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Javanese Mysticism in the Revolutionary Period
Paul Stange, Asian Studies, WAIT
Journal of Studies in Mysticism, vol.1 no. 2, 1978, pp 115-130.
During the revolutionary fighting of the late forties the outer wall of the Yogya kraton (palace) disintegrated. To the Javanese who still experience their traditional cosmology at a gut level, that physical event was directly tied to changes in the spirit realms which are thought to underlie political authority. It meant that kasekten and ngclmu (spiritual power and knowledge) were flowing out into society. 1 In periods of stability that power remains concentrated in the court elite and personified in the Sultan. In the intermediating phasesof upheaval and chaos, the gara-gara of the wayang world or the pancaroba of Indie historiography, power moves at large in society and mystical awareness which is usually hidden becomes accessible for all who are ready to receive it. 2 There is then a transition to a time when the center point of communion between human and cosmic planes is no longer just the one center embodied by the king, but rather everywhere and within each individual.
Java's social hierarchy is closely paralleled in the spirit realms by a network of kingdoms populated largely by ancestral spirits and interacting continually with its political rulers. For the five hundred years since the Islamic Pasisir (coastal) states coalesced to overthrow Majapahit, the key figure within these spirit realms has been Nyai Loro Kidul, the Queen of the South Seas. Nyai Loro Kidul is thought by some to have been a historical figure, possibly the ruler of a small Tantric state in the area of Imogiri, where the royal grave compound of the Mataram dynasty is now located. 3 At any rate, when Islam became established as thr official religion of the Mataram court, Nyai Loro Kidul faded from marginal historicity as a person into significance historically as a spirit — she became temporary overseer of the spirit kingdoms. The kingdoms she has coordinated center on the network of kramat (sacred) pilgrimage sites which are scattered around the Javanese countryside. Her own cult center is at Parangtritis on the coast south of Yogya and one of the easiest places to contact her is at the nearby cave, Goa Langsih, where high cliffs plunge sharply into the ocean. For the five hundred years since her assumption of power, she has been the liaison through which the Sultans and Sunans of Mataram have maintained contact and worked toward harmony with the spirit realms; in fact she has been their official consort. 4
To those among the Javanese who come close to making a religion of the traditional culture, those who are immersed in kejawen (Javanism), the inhabitants of the spirit kingdoms are thought to include not only historical ancestral figures, but also the mythic actors of the wayang cydcles. Although those tales draw from the Indian Mahabharata and Ramayana for their structural core, the overall framework of the mythology shades off ; gradually into divinity on the far side and, through a series of subsidiary and more indigenous myths, into verifiable history on the near one. The actors in the epics are thought to be ancestral to the Javanese and to have been acting on Java. In rural Java it is widely known that Gatutkaca’s kingdom of Pringgodani was near Tawamanggu on Mount LawUi that Baladewa meditated for oens in a cave behind the waterfall called Grojokan Sewu; that Hanuman stands guard on top of the hillock Kendalisata to prevent the escape of the ever re-awakening Rahwana; that Rahwana was finally felled at the sulphuric hot springs, no^ surrounded by the mins of Gedung Songo on the high slopes of Mount Ungaran; that
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Sokrosrono meditated in the cave called Gua Labuan near Pacitan; that the Pandawa created their kingdom in exile on the Dieng Plateau; and that Semar buried the tumbal (talisman) which dampened the power of Java’s demonic forces on Gunung Tidar near Magelang. While the centers of power within the spirit kingdoms focus on the holy mountains, springs, temples, caves, and graves associated with the most powerful mythic characters and most spiritually potent ancestors, the significance of the kingdoms extends through a recognized hierarchy down to the village level. Just as the king maintains mystical contact with the spirit monarchs, so in the desa (village) the lurah (head) is responsible for annual rituals which sustain balanced relations with the danhyangs (guardian spirits) who are usually spirits of ancestors who founded the village.
Although not often noted, it is significant that Nyai Loro Kidul has been caretaker rather than true master of the spirit realms. By rights the key figure among Java’s danhyang is Semar. Semar is not simply a visible Javanese contribution to the wayang and not only a symbol of the common people; more importantly, he is the original ancestor of the Javanese. As a symbol of the people he serves to remind that, although the peasantry are usually politically passive, they have a tacit final say about what shall be. 5 As key ancestral spirit he is thought to have been the god-man who planted the tumbal which keeps Java’s evil spirits under control and by doing so makes the island fit for human life.
Popular traditions hold that Semar’s last major reincarnation was as Sabdo Palon, the retainer to the last ruler of Majapahit and the one who presided over its dying moments. Viewing the ebbing of power from Java’s last and greatest Indie empire, Sabdo Palon advised these around him to accept that for the next five centuries Java would be dominated by external political and cultural influences. He announced that for those five centuries he, as an embodiment of quintessentially Javanese identity, would remain dormant. At the same time he assured people that at the end of the cycle, which is 1978 on our Western calendar, he would return to full power and the outside forces would scatter — Javanese would reassert their primordial identity. That time would then mark the start of Jaman Buda, of a millennial era of compassion, humanism and justice.
