew they're far better off with us in Subud as the people with a greater vision and mission, Bapak's vision and mission for Kalimantan, than with anyone else. So that was the justification for me for being there. 
But then it just came to me, well, the single thing that we can do is give them education because I've came to see how unbelievably smart they are, how uncontaminated their intelligence was. You can take someone who has never seen a water pump before in his life, and you say, "This, this, and this and you start it like this, then you do this." And they're like, "Oh, OK, fine." They're very quick because they have survival instincts and survival logic. These are real bush people constantly living on the edge of survival.
So we started what we called the Kalimantan Kids Club which was initially funded by Murray and I and then others joined, such as Michael and Mariam David, and Susila Dharma. We started giving scholarships and that's now been absorbed into Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta (YTS), the foundation that Bardolf Paul runs, and I think over the years we helped something like 150 kids through varying levels of schooling and higher education.
Yeah, I really came to that singular thing. The only one thing we can give here is education. Because only then they'll have means to really participate in whatever unfolds. And be real participants and not just observers. They will have the means to do it. So one thing led to another and we actually set up the foundation. We started Kalimantan Kids Club about 1990, and then we setup YTS in 1997. 
And then in 2002 we managed to attract Bardolf to come. In 2006 we established Bina Cita Utama which now schools 100 kids and has become greatly appreciated and valued by local people and government, it's done much for Subud's image in Central Kalimantan. More than 400 Subud members have financially supported BCU over the past 6 years and helped it to a near breakeven point. Our next project is to build a school campus that will accommodate 350 students. Hamid da Silva has donated 10 hectares of land to help facilitate this. 
Bardolf came in with a new approach and built YTS up to what it is today, recognized internationally and by local government as a community development approach which is quite unique. Which actually brings about real measurable successes, and everyone these days is looking for measurable results. 
YTS has developed collaborations and funding from more than 20 international Aid Agencies including UNDP, UNIDO, UNTAD, Ford Foundation, AusAid from the Australian Government and the Global Environment Fund. YTS is a world header today in reducing the use of mercury by local miners. Freeport, who of course have social problems with their mine in Papua, like everyone these days acknowledge just how important community relationships are. 
The mineral project will fully fund and support all our YTS community programs this year and that funding will dramatically increase along with exploration success into millions of dollars annually. This is a massive bonus for us as YTS embeds most of our social development objectives and vision. 
Our partners recognize that this social asset is as valuable as our mineral prospectivity. We started really early on this aspect of relationships. It began with my very first years going up the river in their boats and in their canoes and eating their food and developing a trust and a genuine respect.. 
I mean, these guys still ring me up, and if the word goes out that we're back at work, they'll be saying "Oh, we heard you're going back to work?" "Yeah." "What can I do?" It is basic human nature to want to be appreciated.
 One guy last week, I haven't seen him for like four years, he said, "I want to be a rock stacker and a night watchman." So, this is an area where we've been jostling with our new partners a bit, because they don't normally engage local people directly, they use contractors. So they think, "What? You've organized all these guys?" 
Usually they just contract with an outside company to do the job. We believe that in the long run there are far greater benefits by training local people to do the work and directly benefit from the project. My friend who wanted to work as a watchman is now in Jakarta training as a lab assistant so he can help in preparing all the rock core drill samples we will produce for analysis. 
At the end of the day, people living in remote and underdeveloped regions firstly want the opportunity to have good livelihoods, education and health services. What many environmental groups and agencies don't seem to realize these days is that if you actually provide these things you have a far better likelihood of establishing meaningful environmental conservation. 
If people have a good livelihoods they are far less likely to cut down trees or dredge up rivers for gold to feed their families. Its these activities that are most destructive to the environment in remote places.. 
In the final article in this series, Mansur talks about the prospects now that KGC has joined with Freeport.


