The Meaning of Subud

The Meaning of Subud – Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo

The Meaning of Subud brings together four talks given in London in August 1959 by Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, the Indonesian founder of Subud, addressed directly to an audience that had come to find out what the movement actually was. Speaking through an interpreter to a mixed group of the curious and the already interested, he sets out in his own words why Subud is not a new religion, a philosophy, or a technique to be taught, but an experience opened to a person through the latihan kejiwaan and then lived out, in his view, under the guidance of that inner experience rather than by following rules.

Across the four talks he explains the origin of the name Susila Budhi Dharma, how the latihan came to him and how it is passed on to others through a simple act of opening rather than instruction, and why he insisted that people of any religion, or none, could receive it without being asked to change their beliefs. He also addresses the practical questions his London audience raised at the time: what happens physically and emotionally during a latihan, why sessions are held separately for men and women, and how members are expected to test their own decisions in life against what they receive rather than against his personal authority.

Because the talks were given only a few years after Subud first reached Britain from Indonesia, the book also works as a first-hand record of how its founder chose to present the movement to a Western audience meeting it for the first time. This SPI edition is a later, revised printing of a text that has been reissued several times since the original talks were transcribed, and it remains one of the few places where Subud’s meaning is explained directly by the person who started it, rather than by a later member or commentator.