At the moment Nyai Loro Kidul is nearing the dose of her tenure as caretaker of the spirit kingdoms, a role she assumed just as Semar went into his long period of passivity. Now the cooperation between Nyai Loro Kidul and Semar is manifestedwpolitically in the collaboration of the current Sultan of Yogya with the nationalistoveVolution and the Republican government. The Sultan deliberately decided not to rebuild the devastated outer wall of his kraton, he supported the revolution actively in the period of war with the Dutch, he continues to maintain ritual contact with Nyai Loro Kidul, and now he is Vice President in the current government. President Suharto and his dose aides in their turn are deeply preoccupied with a cult of mystics oriented towards contacts with Semar.. One of his closest advisers feels a profound identity with Serna and the whole group makes regular pilgrimages to meditate at the places most sacred to Semar — the caves at Srandil on the south coast of Java near Purwokerto and the andent temple ruins of the Dieng Plateau.
Shifts of power in the spirit realms, associated changes in the social and political dimensions, the ebbing and flowing of cyclical patterns are not unique events according to
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Javanese historiography. To some degree they occur whenever there is a change of rule bu are especially extensive when the changes are revolutionary, when they involve tire structure of power rather than simply interchanges between individuals who wield it for a time |, Java, then, the mythology and the ancestors are very much alive and interwoven with unsocial and historical process. Tire ancestors may not have physical bodies, but in other respects they are thought to behave very much as human beings. The ancestral spirits continue to be interested in the human dimension not only because they arc all awaiting opportunity to re-enter a human body (for reincarnation is a way of continuing their own spiritual evolution), but also because they remain concerned with what happens in our dimension for the same reasons any parent remains concerned with a child's progress and situation. So a tinge of myth and of serious interactions with the ancestral spirits suffuses not only Javanese images of the ancient past but also the Javanist sense of what is happening now. The wall between social and spiritual dimensions is nowhere as absolute a barrier as we Westerners assume - it is porous.
While the mythic image I have been presenting is essential to comprehension of the Javanist perspective on recent Indonesian history, at the moment 1 want to use it simply as a backdrop to changes in the social organization and spiritual practices withirj, contemporary Javanese mystical movements. My aim is not to deal so much with mystical perspectives on the revolution as with the history and revolution within the mysticism. Specifically, I want to draw on the history of one contemporary mystical group, Paguyuban Sumarah, to suggest some of the interactions between social and spiritual dimensions in Java. I hope it will become clear that the social aspects of Indonesia’s revolution are intertwined with the as yet unwritten spiritual history. Both are aspects of the ongoing process of self-discovery and social revolution which is contemporary Indonesia.
One by-product of the Indonesian revolution has been the crystalization of a new organizational pattern within the world of Javanese mysticism. In the traditional period kebatinan, that is mysticism or the “science of inner being”, was so interwoven with kejawen that it was difficult to speak of one without the other. Mystical ontology and conceptions suffused the cultural world of etiquette, arts, and politics while mystical practices in their turn were couched in culturally ingrained imagery and social relationships.7 In effect, to know traditional kebatinan required immersion in kejawen because the techniques for spiritual liberation were thoroughly bound up in the Indie wayang symbolism, in relations with ancestral spirits, and in kraton-centered politics. This interdependence is no longer nearly so characteristic as it has been and as a result it is becoming increasingly possible for non-Javanese to appreciate and relate to kebatinan without prior Javanization. Simply put, kebatinan is becoming less culture-bound, it is expressing itself in more universal terms.
The point I am making may be simplified and true only to varying degrees, but it nevertheless suggests a visible trend within kebatinan spiritual practices and social organization.8 In the traditional kebatinan world organization was restricted pretty much to the perguruan, that is to networks of personally based loyalties focusing on individual guru or spiritual teachers. Currently, especially since the national revolution removed the colonial lid from Indonesia’s social life, the kebatinan groups have been adopting more or less modern institutional formats as associations and foundations.
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While there has been a clear shift away from purely personal loyalties of the patron-client sort, the switch toward institutional membership has not meant a Weberian “routinization of charisma”. In fact in the history of Sumarah, the kebatinan group I want to turn to now, the irevolutionary process has brought together two seemingly contrary vectors of change. Socially the group has undergone a process of institutionalization, a process which has , .generally implied ossification and dogmatism in the history of religion. Spiritually Sumarah has been experiencing something of a “democratization", of a spreading of charisma within the circle of practitioners. On the social side, however, the history of Sumarah has been a progression toward increased organizational formality. From its founding in 1935 until 1945 there was only a loosely connected circle of friends sharing a common practice; from 1945 to 1950 there were a few preliminary attempts to organise based on the groups which fought together; from 1950 to 1966 there was an organization, centering in Yogya and headed by Dr. Surono, which included all but a few fragments of the original group; since 1966 there has been a reorganization, centering in Jakarta and headed by Drs. Arymurthy, which has succeeded in bringing in the fragments which did not join Surono’s organization.
From the social perspective the major turning points in the history have been 1950 and 1966, and from the spiritual one, which is the basis for Sumarah’s internal historiography, the major transitions have occurred in 1950 and 1957. Sumarah marks its own history in phases characterized by different stresses within the meditation practice — and correspondingly increasing maturity of spiritual consciousness on the part of the membership as a whole. Phase I began in 1935, phase II in 1950,phase III in 1957, and nowa phase IV has been officially recognized since late 1974. From this spiritual vantage point the core process of the history has been a diffusion of khakiki from the center down to the roots. Khakiki, the defining characteristic of Sumarah as a spiritual association, is the source of spiritual authority and authenticity, the channel through which spiritual guidance comes directly from God to the individual. 10Between 1935 and 1950 khakiki was concentrated within the small circle of half a dozen founding members; from 1950 to 1957 it became accessible to leaders throughout the organization; since 1957 it has reached a far larger circle of advanced members. The spreading of khakiki has not been a matter of a few leaders gradually loosening up and “revealing secrets” to initiates. By definition khakiki cannot be controlled by individuals — the process has been based on the gradual maturation of practice and fuller consciousness on the part of practitioners. While there have been associated changes in meditation techniques and patterns of guidance, from Sumarah’s internal perspective the central process has been the spreading of khakiki and the increasing surrender to God’s will that receiving khakiki implies.