YUM IN JAVA - Olvia Reksodipoetro on the history of YUM 
 
Olvia Reksodipoetro is the chair of Yayasan Usaha Mulia (YUM) one of Subud's longest running social projects working in several different areas Indonesia. Here is Part 2 of her interview with Harris Smart - 
Harris: In the last interview you told me about YUM's projects in Aceh and Kalimantan. Could we backtrack now and talk about how YUM started and what projects you are doing in Java?
Olvia: Well, actually YUM was set up legally in 1976. There was a priest, Father Wilbert Verheyen, who was doing some work with Sister Rina Ruigrok and Ibrohim Wesells, all from Holland. They were doing social work and then they became Subud members. So Bapak recommended the setting up of the Yayasan.
Harris: So the seed of it was with these three people?
Olvia: Yes, and Sharifin Gardiner was one of the Directors and Murray Clapham was Treasurer for a number of years. So it was a mixture of Indonesians and ex-pats living in Indonesia who set it up.
And it was excellent for 10, 15 years. I have found in old records that, for example, in 1985, they had five clinics. They were serving almost 100,000 patients a year. They were assisting over 1,000 children with sponsorships. They were doing fantastic work.
Harris: Would you just run through some of the projects that YUM has had over the years? There was a tuberculosis hospital, wasn't there?
Olvia: It was in Cipanas in hills a few hours drive from Jakarta which is still an area with very high tuberculosis. Indonesia is the place most affected by tuberculosis of anywhere in the world. So there was a clinic in Cipanas, where they were treating people but I had to close it because it had been operating without a license and without a doctor. They had no funding. So the only thing they had was Aspirin, Panadol, these kind of things. And it was no longer needed because there are now four or five different clinics there.
YUM also started an orphanage in Cipanas know as The Children's Village. What had been realized when the hospital was operating was that because not everybody survived, there were lots of orphan children. It remained an orphanage until last year, because now the Ministry of Social Affairs, UNICEF, and Save the Children are all saying that we should look after the children within their own families.
A huge survey was done of 500 orphanages, and only 5% of the children had lost both parents. Maybe another 20% or 30% had lost one parent. But the big majority staying in those so-called orphanages were children who came from very poor families, who could not afford to feed all their children, nor put them through school. So we had a number of these over the years in the orphanage; they were the only ones who got an education in those families.
So last year, because UNICEF and Save the Children and other big organizations were saying, "look after the children in their own homes", we could not find funding anymore to keep 50 children. So we had to return the majority to their families after talking with each family and the children themselves.
So we only have eight left who really could not be looked after by their family, and they have almost finished their studies, I mean they only have a few years left. But the others have been returned to their families and the government has given us funding to look after those children who have been returned.
In fact, the funds are sent directly to the children; they have to open a special account, and the Health Ministry has lent us three social workers to visit the children regularly and make sure that everything is all right and to talk with relatives to make sure that the children are kept in school.
Harris: And there was also vocational training, wasn't there in Cipanas?
Olvia: Yes. So we have now expanded our activities a lot in Cipanas. Instead of being an orphanage for only 50 children, our library is now open and we have 1,000 visitors a month, because all the kids from the neighbourhood come. They have nowhere else to go. So we have a playground. We also have a teacher coming every afternoon to help them with their homework.
Those who want to can learn to play music and on Sundays they come to do aerobics. So cute! 50 little kids coming to do aerobics on Sunday morning. And then they help us clear up the grounds, in case there are papers or empty bottles. And then, as a reward, they get some milk. We get free milk from Nestlι.
And we have also established a vocational training center, because like everywhere in Indonesia, it's very difficult for young people to find work here. So when they finish high school or technical school, they need added skills in order to have a better chance to find a job.
So we have a number of computer classes there. I think it's 16 every month for different levels; same thing for English. We also have a job-seeking class and we work with the Hospitality and Tourism School to improve the English of some of their students; we prepare them for working in the world.
We also have a sewing class, and last year we established a sewing workshop to provide employment for local women, and now we have orders from the International School, JIS, to make 700 folders from recycled material. So we buy the recycled material from scavengers, and then we purchased special sewing machines, strong enough for these recycled materials. So the ladies are sewing these folders and making bags and other materials.
And we have an organic farm there. Actually it was started three years ago. The idea being that since we had more and more difficulty to find funding for the orphanage, we should grow our own vegetables, but it was really only done on a very small scale for the first two years. It's only early last year with the new project manager that things really started to develop. We had an excellent volunteer who helped us and it's working very well.
So we are invited every two weeks to sell our vegetables at the International School. They have a farmers market. So we sell these, and our bags and everything we produce, at the International School. So that is running very well.
One thing I should mention is that we have a very good relationship with AUSAID, the Australian aid agency's volunteer branches. So we get quite a number of Australian volunteers for one year or more and in general they are extremely helpful. So we apply for volunteers for specific activities. Next month we will get two for Cipanas; one to help us with the marketing of our organic produce, the other to help us develop the library into an information center.
Another major problem here in Indonesia, is that the government has programs for poor people, but nobody knows how to access them. So since we have a good network and good relationships with the different government institutions in the area, what we plan to do is to put people in contact with these programs. They can learn what programs are available, and then we will put people in touch with these different institutions, so that they can access their programs.
Harris: There was also a tuberculosis hospital in Pamulang, wasn't there? Is that still there?
Olvia: No. That was the land that we sold, two-and-a-half hectares which had lots of problems. Yeah, we had to sell it. There was no way to restart the projects there. They had been abandoned for 10 or 12 years.
Harris: Are there any other projects that we haven't talked about?
Olvia: Yes, sponsorships. We also had two preschools in Jakarta. Again, these were not properly run at the time I became Chair. The staff could not be trusted. We did not own the premises; we were renting.
So first I had to change the staff to people who could be trusted. And because we were renting we always had to find the funding for that and to pay the staff. And it is often the problem with donors that they don't understand that we don't only need equipment and buildings and furniture, but we need to cover our running costs such as staff. And if we can't find funding for running costs, then the project cannot go on.
And also those preschools were serving children of scavengers in the area. There were three scavenger locations in the area, but then in the huge Jakarta flood of 2008, the scavengers were displaced. The land they were using was totally flooded and the owners decided to get it back and build a supermarket. So they are no longer there and we are no longer in that area.
And since we had so much difficulty funding running costs, we decided to close these preschools, but we continue to assist the children through sponsorships, to cover their education, as long as possible. What we hope is that once a sponsor starts sponsoring a child, that child will continue to be sponsored until he or she finishes her studies, because it's useless to assist the child for one, two, three years and then not continue, because the child cannot get any work; you can't do anything without proper education.
Harris: So you try to support them through to the end of high school?
Olvia: Yes, at least until the end of high school. There are a number of big companies nowadays that offer scholarships to university for poor families. So through the Muhammad Subuh Foundation (MSF),we also got some funding to help some young people go to university. We also hope that once the children we are sponsoring reach that age, we can help them to connect with these big companies. If they are bright enough to continue to university, then they have the possibility of doing that.
Harris: You mentioned that there is currently a problem finding funding?
Olvia: Yes, well, with all the problems in the world, such as the financial crisis in the developed countries, it's more difficult to attract funding.
Last week I was meeting with an Australian donor. He would like to establish a pre-school in Cipanas, because there is a need. There is no preschool for poor people in the area, and also because he himself has a lot of difficulty to attract funding. So he wants like a flagship project that he can show to potential donors, his friends, to show, OK, this is the kind of project our organization sponsors.
Harris: Is funding from Subud members still significant?
Olvia: Yes, it's only a small proportion of the funding we need, but it's still very helpful. But because we have grown quite a lot, our budget is in the range of $400,000 a year. So what we get through the various Subud organizations or individuals is maybe a fifth of that.
Harris: So still very significant.
Olvia: Yes, but that's why we constantly need to look outside to companies and big organizations.
Harris: Yes, you mentioned you now have a permanent staff of 26,
Olvia: That is spread across all of the projects, but besides these 26 permanent staff, we have half-a-dozen part-time teachers for the vocational training centers, and we have part-time staff also here in Kalimantan working on various projects. And we have the Australian volunteers. Altogether we have 40 people working regularly here on our various projects, but it's still not enough.
For more about YUM go to http://www.yumindonesia.org/index.php/en/


GUITAR HERO - Interview with Top Topham 

Emmanuel Elliott writes - 
Did you know that one of our longstanding Subud brothers here in the UK  just happens to be a legendary 'guitar hero' who helped launch the original Yardbirds?
As the sleeve notes to his Complete Blue Horizon Sessions says, "Thousands of guitarists have walked in the footsteps of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page – but only Top Topham can claim that they walked in his."
That's right, Topham – better known to us by his Subud name Sanderson.
I was delighted to come across a recent interview with Sanderson in Guitar International and thought it might interest you too – see below. I hastened to get the Blue Horizon collection on Amazon, at a very reasonable price, and felt very 'cool' when my son-in-law admired my taste in blues guitar! I love playing it: this is a guy with a real inner affinity with his instrument.

Top Topham: The Original Yardbirds Guitar Hero
By: Matt Warnock
Before there was Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, there was Top Topham. The original guitarist in one of the most famous, guitar-hero filled bands in rock history, Topham was the guitarist who started it all. Though his tenure with the band was short lived, being only 15 years old at the time his parents had issues with his late nights spent jamming in clubs, his influence can still be felt to this day. A blues lover at heart, in the same vein as Eric Clapton was when he was with the band, Topham has continued to record and perform stellar blues-inspired music after leaving The Yardbirds back in 1963.
A true Renaissance man, Topham is also a highly successful painter, and experienced interior decorator, alongside his envious resumι as a guitarist and recording artist. Though most people who left a band like the Yardbirds before they were famous would be haunted by the question, "What might have been?" Topham has instead focused his creative energy into his art, creating a musical legacy that will live on for generations to come.
Guitar International recently sat down with guitar legend Top Topham to talk about The Yardbirds, his inner creativity and his love of Fender Telecasters.
Matt Warnock: The world that I grew up in and learned to play guitar in is vastly different from when you learned to play back in the '50s and '60s, including the rise of popular music programs in Colleges and Universities. How do you feel about the current system where students learn to play rock guitar by going to school to study, as compared to solely learning in clubs as you did when you were cutting your teeth?
Top Topham: It's like another universe really. My feeling is that technique has become such a predominant thing, and I think it's human nature to want to gather as many techniques as one can and then put them all together in their music. I think that as we go further on down the road we're producing amazingly technical people, but I'm not sure about that element of Soul in their playing.
I heard records that absolutely changed my life when I was growing up, as I'm sure happens to people today, but to me it wasn't about the technique that the player possessed, it was about an overall sound and something that personally moved me inside. That was so foreign to British culture and British folk music, which is really boring actually. [Laughs] When you heard a guy bend a note on a blues track something happened to you. It was that quality that you wanted to emulate and that inspired you to push forward with your playing.
Matt: How do you feel about the commercialisation of music that has gone on over the past 4 decades? It seems that when you were growing up it was more about being creative and artistic, but now, music is only deemed "good" if it sells a lot of records, at least in the pop-rock-radio world that dominates the music scene today.
Top Topham: Well, I think we have people in this country that are responsible for the demise of the music industry. These sort of ataman cows that just sit around and watch X-Factor where we see all these young kids queuing up to try and become famous. On top of it, their musical references when they sing are of course equally bad people that they've emulated. They're not listening to what I call "classicism" in Soul music, and I think that's what I miss with the younger generation of performers. When I see somebody playing I want to feel their life experiences. That's what really grabs me.
One of the guys that I really feel this coming from is Jeff Beck. I have to tip my hat to the man. He's never resting on his laurels. He's always pushing himself and you feel that every moment is a total commitment to what he's doing. That's something that I used to really find attractive in a player, but I'm not sure I hear those qualities in the newer, younger players. What I hear, is a lot of people trying to emulate blues-based music and getting the whole point of it wrong, really.
But I think it's interesting for guys like myself, who've done it on or off over the years. It's not really about trying to emulate anyone else at this point. It's just about finding one's own sound and trying to be as creative as possible within that framework.
Matt: In your career you've been a very successful painter, interior decorator and of course worked with The Yardbirds, Peter Green and developed your solo career. It seems that sometimes when people rely on music as their sole source of income, the pressures that come with that situation prevent them from being able to reach their full creative potential. They take less risk because they need to have steady work to keep things going. Do you feel that because you've had a diverse career that that's helped you keep your creative fires going, as a musician and in your other endeavors?
Top Topham: I think so, in a way. The thing is that the painting was a way for me to make a living. I got to a point in my life where I had a family, I had children and needed to make money, and the painting allowed me to do that. I went back to music when I was about 40. I sort of rediscovered it after a number of years away from that side of my life. That was interesting, but I think creatively, I've been fortunate enough in my life that through my painting I've always been able to be creative, whether I was involved in music or not.
With the music thing, I still really never feel like I fulfilled what I could have fulfilled. I never felt like my true voice was able to fully come through. Though, when I play now I am completely myself and I feel it's very creative with the band that I have. We don't rehearse at all. We just get up and do it. I think you're probably quite right, if I had done music full time, which I would have loved to have done, I would've been affected by the commercialisation at some point. Whether I could have sustained that admirable quality that Jeff Beck does in his music, I'm not sure if I could have done that, no one really knows really.
Matt: You're obviously a big lover of the blues, but you also like Jeff Beck, who went in different musical directions after he left the Yardbirds. You also had to leave that band very early on, because you were so young and your parents had issues with you being in clubs late at night. How do you feel about the direction that the Yardbirds took after you left the band?
Top Topham: It's interesting really. I saw them, obviously, through those years with all those different aspects, with Jeff Beck in the band, with Jimmy Page in the band, with both of them in the band at the same time. I think that they produced three or four really good records and wrote some really interesting material, some very beautiful songs. I can't say that I ever loved the music particularly. If I'm going to be absolutely honest, it wasn't my kind of band.
If I had stayed in the band, I think I would have been pushing, like Eric Clapton did, to keep the blues as the focus of the band. You have to bear in mind, that in those early days we hadn't even heard B.B. King. [Laughs] If you haven't heard that music before and then you hear Live at the Regal, you can't really be the same after that.
Matt: Because you've continued to perform over the years, your playing has grown and sounds absolutely great today. What do you think is the biggest change that your playing has undergone since your early days with The Yardbirds and later Peter Green?
Top Topham: I think that when I was younger I was very limited in my guitar style. The access to decent instruments was fairly depressing. [Laughs] I mean, I played a Harmony Sovereign in that band. Then I played a Strat-o-Tone, and I didn't get my first Gibson until a few years after that.
It was hard to get good guitars in England back then because of the embargo on selling American goods. So, we were pretty starved of things. There were a few people who had the money and could get those things, but money back then was few and far between.
The main difference, musically, is that now I can get up and just hear things and let them flow into my playing, and I don't think I could do that back then. I could definitely do it around the Blue Horizon days, but that was in a live situation.
Matt: Speaking about the Blue Horizon days, you recently released the Complete Blue Horizon Sessions . What inspired you to rerelease this collection of recordings at this time in your career?
Top Topham: I had no part in that project. Unfortunately, Sony is releasing all of that stuff and not paying anybody. It's a sin really. They were going to release it and gave me the opportunity to be involved, which I took because I'd rather be involved than not involved.
I'm glad it came out, because I think it's a good project and sets things straight in a sense, because the person that owns all that music bought the whole catalogue and has been raking in money over the years. He's been licensing it to different companies over the years, and guys like myself have never seen a dime from that music.
Matt: How does that feel to know that someone else has ownership of your art, that they have control over something that you created years ago as part of your artistic output?
Top Topham: I mean, I suppose I read many stories about blues guys never getting paid for their music, and I think it's always been a little bit like that. I think that there are some players who were very smart about this side of things, the Peter Green's and Eric Clapton's of the world. I feel resigned to it, but I think it's very unfair really. But it's something that has always been a part of that business.
Matt: Moving on to a more positive note. [Both Laughing] You've played a number of different guitars over the years, what is your number one guitar of choice these days?
Top Topham: My main guitar these days is a Fender Telecaster. I have a very lovely '66 Telecaster, absolutely fabulous. Tom Principato was jamming at a festival with me and he turned around and said "That's a '66." I said, "How do you know?" He said, "Because I've got loads of 'em." [Laughs] Mine is very doctored, I have to say.
I bought it when I was working at Andy's guitar workshop. A friend told me to check out this guitar, so I went down and found this guitar in pieces. It had been run over by a Taxi. I had the guys put it back together, put some P-90s in it, with some Hot Rails in the middle with a 5-way switch.
If I use the Hot Rails and the neck P-90 I can get that woody, Wes Montgomery sound. It's a very expressive guitar. I don't use any effects or pedals at all, just run it through a Fender Super Reverb, an old one from the '70s. There's nothing more to it. I love that sound. People come up and ask about my sound, and it's just the guitar through the amp, nothing special, just a great sounding guitar.
Matt: Now that you've gotten back into music, what's your musical future hold for you? Is there a new tour or new album on the near horizon?
Top Topham: To be honest with you, I find it difficult here to get any gigs these days. You can try for months and not find anything. There are very few venues to play here right now. There's nothing that I like to do more right now than play gigs, but they're hard to find. We're all finding it very hard going in this country to make things happened these days. Ideally, I'd love to be out playing more and so hopefully the opportunities will come back and we'll be able to make that happen.
To hear Top play go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1FnkQqWaD4&NR=1
Originally published in Guitar International magazine. Thank you for the permission to republish.