So while the one core of mystical practice is always the same, the technical, intellectual, and social patterns through which that core is communicated have not remained static. In fact within Sumarah there is awareness that the evolution of spiritual consciousness and practices has occurred through direct response to the demands of the time — in each phase of Sumarah’s history there have been clearly related changes in consciousness, technique, cosmology, organization, and context.11 The leaders do not see themselves, however, as introducing innovations in the name of progress, rather they conceive of their function as recognizing and articulating trends which become evident. Although there is some
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coincidence in practice between organizational functions and spiritual standing, the two scales are distinct. While Westerners presume that a person enters into an official function by virtue of achievement, of demonstrable skills and training, within Sumarah the converse is just as often the case. As is true to some extent among Javanese generally, there is a sense in Sumarah that the nun is made or called forth because of responsibilities intrinsic to the task he is presented with. Sumarah leaders find themselves learning from and growing through their organizational responsibilities rather than feeling they are master of a skill.
“Sumarah”, a Javanese word meaning the state of total surrender, is a nearly-adequate description of the aim and nature of Sumarah spiritual practice. The aim of meditation, which is usually called sujud, is to surrender every aspect of the personal being so that the self functions as no more than a channel, warana; or vehicle, for God's will. Meditation sessions take place on a weekly basis, usually in the home of the advanced members who function as pamong, or guides, for the dozen or so participants. Most of the membership participates in one group session each week while continuing individual practice at home. The core of dedicated meditators and active pamong often spend every night of the week with the Sumarah groups. But no matter how much time is spent in meditation or in sessions with other members, all Sumarah members continue to lead normal existences of working for a livelihood and participating in family life. The aim of practice is not isolation from society or personal eccentricity, but a balance of lahir and batin, of the outer and inner being. When practice pays off, it leads to proficiency and dedication to society as a whole. According to Sumarah it is only when we manifest compassion for all beings through service to society that we are really showing we are in tune with God’s will.
Currently Sumarah is an association of approximately eight thousand members. The seat of the organization, the Dewan Pimpinan Pusat (DPP), is in Jakarta, which is at the same time one of the nine regional centers, or Dewan Pimpinan Daerah (DPD). The other regional centres are in Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Semarang, Madiun, Ponogoro, Kediri, and Sunbaya. In West Java the membership is small and confined largely to Javanese civil servants and professionals who were members before moving there. In the kejawen heartlands of Central and East Java the membership is heterogeneous — it includes a core of lower level priyayi in the regional towns; a smattering of Chinese; and a few regions, notably Madiun, a large number of peasants. At the moment Sumarah is of some national significance in Indonesia because of its active role in the SKK (Sekretariat Kerjasama Kepercayaan), the national umbrella organization seeking to include and represent all kebatinan groups.
With these general comments about the nature and phases of Sumarah as background, I want to turn to examination of several important individual experiences within the history. In examining them, I want to suggest the nature of the interplay between personal spirits quest, the realms of magic and the ancestral spirits, and the socio-political demands of the historical moment. Specifically I want to deal with Sukinohartono’s initial revelation of 1935, with the wartime experiences of Zaid Hussein and Joyosukarto, and with the 1965 crisis of Dr. Surono. The events, the moments, reveal the substance of Sumarah’s history, of trends within kebatinan as a whole, and of the meaning of the mythic Semar I began with.
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Sukinohartono was born at the turn of the century in a village near Wonosari, in the chalk hills, at that time still a teak forest region, east of Yogya. 12 He went through a few grades of village schooling before moving to Yogya and eventually became a minor employee of the kraton, as mantri pamicis, and clerk in the national bank. As with so many kejawen types. Sukino became interested in mysticism at an early age and experimented with many practices before experiencing his own awakening and revelation in 1935. He was involved for years in a group called Hardopusoro, a sect preoccupied with secrecy, occult powers, ritual, and initiations. 13 The principal technique employed in Hardopusoro meditation involved immersion by night in the water of holy springs or at the junction of two rivers — a traditional kejawen practice called kungkum. Being apt in mystical disciplines, Sukino rapidly completed the course of seven initiations. Then for a short time, he was involved with Muhammed Subuh, who became the founder of Subud, before having his own revelation. It is quite important to note that from a kebatinan perspective the assorted influences men like Sukino experience prior to realization are not the source of the teachings they later communicate. Sukino’s experience of 1935 was a wahyu, a revelation or direct communication from God rather than from any human intermediary, religious doctrine, or intellectual theory. 14
Sukino’s revelation came through a series of experiences at a time when he was thoroughly preoccupied with prayer for Indonesian independence. In 1935 politically concerned Indonesians were preoccupied as a group with the paradox that just as independence came to be thought of as essential and imminent it became more difficult to visualize how it would occur. While praying for Indonesian independence in the yard of his Yogya home, in the kampong (neighbourhood) of Wirobrajan to the west of the kraton, Sukino was approached by the spirit of Senopati, founder of the Mataram dynasty. Senopati suggested that they should work together to achieve independence, that is that Sukino should enter into alliances with the spirit realm. Although he was polite and expressed gratefulness in his response, Sukino turned down the offer on the basis of his conviction that the spirits should not be drawn into human affairs. Shortly after that, while Sukino continued to pray for independence, he received the Wahyu Sumarah, the revelation of the teaching and aim which was to form the basis of Sumarah. The wahyu was to the effect that it was Sukino’s task to lead humanity toward total faith in God, iman bulat.
Sukino balked for a time. In the first place he doubted his ability.rto perform the assigned mission. In the second place he had never desired to become a teacher. He had always felt that his spiritual striving was to improve his personal state and perhaps to increase the harmony of his household. But he had never intended to teach and he knew how heavy the karmic responsibilities are for one who does. It was only after repeated confirmation of the need to teach that he began to do so. To start with, he contacted friends he had known through Hardopusoro and other mystical groups. His first companion on the path was Suhardo, a close friend from Hardopusoro, then gradually a handful of friends began to meet informally to feel their way toward a sense of what their experiences meant and what they should do about it.
Although Sumarah is opposed to the use of force or pressure, pamrih, in either its style of
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meditation or its manner of spreading, during the first phase some of the founding members relied on magical powers to convert people to the practice. To some extent magical power was used in healing people, if they requested. But at times expansion came through intentional pressures applied by the founders. Suhardo was the most active in spreading Sumarah outside of Yogya. From 1939 to 1950 he lived in Solo, Cepu, Bor.joegoro, Madiun, and Nganjuk - leaving a cadre of pamong behind him each time he moved. Suhardo was only able to motivate Sutadi, eventually the senior leader (pinisepuh) of the Solo region, after a long battle of willpower. In Madiun Suhardo entered into a battle of occult power,a testing of kasekten, with Kyai Abdulkamid of Banjarsari. Once the latter had accepted that Sumarah was more powerful than his assorted previous practices, he in turn became a founding member by communicating the practice to villagers all over East Java. In this preliminary phase of Sumarah’s history, on the eve of the proclamation of independence in 1945, there was one sort of understanding of the relationship between Wahyu Sumarah and the social situation it had come as a response to. At that point it seemed'that the spiritual message was a reminder to surrender events to God’s will? to realize that human beings are not in command of how events will take shape.
When the intermittent fighting of the revolution broke out, a new dimension was added to that understanding. In the physical struggles of the 1945 to 1950 period the practice of meditation geared itself to the needs of war and the fear for survival which came with it. This was the period in which there was the largest single influx of membership into the association — it still leaves it mark deeply impressed on the organization, since most of the current leaders are men who were a part of the revolutionary pemuda movement.. During the fighting Sumarah meditation was still divided into two basic styles, as it was throughout the first phase. Those who had matured in their practice and already felt an immediate spiritual thrust within themselves practiced kasepuhan, that is mature meditation. Those who were young in their spiritual development were in the kanoman group. Kanoman practices can be seen as a variant of the traditional kejawen practices called kadigdayan, meaning the arts of ksatria or warriors. Kanoman included practice of karaga, karasa, and kasuara — respectively meaning automatic movement as it is associated with Asian martial arts, intuitive perception of people’s inner state or of events which do not register through the five senses, and ability to speak in tongues. The kanoman style was characteristic of the Sumarah youth v/ho went off into battle. From Sumarah’s point of view the stress was not so much on achievement of invulnerability and superhuman battle skills as on the fact that surrender to God could lead to a selfless and total devotion to the struggle.
Sumarah groups were involved in the revolution on a number of fronts. In Bonjcnegoro Suhardo served as a sort of spiritual consultant for the local military command of th{ Republic.15When the Dutch reoccupied Solo during the second clash Sutadi led groups of youth in periods of intensive retreat and meditation as a preparation for battle. He held hi5 sessions in the villages in the hills west of Wonogiri where the nationalist administration & the city had holed up. In the fighting outside of Yogya a group of Sumarah youth caM themselves the Barisan Berani Mad, the company unafraid of death, engaged in skirmish'5 with the Dutch. The most notable Sumarah participation in fighting was under the leadership of Kyai Abdulkamid from Banjarsari. Pak Kyai, as he is called, trained groups of
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youth in his pesantren style asrama (that is somewhat in the style of the rural Muslim schools) and led them into heavy Fighting in Surabaya as a group called simply Pemuda Sumarah. In addition to leading his own company into battle he was occasionally called on to bless the regular troops on their way to war. In doing so he would perform what was in effect the first initiation of Sumarah. His own group marched around town chanting “Allahu Akbar’’ over and over as they headed into battle. 16
From the generalized descriptions of the wartime that I have been giving so far it may be hard to see how the spiritual concerns related to war. One of the things I found striking in speaking with people who had been in Sumarah at the time was that invulnerability did not mean that they felt they could fearlessly stand in front of a machine gun — what it meant was that they would mysteriously find themselves surviving situations of such intense dangers that logic could not explain why they had. Pak Zaid Hussein, one of the current national leaders of Sumarah, helped me to visualize his experience of the revolution. At the moment Pak Zaid is still in the military, as a colonel working in President Suharto’s offices, and he is one of the few Sumarah youth who were in the regular army. 17
Zaid had known of Sumarah since his early youth in 1940 because his adopted father was one of the early leaders of the Yogya group. He was not initiated into Sumarah until shortly after the Japanese invasion; he entered simply because he had always felt that it was good to be as close to God as possible. Zaid soon became the only Sumarah youth in Peta, the Fembela Tanah Air or defender of the homeland, the military organization through which the Japanese trained Indonesians. At one point Sukino called Zaid to him to stress what a good move it was for Sumarah youth to enter Peta — he went on to elaborate some of the visions he had been given in his initial revelation. After the close of the World War Zaid entered the national army and saw continuous front line service from 1945 to 1958.