DAWN OF A NEW AGE - Rachman Mitchell on Bapak 
 
Rachman Mitchell is a medical doctor and was for many years Bapak's personal physician. He writes - 
We live in extraordinary times with the pace of change ever accelerating, especially in the field of science, technology and communication. Our minds are sometimes overwhelmed, and it becomes more and more difficult to be connected to one's Essential Self and through that to All that exists, or as some put it God, Allah, Brahma or whatever language tries to express the inexpressible.
As an adolescent and young man, I could only dimly remember that connection, I say dimly because I had mostly forgotten it and believed in my conscious reasoning mind that it did not exist. However deep within me, perhaps in my subconscious Inner feeling, was a longing for that connection to come alive again.
The coming of Bapak to Coombe Springs in June 1957 was heralded for me six weeks earlier by an experience which woke me in the middle of the night, and which I now recognise as my Opening to the Love and Power of the Almighty.
I was suddenly very wide-awake and became aware of a ball of bright light above the French doors in front of me.
It moved first into my head and then filled the whole of my body. It was accompanied by an intense blissful happiness and a feeling of being in my real home.
My heart felt itself expanding but it knew it could not expand enough to contain it all. I heard my own voice telling me to follow what the Man from the East had to bring. A few days later walking along a path I found myself leaping in the air saying " Eureka, I have a soul".
I began to be happy. One reason for this was the healing of the grief over my father's death 11 years earlier. I experienced him sitting beside me sharing my happiness while on a train in the London underground.
That a human being can have a set of experiences which includes hardly sleeping for a thousand days while he is taught about the structure of Man's being, has an Ascension and is given the task to open Mankind to the Love Power and Guidance of the Almighty is already a miracle many times over. That this experience can be handed to others who need it through, what we call the Opening (a most revealing word) is another extraordinary miracle.
His hopes for us all were expressed in a few simple words " All you need to do now is to put it into practice" and " Everything that you need is there from A to Z" " The latihan is a continual learning from your Inner Self".

Proofs
I confess that there have been many times when I feel that I have disappointed his hopes for us and me in particular through not being enough of an example of a true Subud person to attract people to the miracle of the latihan. Thinking and words always get in the way. But when this feeling comes to me I try to feel what I can do to meet the real need of someone in some way that is within my capacity.
Because of how I was at that time of life and I guess how many of us were we regarded Bapak as something like the return of Jesus Christ, someone who knew and understood everything and who had power over events, such was the wonderful atmosphere of the miraculous around us. I certainly was in awe of him. He did his best to disabuse us over that and to say that he was only a channel for the Power of the Almighty. 
Later when he asked forgiveness at the end of a Ramadan and someone said that he did not need to ask us for forgiveness, he became quite stern and said he was a human being who made mistakes and again asked us for forgiveness. This was a great comfort to me later. BUT what we witnessed at Coombe was a man who walked and talked like no other we had yet met. 
When he walked there was a visible sense of Presence and Self Awareness. When he spoke about spiritual matters there was a sense that he was talking directly from his experience rather than talking learnedly about something. His words had the deep ring of truth and somehow made me quiet as they found their mark in my inner feeling.
They were such contrast to the words of the highly charismatic and intelligent Mr B who had held us in thrall for the previous five years. Bapak was always keen to hear from us what was or is the Proof of what has been the benefit of the latihan in our lives
If I try to answer that question now I would say that I know I have the power of choice. To be miserable and complain about what I don't have and this list is actually very small, or to be happy and be grateful for what I do have and this list is very long and top of it is what we call the latihan.
I could go on about the proofs and I like many here have had many proofs. We need to remember them on this day that we thank the Almighty for the Gift of Bapak to this world and the Opening and the Contact that he brought to our own Inner Selves.


FINANCE FOR SUBUD'S INITIATIVES IN KALIMANTAN - by Leonard van Hien 
  
Leonard van Hien writes - 
The autobiographical parts of what follows may not be of interest to many members, but for those who don't know my background I believe that to leave those parts out somehow leaves readers wondering what authority I have to be making the observations that are in the rest of the article. 
When I first came to Indonesia for the historic Fourth Subud World Congress at Wisma Subud I was twenty one years old. I had qualified as a chartered accountant in the City of London and, having started work aged seventeen in a medium sized firm of accountants, I already had under my belt four years experience as an audit clerk.
Although this clerical work appeared mundane, it brought me into first hand contact with people who ran a large variety of businesses. I was at liberty to ask lots of questions and to try to understand how these businesses worked and sometimes why they failed.
I was on the audit teams of, inter alia, a brick manufacturer in Sussex, a textile manufacturer in Glasgow, a citrus fruit importer on the Liverpool docks, restaurants in Piccadilly, a prime city-centre real estate developer, a hotel management business, a merchant bank in the City of London and a business syndicating television programs world wide, whose office premises in London West End's fashionable Sloane Street, turned out to be a front for gun running by the founder of Britain's SAS.
In the early nineteen seventies I sat on Subud Britain's National Committee as its Treasurer and oversaw the affairs of  The Subud Human Welfare Trust. Four years later, in 1975, I was asked to take unpaid leave from my office in London to come to Jakarta for a few weeks to help improve internal control systems at PT S Widjojo, where the S Widjojo Center was under construction.
At the 1979 Toronto Subud World Congress, I was appointed to a consultative committee for Bank Susila Bakti. Based in Singapore, I flew into Jakarta at weekends, sometimes as often as fifty times a year, usually staying as house guest with Wayne Lerrigo, Sharif Horthy and Rashad Pollard.
Five years later, in 1984, I was asked to join a team led by Lienhard Berger to review Project Sunrise, which was at that time involved with devising plans for the redevelopment of Darling Harbour in Sydney. I then spent six months in a cabin on the construction site at Anugraha looking after the one million dollars that Adam Albright generously provided to ensure that all building contractors were paid off.
Later, after spending three years inHong Kong, I sat as a shareholder representative for PT S Widjojo. Lienhard's team handed over a clean company at the end of 1996, only to see the company run into problems created by its new board.
I founded a company called Kalimantan Investment Corporation ("KIC") in order to acquire, for only one dollar, an Indonesian mining contract of work that an Australian company called Molopo wished to sell. This provided a formal corporate investment structure for those Subud members whose money, which had originally been sent for plots of land at Tengkiling, had, without their consent, been diverted to the mineral exploration project.
Others in a tight circle who wished to risk new money in the exploration could also invest in KIC ordinary shares. This was the fore-runner for the present company Kalimantan Gold Corporation ("KGC") which is publicly listed on both the Toronto and London Stock Exchanges. Neither KIC nor KGC has ever had debt on the books.
I have also sat on the management board of the Indonesian foundation Yayasan Muhammad Subuh and on the board of trustees of its US registered counterpart, the Muhammad Subuh Foundation. Following Bapak Subuh's passing, his heirs found themselves as owners of a small company called PT Pancaran Cahaya Bahagia ("PT PCB") established by Bapak Subuh, a few years before he died, in order to pioneer Subud's involvement withKalimantan.
The company had the rights to over 600  hectares of land at Tengkiling promised by the then Governor of Central Kalimantan to Bapak Subuh. It also held a significant number of shares in the mineral exploration endeavor. Bapak's heirs duly donated all of their shares in PT PCB to Yayasan Muhammad Subuh. I have the impression that most Subud members are unaware of what Bapak's family gratuitously handed over to Subud's institutional interests.
Having spent eighteen years as a partner in an international accountancy firm in Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia and a further ten years as country chairman for a public listed company with over 130,000 employees in Indonesia engaged in everything from auto assembly to palm oil plantations, consumer finance, supermarkets, luxury hotels, coal mining, banking and heavy equipment, I have a reasonable grasp of how global businesses operate in Asia – and Indonesia in particular.
I have sat on the boards of the British Chamber of Commerce and the European Business Chamber of Commerce and have been invited more than once to the Palace to act as a spokesman in order to brief the President of the Republic on the concerns of foreign investors ahead of his attendance at G20 meetings.
I have also brought a twelve man multi-disciplinary group to meet with the present Governor of Central Kalimantan to discuss the establishment of a Regional Development Authority coordinating the plans of all four provinces in Kalimantan. At the Governor's request, the meeting was held at the Muhammad Subuh Centre at Rungan Sari.
This was a milestone of sorts. Years earlier, when there was nothing to see but sand and bushes, I had attended the laying of a foundation stone by Ibu Siti Rahayu at the site of the Latihan Hall at Rungan Sari. The place has come on a long way since then.
To date over twenty five million dollars has been invested by Kalimantan Gold Corporation in the mineral exploration endeavor. It remains to this day a speculative venture on an ever shorter time fuse with only one year to run in its exploration phase before it will be required, under the terms of its contract of work, to move to a feasibility phase. The "one year" clock starts running as soon as a long awaited permit has been received from the Department of Forestry.
Separately, thanks to the initiative of two Subud members, over one million dollars has been privately invested in putting in basic infrastructure and a small hotel at Rungan Sari complete with a swimming pool, tennis court and meeting facilities. The Subud community there, so far as I can see, remains a faith-based community.
The houses are of good quality and the development is clean and well managed. Apart from the residential properties, the hotel and a well-regarded, Subud-run school with ninety pupils, there is little else of significance to talk about.
Unlike the situation several years ago when it was hard to access credit in Indonesia, banks and other financial services companies now compete strongly with each other to provide loans and other forms of credit all across the archipelago. Any well run business, especially one serving a mining joint venture in which a reputable mining major has invested, should have no difficulty accessing working capital loans.
Any business that is unable to access credit in today's Indonesia is, almost by definition, a high risk credit. It is important for Subud members anywhere in the world to understand this, especially if they are in due course approached to invest in a Subud-run financial services company such as the one which the World Subud Council has recently encouraged to be established.
Any such financial services company should, in my opinion, be owned and run only by a small circle of experienced people who are willing to risk their own capital. It should not be owned by hundreds of small unsophisticated investors.
The standards of governance in Subud have, for several years now, fallen well short of where they should be. For example, the World Subud Association and the Muhammad Subuh Foundation have for many years failed to present their audited financials within the time limits specified in their respective constitutions. Accountability of organizations is a key component of democracy. Without competence, integrity is overvalued.
Apart from the aspect of governance, I am not convinced that there is currently sufficient experience in the World Subud Council to act as an effective brake on the enthusiasms of the WSA Executive. This makes it necessary for Subud members not directly involved with the World Subud Council to remain vigilant and to do whatever is required to protect Subud members everywhere from investing in any venture just because it appears to coincide with the general wish to become involved withKalimantan.
My own view is that for the time being investment into Kalimantan remains high risk and, as such, it is not something that hundreds of small unsophisticated investors should be encouraged to invest in. Instead, a courageous few with deep pockets who are so inclined can take up the challenge.
Over the course of many decades businesses can develop and reinvent themselves. For example, one day Kalimantan Gold Corporation might, with an expanded board of directors, be restructured and extend its remit beyond the present dedicated focus on mineral exploration.
That would enable KGC to become a vehicle for future investment in Kalimantan on a broader plane. As a public listed company, KGC is required to comply with the regulations of two reputable stock exchanges. Therefore, one expects that the standards of governance would be better than what was experienced in the last few years at PT S Widjojo.
Even so, KGC's reports should be read carefully. Using the mainstream Subud media, KGC has consistently emphasized its commitment to community work. However, from a careful scrutiny of the company's latest interim statements, it is clear that more has been expended in the six months to 30 June 2011 on executive stock options than has been spent on community development in the entire history of the project.
No doubt this is an inconvenient truth. Disproportionate remuneration is one of the issues that have to be watched, especially in a community such as the one we have in Subud, where so much of the early foot work is done on a voluntary unpaid basis.
There are many reasons why large scale Subud enterprises have failed. To me the one that stands out as being the most obvious is that they were brought down by an inability to manage debt obligations. In some cases this was because the businesses were under-capitalized and consequently relied too much on bank loans, which in the end could not be repaid.
In other cases, the terms of loans provided by one or two Subud members were unfairly biased against shareholders in favor of the lenders. In effect the lenders had positioned themselves for personal advantage at the expense of the bulk of the other investors.
My sense is that for many years to come Subud investment into Kalimantan will, for the most part, have to be mainly in the form of shares. Otherwise our endeavors will continue to be at the mercy of lenders.
LvH: Pamulang, Indonesia 5th September 2011