Pak Zaid has felt that practice of sujud Sumarah has been an invaluable companion in his long active service. He has described how in some very tense moments he would pray to God for peace (selamet) and it would come — but he never assumed there was a direct causal relationship. Once this happened to him in the course of heavy fighting along the Daendels highway to the west of Semarang. There had been heavy fighting with many casualties on both sides from six in the morning until two in the afternoon. Just as it seemed that more planes were coming to strafe, Zaid experienced an overwhelming feeling and lay down in the road to ask God if it hadn’t been enough — and the battle stopped. Another time he was on patrol in Kulon Progo during 1948 outside Yogya, when he found himself walking along only a few yards ahead of a Dutch patrol, separated from his own companions who were in among houses several hundred yards off. Zaid explained that in situations such as this there is always an inner struggle between fear and surrender. As the situation was hopeless and he had to give himself up for lost, he surrendered everything to God and continued walking calmly in front of the Dutch patrol. Then as he neared his companions and the shelter around them, fear consumed him and he broke for cover just as fighting broke out. He later checked the experience out with a pamong and was told that actually, while he was in the state of surrender the Dutch had not been able to see him, he had been within a God given protective sphere. When he was overcome by fear, that sphere broke.
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In addition to meditation geared to battle situations, Sumarah practice also came to grips with what it means to be simultaneously in a state of inner surrender and yet be totally dedicated to the national struggle. This is an issue that comes up in every form of meditation practice, that is how meditation can avoid fatalism and allow for positive actions, but which was posed with special clarity by the revolutionary situation. The revelation of exactly how to deal with the dilemma of simultaneous surrender and struggle came not through Sukino, the founder, but through a young member of therMagelang branch of Sumarah, Jovosukarto. Joyo’s inspiration came as a message through khakiki and was confirmed as such by Sukino in 1947. Although this event was, as Arymurthy now puts it, confirmation that khakiki is not the monopoly or possession of any individual, many of Joyo’s friends were reluctant to accept his revelation because of his youth. The attitude from above, from the leaders of Sumarah at the time, was that it was fine for anyone who wanted to practice Joyo’s “sujud perjuangan ”, but there was no pressure to do so either.18
The meaning of sujud perjuangan, or surrender-struggle, is bound up in the rock-solid person of Joyosukarto. Pak Joyo is a tailor and now, after his experiences of the late forties, one of the leaders of the Sumarah group in Magelang. The practice of sujud perjuangan came to him via khakiki as a variation of sujud Sumarah in which meditation is performed standing up and tuning in to the necessity of serving society rather than simply personal cleansing. In performing sujud Pak Joyo stresses that there is no sense praying (nyuwun -asking) for favorable things to be given to us, we have to arrive at all things ourselves through the process of individual inner struggle. In Pak Joyo’s experience, the national revolution is wrapped up with the issue of ‘kepribadian nasional' (national essence) and to him this means there is a requirement “for honest growth and expression of the self rather than imitation of assorted outside cultures”. In his view the revolution will have reached its conclusion when that is accomplished. Pak Joyo’s spiritually demanding sense of the revolution is based on an understanding of an interior psychological dimension to imperialism — as the state within the body when the mind is worshipped as king. To Pak Joyo, his sense of sujud perjuangan was not simply a style of relating to the physical battling of the revolutionary war, it is more comprehensively a way of sensitizing the individual meditator to his role within the greater spiritual revolution which is to become the fulfilment of the outer revolution. Nov/ that the battles have ended, sujud perjuangan has become sujud pembangunm, or meditation as a contribution to “development”. It continues as an aspect of Sumarah practice among some circles.
Shortly after Joyosukarto received direct guidance from khakiki in 1947, there were signs of a distinctly new phase in Sumarah. Sukino received a qualitatively different wahyu in 1949, indicating a new emphasis within spiritual practice; Dr. Surono, a young member of the Yogya branch, received a dawuh (message) khakiki to the effect that Sumarah should become an organization and he should lead it. During the first phase khakiki had remained confined to the founding members, among men like Sukino, Suhardo, Sutadi, Abdulkamidi and a very few others. Most of the lower level pamong of that time did not have a very cle*r awareness of what they were doing as they performed their functions of guidance.'Th® pemuda who were the largest component of the association did not so much know what happening in their spiritual development as give the responsibility and direction of it to the
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older pamong. Instruction in sujud relied heavily on explicitly clairvoyant perception by the pamong. Magical powers were used by the leadership in creating a sphere for the meditation of the followers, for healing, and for converting people; similar powers were used by pemuda as an aid in battle. With the second phase there was a shift away from kanoman and from emphasis on the powers that could come through sujud toward stricter stress on surrender to God. Along with the second phase came a spreading of khakiki into a wider circle of advanced meditators.
Although Suhardo and Sutadi went along with Sukino’s confirmation that Dr. Surono had received an authentic dawuh khakiki, they refused to join in the organization. Indeed, there was a significant resistance to the organizing process on a number of fronts - some older leaders held back because they didn’t want to lose their personal following, some because they did not feel Surono was the right man, some because they felt that kebatinan is intrinsically impossible to organize anyway. The pemuda who did the actual organizing were supported by most of the senior members and argued that they were not trying to organize spiritual practice, only to coordinate relations between the people doing it.Skipping over most of the developments associated with the Surono organization, the Pengurus Besar (PB) as it was called, I want to focus on the crisis which built up in the early sixties and which culminated in a reorganizing in 1966, when the leadership of Sumarah was passed into the hands of Drs. Arymurthy and a new Jakarta center was established.