LETTER FROM CHRISTCHURCH - from Maynard MacDonald 

Maynard MacDonald, Chairperson of Subud Christchurch, sends this touching and informative letter. He includes financial information on donations and expenditures. We are extremely grateful for Maynard's excellent reporting and for the outpouring of donations to assist our sisters and brothers in this devastated city, home to our not-so-distant World Congress.  Here is an excerpt from Maynard's letter; you may read the complete text, write to wsa@subud.org. 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This letter is to thank you for your generous support and indicate how we are now. Many of you who came to the World Congress will remember the wonderful testing and latihans in the Convention Centre with Ibu Rahayu. We heard this week that the building will have to be demolished, as well as the Crowne Plaza Hotel where Ibu and party stayed. This loss is emblematic of our situation. It occurs again and again throughout the city as the familiar, the useful, and the beautiful, are reduced to rubble.
Looking back, the first big earthquake in September caused terrible damage and changed the cityscape forever. There was a sense that, yes, we had been through something awful, but actually since the damage was so huge, and the loss of life so small, there was a sense that we were lucky -  The 3rd big quake in June was a vicious jolt that brought down more buildings and wrecked big areas of the Port Hills suburbs. City wide, much that was repaired had to be repaired again. From this point, for many of us, the new normal became a state of bottomless fatigue, if not actual depression.
We have to fight this. And it is becoming clear to our Committee that our best weapon is to encourage the members to take breaks. With the money you have sent us we support respite intervals for families to get out of town and escape the constant aftershocks, to escape the fear that the next one will be another big one, to get a good night's sleep, to see a another landscape with its own sweetness untainted by destruction. We sincerely thank you for this practical blessing.
So how is the group? -  I have a secret list of active members. To make my list, one has to do any of the following things: come to latihan regularly, contribute money to the group, or come to working bees. Before the quakes – by my admittedly ruthless reckoning – we had 59 active members. By the time everyone leaves who is leaving, we will lose 13 members and be down to 46 active members. In other words the quakes have cost us almost a quarter of our membership. So to be blunt, it is very hard to live here. It is scary, expensive, and depressing. But however uncomfortable it may be, we are witnesses to God's Power and would rather be here than anywhere else in the world. So thank you for helping us stick it out.