By most accounts it seems that Surono performed his organizational duties very well up through the mid-fifties. Problems only began to emerge after 1957 when there was a shift into a third phase of spiritual practice. It seems that when the organization as a whole took a step forward at that point, Surono was not able to make the transition. In the period from 1957 to 1966 Sumarah was out of joint, its functioning as an organization was not in tune with its spiritual stage.20 In my view this accounts for the discrepancy between social and spiritual periodizations of Sumarah history (see page ). Indications that a third phase was beginning came first from Magelang, this time the dawuh khakiki was received by the leader of the Magelang branch, Martosuwignyo. His experience was confirmed by Sukino and the organizational congress of 1957 made it official that a “phase kesucian" and practice of "imam suci” were to be the keynotes.21 As in the shift to phase two, this new transition meant that khakiki, spiritual authority, was becoming increasingly accessible to members, that power and knowledge were spreading as the organization matured.
Quite soon after the announcements of the new phase, Surono began to show signs of not moving along with it. In 1957 he announced that, for all intents and purposes, Sukino should be “retired”. He said that Sukino had performed his duties admirably, but that it was time for him to take a passive role as far as the organization went. This announcement was not entirely out of line, since in 1950 Sukino had begun encouraging everyone not to depend on him or always come to him for guidance. Sukino was trying in this way to encourage people to seek direct guidance from khakiki rather than seeing him as an embodiment of it. Surono, however, went well beyond the meaning of the announcement. Soon afterwards he began to contradict Sukino publicly, to ignore and by-pass him, and finally to attack with the charge that Sukino could no longer meditate properly. At the same
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time it was becoming evident that Surono couldn't quite stomach the decentralization of authority implied by the spreading of khakiki down to the regional centers. He began to conflict more and more openly with Arymurthy, the leader of the West Javanese (Konsulai Jabar) and with Sujadi, the leader of the Ponorogo centered East Javanese region (Konsulat Jatim). Both of those leaders had begun producing stenciled versions of their owi wemrah, teachings, and Surono objected to that as unjustified liberty. Eventually Surono announced that organizational congresses were no longer necessary since he could make all the necessary decisions, then in early 1965 he announced that he was the "penjalur dawuh tunggal” - the ultimate and only spiritual authority, the only channel for khakiki. This announcement combined with his growing involvements in the spirit kingdoms to bring about a storm of protest from the regions.
Surono began to become involved with spirits only a short time before the Sumarah congress gave him--a vote of no-confidence. The involvement came about through his efforts to help a woman Sumarah member who came to him for help, specifically to ask that he remove the spirit which had begun to possess her. In the process of casting out the spirit, Surono began to speak with the spirits through the woman as a medium. He then came to the understanding that through the woman he was to establish a Sumarah branch, as it were, in the spirit realms.23 After that, Surono began a long interchange with the powers of Nyai Loro Kidd's kingdoms, which has continued to the present. Surono says that he has converted most of the key figures within the spirit kingdoms to Sumarah, as a result of which they are liberated from the suspension and purgatory of those kingdoms and allowed to seek rebirth as human beings.24
From the viewpoint of most Sumarah members at the time all of this was simply too much. Although Surono felt he was converting the spirits to faith in God, most Sumarah members concluded that Surono himself had been led astray by the spirits. From the perspective of Sumarah practice, any. form of spirit possession is harmful to the spirit of the human being who is possessed. When possession occurs that means that the spirit of the one who becomes possessed is pressed down and shunted aside while a spirit from other dimensions makes use of the physical body for its own purposes. For some of the Sumarah members that argument alone was sufficient demonstration that Surono was getting on the wrong track. More generally, however, within Sumarah there is no approval for dealings with spirits. Sukino made his sympathies on that point clear when he first rejected the assistance offered him by Senopati. Within Sumarah it is held that human beings can best help the ancestral spirits advance simply by surrender to God in this life, without having to go through elaborate rituals of contact and worship.
Since 1965, when leadership passed into Drs. Arymurthy’s hands and the center of the organization shifted from Yogya to Jakarta, the way has been clear for many of the changes which had already been foreseen during the final years of Dr. Surono’s leadership. The Jakarta leadership has consolidated the organization, increased the coordination and efficiency within it, delegated much more autonomy to the regions, and brought in several of the largest elements of Sumarah which had never joined Surono’s organization (notably the whole Sukakarta region). Khakiki has taken another step into a wider sphere of members
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of (lie association. Paradoxically, just as the organization has been crystallizing into a stable and solid pattern, it is becoming less important to practitioners of sujud whether other people are members or not. Logically it would be natural to assume that a firming of organizational ties would bring with it a more sharply delineated boundary, a larger preoccupation with where people stand with respect to these lines, instead there is a clearer sense titan ever that Sumarah as both an organization and as a practice is only a vehicle, not an end irt itself. Sumarah members talk of the fact that there are frequently non-members who arc far more "sumarah" in their style of life than many who profess to practice sujud in the organization.
A number of processes are worth highlighting in this' overview of the trends within Sumarah history. First there is a core process, as Sumarah sees it internally, through which khakiki is being transmitted to progressively wider circles - in Sumarah terms more people have been basing their lives on total surrender to and faith in God. In other terms, members of the association are reaching to a higher spiritual consciousness in which they can become aware of direct guidance from God within themselves, rather than having to rely on mystically phrased instructions from human gurus. There is a democratizing process, a spreading out and coming into the open of a mystical knowledge which in the past has often been hoarded and concentrated within a narrow elite. At the same time the consciousness explicitly disavows preoccupation with formal and external factors as a basis for recognizing spiritual attainment — there has been decreasing concern within Sumarah for rituals of initiation and grading (martabat) of consciousness. Associated with these shifts in practice, meditation is seen less as an activity taking place only under specific conditions and increasingly as a consciousness to be continued throughout daily life.
Second, from a cultural and social point of view, there has been a process of organizational crystallization in Sumarah in contrast to the nexus of kejawen from which it emerged. In 1950 Sumarah moved selfconsciously away from the preoccupation with occult powers which is still typical of the kejawen style kebatinan groups. In 1966 Sumarah made it equally clear that it would have no part in traditional patterns of ancestral spirit interactions. By moving its organizational center to Jakarta and by using Indonesian rather than Javanese in most organizational meetings, Sumarah has been proclaiming itself as an Indonesian rather than a particularly Javanese group. While in the traditional context of old Java it was difficult to extricate kebatinan from kejawen, now several of the contemporary kebatinan groups are able to relate their teachings to international needs. The crystallization of kebatinan against the background of kejawen is simply another example of the aliratt pattern - of the creation of networks of voluntary organizations in rural Java. Seen as a process within the spiritual world of Java it reflects a modernization and an extrication of mystical practice from the cultural matrix it has been embedded within. This process is one in which patterns, many of them latent with kejawen, have become consciously articulated. It is an unfolding of consciousness.
Although in all of this I have been confined to one case, to one kebatinan movement, I hope that Sumarah’s story suggests some of the patterns evolving within Javanese mysticism is a whole. Naturally, there are many variations needed to be considered in order to deal
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wilh the total process, but on the whole much of the perspective I have been articulating through Sumarah is representative of what is happening within kebatinan. Culturally, looking at the social processes within contemporary Java, it is important to sense the life within the kejawen and kebatinan world in order to evaluate the trends within recent history. Once the life within those cultural forms is understood on its own terms, then it becomes possible to understand the sense in which the dynamic within the history is a positive forward thrust, a reassertion of primordial selfhood.
In conclusion there are a number of points worth making about the process of revolution and the meaning of Semar within it. Semar is the life force given by God and lodged in every human being. For the most part we never realize the essence of life within ourself although some of us subscribe intellectually to doctrines recognizing that it is in us. Nyai Loro Kidul, as caretaker in the spirit realm within us (for, as mystics have it, everything is within us), represents the assortment of ancestral influences which give form and substance to the spirit as we experience it. The spirit kingdoms a<re-.a representation of the karmically inherited cultural patterns we get from our ancestors — the spirits are alive within us. There is not just a “correspondence”, as it is so often phrased, between the macrocosmos and the microcosmos — there is simply no line between them. To fulfill the revolution, to complete the process of liberation that is implied by revolution and which actually motivates the individuals who dedicate their lives to it, requires total surrender of every aspect of the inner being to God. Sukino received Wahyu Sumarah as the answer to his prayers for independence not because it was an aid, although it was also that, in the process of achieving physical independence from the Dutch, but because it was and is the pathway to total liberation which is the inner spiritual revolution. Only when, in Pak Joyo’s sense, the imperialism of the mind within the body has surrendered to movement of the life essence which is from God, only then has the final revolution reached fruition.
Paul Stange, WAIT
This article was published originally in the proceedings of the Conference on Modern Indonesian History, Centre of South-East Asian Studies, Madison, Wisconsin, 1975.
It has not been altered to reflect developments in Sumarah since that time, none of which affect the argument’s substance. It should be noted that terms of Sanscrit or Arabic derivation are given here in their common Javanese form.
NOTES
1. 1 owe both this image and its application to conversation with W.S. Rendra in Yogya.
2. For elaboration on this point see Benedict Anderson, “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture” Claire Holt, ed. Culture and Politics in Indonesia, Ithaca, New York, 1972.
3. I encountered several people in Java who saw relationships between Nyai Loro Kidul and other spirit and actual historical individuals, i was given the most complete argument on the point by D15' Warsito, a teacher of economics at Akabri (the military academy in Magelang) and an actWe spokesman for kebatinan in the journalistic media. He explained that as the Islamic coastal state* began to control the interior in the period just after the fall of Madjapahit, there were pe™ fragments, ex-bupatis of the old empire, which for a time continued the Tantric tradition of
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empire. These fragments (such as that supposed to liave been headed by Batara Katong in Ponorogo and the builders of the temples of Sukuh and Ceto on Mount Lawu) were disparagingly called "lelcmbut" (a Javanese word for spirits) by the Muslims. At first the term was used much as, in other contexts, there is talk of “pagans" and "infidels”. Later, the actual people who had been addressed as "lelcmbut" became spirits - on their death they moved into spirit realms. Other related arguments of Warsito's can be found in the collection of newspaper articles called Disekitar Kebatinan, Bulan Bintang, Jakarta, 1973.
4, See Socmarsaid Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java. Ithaca, New York, 1968 for elaboration on the magical and ritual aspects of Javanese kingship.
5. The symbolism of Semar as a representation of the common people is quite well developed. There is an understanding that Semar is secretly the locus of cosmic power which is ostensibly invested with the gods. Within the wayang cycles, when the gods have misused their powers, Semar will step in and : assert the powers he usually never shows. The most powerful manifestation of divinity of Semar is when he performs Tiwikrama - that is when he manifests himself in his full divine form as lsmoyo, the elder brother of Siva. The symbolism in the wayang implies that whichever ksatria Semar follows (most often he is of course associated with Arjuna or one of his sons) will win. At the same time, he will only follow a ksatria who is in the right. This symbolism was put to work by a populist writer in i the early sixties who wrote a book called lsmoyo Tiwikromo (the book was by A.W. Sardjono and was published in 1965 in Jakarta).