AFTER SUMMERHILL - New book by Hussein Lucas 
What Happened to the Pupils of Britain's Most Radical School?
by Hussein Lucas
ISBN: 978-1-84289-052-3
£9.95
Paperback 216 x 138mm
224 pages plus 4 pages of colour photographs
Buy online at http://www.herbertadler.co.uk/aftersummerhill.html after 26th July 2011
One of the big questions surrounding a radical educational establishment like Summerhill is whether parents might be limiting their children's prospects by sending them to a school where the child is not forced to learn.
Founded by the legendary educator AS Neill in 1921, Summerhill is notable for the fact that it does not require any of its pupils to attend lessons. Furthermore, the school is run by a council of pupils, teachers and houseparents, where questions of discipline are decided democratically. What, one may ask, is the likely outcome of sending a child to such a school?
In After Summerhill, Hussein Lucas investigates these and other questions in a series of extended interviews with people who were educated at Summerhill throughout its history.
The former pupils who emerged from this radical experiment talk about how they coped after they left the idyllic environment of Summerhill and went on to face the harsh realities of the world at large, and how their experience of the school affected their lives subsequently.
After Summerhill is also, in part, an oral history of the school told by those who were there: a vivid and illuminating picture of what it was like to be a member of this remarkable educational community.
It also reveals how throughout its 90 years, Summerhill has undergone a number of changes, yet never lost its basic ideals.
Most of all, this is a book that deals with the actual outcomes of an approach to learning and education that seems to fly in the face of accepted wisdom.
Well-known Subud member, Leonard Lassalle, is one of the people interviewed in the book.
For further information please contact John Adler at
telephone/fax: 0044 (0)117 9241766
email: publishing@herbertadler.co.uk


OBITUARY: RUKMAN KARSTEN HUNDEIDE - Keeping the Flame Alive 
 
On the passing of Professor  Rukman Karsten Hundeide, founder, chairman and leader of ICDP for over twenty years - 
Dear friends,
Yesterday, the 7th of September, we lost Rukman Karsten Hundeide, the founder and leader of the ICDP family. While we mourn our friend and brother, we also reinforce our commitment to carry forward his message of compassion and humanity by continuing to work together, spreading the ICDP programme in the world.
Rukman provided guidance to us all, which we will sorely miss, not only because of his impressive academic contributions, but even more because of his human sensitivity and friendship, his tireless dedication to ICDP work, his continuous inspiration, personal warmth and sense of humour. We will try to "keep the flame" alive.
Lailah Armstrong, on behalf of the ICDP international team

And Nadeem Mohsin writes from India - 
The only way that we can pay tribute to this wonderful human being is to carry forward his dream project by spreading it in different corners of the globe. I, for one, would be really thankful if you all can guide me to spread ICDP in different parts of India. I have had some initial correspondence with Karsten on this subject and he was very keen to put India on the ICDP map.
Lailah, I know Karsten's demise would particularly mean a great loss to you. Believe me, I am with you at this moment of trauma and would be willing to devote my services to the cause of ICDP.
Once again I offer my deep condolence to Karsten's family, all his colleagues at ICDP and all his friends and well wishers.

And Renee Goetz writes from Australia - 
Dear Lailah
For me Karsten's and your work is based on love or simply is "living love". Love never dies.To give love and spread love is our fulfillment, is our timelessness. When we look into Karsten's work we can feel attached to something truly big, something that will feed our feelings, creativity and time for a long time.
Thank you God for sending us Karsten Hundeide with your very special guidance for the children, the needy, and all of humanity.
To find out more about Rukman Hundeide's legacy, ICDP (International Child Development Program), go to  http://www.icdp.info/


OBITUARY: MIRIAM KARIN - An unforgettable sister 
 
Miriam Karin passed away in Melbourne on Friday September 16 after a long illness with cancer.
She was a deeply beloved and highly respected woman in many parts of the world, particularly in Israel, where she spent the early part of her life, and in Australia where she spent the last 30 years or so.
She was a woman of the greatest integrity and dignity.
She was born in Israel. She once explained to me that people born in Israel are called sabra, which refers to a tough plant which grows in the desert, a kind of hardy cactus (prickly pear), meaning that people like that can survive, and thrive, in the most difficult and desperate circumstances.The allusion also contains the idea that the thick hide of this tenacious, thorny desert plant conceals a sweet, softer interior.
I only knew her after she came to Australia, so I'll only speak of that. Others may wish to add about her Israeli years.
I believe that the first contact with Australians came about with members of the Wollongong group and she first spent time with them after she came to Australia. The Wollongong group at that time had a great pioneering attitude, and Miriam and that group found kindred spirits with each other.
I well remember that during the time she was in Australia, and Bapak came around, he very frequently tested with her. It was a sign of how highly he thought of her and held her up as an example.
She was a woman with very fine artistic tastes and her home was decorated with many excellent paintings and artifacts. She was extremely intelligent and cultured with broad interests and sympathies.
In recent years she was extremely ill with cancer but lived with this illness with great courage and without complaint.  The illness reached a point where she was no longer able to live by herself and her last years were spent in an excellent facility for ageing Jewish people. She was still attending latihan with the Melbourne group right up until her death.
It was a shock to hear of the death, because though I did not see as much of her in recent years as I had done in the past, she was always there.
Our sympathy to her son, Sean Adelrod.

MY  LOVELY UNFORGETTABLE  SISTER
Who could ever forget Miriam once they had met her? Her strong accent and witty charm made even a scolding seem like a love pat.
I met Miriam for the first time when she came to Europe some four decades ago. We bonded when she next visited England. She loved Sachlan dearly for his dedicated work for Bapak and Subud, and was delighted when we married some 38 years ago.
When we moved to Melbourne from Loudwater Farm, we expected the same strong Subud family connection. There was no dedicated Simon Sturton here to set the tone of the group. We had reckoned without Miriam. Being an experienced old helper of Bapak, she set the bar in the helper group. Sometimes she was sharp and prickly, yet when she was your friend, it was for life. As helpers we were invisibly guided to follow Bapak's guidelines.
When we bought our first home, our closest neighbour was Miriam. So on her way to the shops she would stop off for a cup of tea and a chat. My children loved Miriam. Her love for them would flow freely and they reciprocated. She came in one morning and spontaneously we had a house warming party with a table cloth in the centre of the huge dining room floor, with food that we all shared. "Why wait for the furniture when you are living here, it needs to be blessed" was her opinion. She latihaned and prayed in every room so there would be no "negative energy" from people who had lived there before.
She was one of the few people who understood Aramaic. I recall a testing session we witnessed when one of the candidates being tested was speaking what we thought was gibberish. No, not so! Miriam strode purposefully to the Chairman's table and explained the meaning of the Aramaic words. The atmosphere was electric as it dawned on us that the words were of worship and purity.
On another occasion, in the middle of a wedding celebration, one member took umbrage that 'Amazing  Grace', which she disapproved of, was being sung to the bridal Jewish couple. Miriam was quick off the mark saying "thank goodness it is not your wedding, my darling, I am sure the couple will love that song" and the celebrations continued without a hitch. No offence was meant and none taken. That was Miriam.
At the Melbourne group that I went to, we had a Thursday morning latihan. Miriam dubbed it 'The Thursday Morning Club'. We were a close small group of women. Miriam often held court with her stories about the time when she was the Principal of a school in Israel and had to protect the students from enemy gunfire. Her exploits were always full of drama. Her charm was in the way she handled us all. She was the wise older sister who came up with all the answers. So as she started taking time off for hospital visits and surgery, our group was not the same.
When her illness took hold of her, I often visited her both in hospital and at her home. Instead of me comforting her, she would regale me with snippets from Bapak's visits. She was very fond of Vernon (dad) and Sandra (mom) Fraval. She made the effort to visit him even though her health was failing. There was one particular story when Bapak had asked Sandra to show how she reacted when Vernon was cross with her. Miriam's acting kept us all in stitches. She was an amazing mimic.
As she battled cancer and the pain associated with it became unbearable, she never complained. Instead, she would laugh at my gently massaging her spontaneously and joke that I could not resist her arm! "Now you have to stop all this show of affection" she would chide. She was in constant pain, and would plainly tell me not to visit as she felt very weak. Her strength was in her honesty. There was no back stabbing.
I saw Miriam a few weeks before the end. She was tired but still full of cheer. She firmly planted two big kisses on my cheeks and forehead. "This one is for Sachlan. Tell him I love him." From the day we met her to the day she physically left us, she left a big impact on us. Her lifelong dedication to Subud was to be seen to be believed. She would walk tentatively to latihan on the Sunday morning with a walking stick holding on to Sean's arm. Dear Sean, it could not have been easy, yet his dedication and commitment to bring her to latihan was exemplary. She loathed missing her latihans. She was very sad she could not come to the Thursday Morning Club. It was not the same without her, and gradually whittled down to something that was totally different.
On the day of her funeral I was with another sister up in Kilmore doing a latihan and praying for Miriam. We shared some early stories of Miriam and laughed at all the funny things she would say like "leemon". There was no sadness, only joy that she was now free.
Miriam, we salute you. You brought so much joy wherever you went. We pray you are safely journeying to your destination free of the pain that was your constant partner all these years. We thank Almighty God for your presence and friendship that had no room for judgements and criticisms. You were truly Subud. May God bless and keep you safe, dear sister. Rest in peace.
Loving embrace,
Rohana Fraval


BAPAK TALKS ABOUT TALENT AND ENTERPRISE - Sydney 1982 
 
Since Subud Voice is now once again available in full to the general public, we no longer publish talks by Bapak or Ibu Rahayu in their entirety, because it is felt that, generally speaking, these are really only comprehensible and of value to people who already practise the latihan.
Bapak always insisted that his talks are "explanations" for people who already follow the latihan. One of his oft-repeated maxims was, "First the experience, then the explanation!"
He compared the latihan to eating a mango. There is no way you can "explain" the taste of a mango to someone who has not tasted one. First, you must experience it for yourself, then you can talk about it.
At the same time, brief quotations from Bapak, the founder of Subud, and his daughter, Ibu Rahayu, are often comprehensible to anyone, and may contain wisdom or advice that is akin to what is said in religion or other spiritual traditions.
So what we will do in Subud Voice from now on is generally suggest a talk which relates in some way to the contents of the issue and include a brief quotation of general interest. Subud members may then go to the www.subudlibrary.net web site to read the talk in its entirety.
This issue has a bit of an emphasis on talent, so we are suggesting a talk given by Bapak in Sydney on May 17, 1982.
The context of this talk is that it was given at a time when Subud members were developing an enterprise in Sydney called Project Sunrise which led to the development of the leisure and shopping precinct Darling Harbour. During this talk Bapak tested various people as to their suitability to be directors of this project. The talks includes this passage - 
The enterprises that Bapak talks about are very different from enterprises that are done by those who do not have the kejiwaan meaning those who do not receive the latihan kejiwaan.
The enterprises that are carried out by those who have received the latihan kejiwaan of Subud are enterprises where we pray to God Almighty that in all our actions and work which we do, we should not be separated from the guidance of Almighty God. 
So, to be clear, while doing the work of the enterprise in the way people ordinarily work, we do not separate ourselves from our worship of God. This is a grace and a good fortune for us that while we are close to God we do not forget the world. Normally, from long ago till now, there are many people who practice some sort of spiritual way while, as it were, putting aside the needs of their life in this world. This is wrong in reality,  but right according to the belief of those who do it.
Code Number : 82 SYD 6. Sydney, May 17, 1982
Provisional Translation by Sharif Horthy