6. The cults oriented toward Semar are not officially organized as are many of the contemporary aliran. Instead they exist on a personal basis and there are loosely associated connections between individuals who are important to the group in different areas. In Semarang the leading figure is Romo Sudiyat, in Wonogiri, Romo Dariatmo, in Yogya, Romo Budi and Romo Merto. Their meditation practices involve rituals at various kramat places and automatic speech, which is sometimes guided by the spirits called on to enter them.
7. The intertwining of kebatinan and kejawen can be sensed through books such as Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java, New York, 1960; H. Ulbricht, Wayang Purwa; Shadows of the Past, Singapore, 1972; and in a fine essay by Zoetmulder on “The Wayang as a Philosophical Theme” in Indonesia, No. 12, (October, 1971).
8. Currently the very debates over the meaning of the word “kebatinan" say a lot about the nature of the changes going on within Javanese mysticism. I have used kebatinan to mean Javanese mysticism as a whole but in fact there are many groups which refuse to call themselves that because they feel the term has become too bound up in popular associations with occult practices of power implicit in kejawen mysticism. As a result the SKK, the umbrella organization of kebatinan groups, has an awkward name including kepercayaan, kebatinan, kejiwaan, and kerohanian (beliefs, the science of the inner, and the spiritualist). The name was an effort to satisfy all of the groups the SKK has been working to represent, but that effort has not been entirely successful.
9. This sense, that the history of Sumarah has been a democratizing process associated with the decline of feudal elements along with the revolution,' is not only my personal interpretation. Pak Hadi Sumartono, one of the oldest Sumarah members in the Bandung region and an old associate of Pak Kyai Abdulkamid during the revolution, suggested the term to me.
10. Although not everyone in Sumarah would accept the point, khakiki (and I am relying on Suhardo’s word on this point) means essentially the same thing as "guru sejati" (the true teacher), as is symbolized by Dewaruci in the wayang, it is related to the “Christ” aspect of the man Jesus and to the “Nur” aspect of the man Muhammed. Of course it has pecularities simply because khakiki happens to appear in the specific historical context we are seeking it in here, but the essential principal is seen as the same in the eyes of those practising.
11. Much of Sumarah’s history can be seen in the collection of documents titled Perkembangan Panguden Ilmu Sumarah dalam Paguyuban Sumarah (the “development of Sumarah practice within the Sumarah association”) which was produced by the DPP in Jakarta in 1971.
12. Data about Sukino’s life comes both from stories about him and from his own autiobiographical sketch, which has been translated into Indonesian as Biografi R. Ng. Soekinohartono (Pak Kino) Sebagai Warana Paguyuban Sumarah (the biography of R. Ng. Soekinohartono as vehicle or messenger of the Sumarah association).
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13. The emphasis on secrecy within Hardopusoro is partially accounted for by the suspicious eye the Dutch government cast on all kebatinan activities. From the Dutch point of view, as before that from the kraton perspective, wandering gurus holed up in the mountains and forests were always a possible channel through which political unrest could mobilize against the ruler. Under the Dutch Hardopusoro functioned as something of a secret or occult counterpart to the officially allowed Theosophical Society. Together these two organizations have had a wide impact within the circles of people who have become kebatinan leaders since independence.
14. There is very sensitive controversy in Indonesia between orthodox Islam and kebatinan groups on the issue of "wahyu". Among the orthodox Muslims, the santri, the word wahyu is reserved for the revelation of the prophet. And as Muhammed was the seal of the prophets, by implication no further revelations are to take place (of the same qualitative degree, at any rate). Santri therefore argue that the basis of kebatinan teachings may be "ilham", that is “inspiration”, but argue that it cannot be wahyu. Kebatinan sorts, although often willing to give way publicly on this point, *n fact maintain that the basis and essence of their teachings straight from God in just the same sense that Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, and other teachings have been. From the perspective of kebatinan groups the key point in this debate is their insistance-lhat spiritual realization and contact with God need not involve any intermediaries (including the kebatinan group itself!)
15. 1 heard about Suhardo's role as an advisor in the army through Major Sukardji, now the leader of Sumarah in the Surabaya area. At the time, Sukardji was appointed liaison man for contacts between Suhardo and the regiment led by Sudirman. As a by-product of that, Suhardo was given a railroad pass that made it possible for him to travel freely all over East Java. One result has been that there are many railroad employees, from office heads down through brakemen, who have become Sumarah members. Another has been that Sukardji has gone on to become an extremely dynamic and forceful Sumarah leader in his own right.
16. Kyai Abdulkamid was classically mystic in his response to my repeated questions of what had been going on during the early period. When I asked him how Sumarah had expanded all over East lava and how. it had changed during his years of activity within it, Pak Kyai smiled and responded that Sumarah had grown “little by little with the help of God”. Abdulkamid has been active, though not entirely healthy, for the past several years. I was told some stories of his wartime activity by Pak Soemarsono, currently the leader of the Madiun region and at the time a member of the pemuda group which followed Pak Kyai into battle. From the perspective of the politicians within the revolution Pak Kyai and his followers would have appeared as just another of the countless rural pesantren which were mobilized by the war.
From Pak Kyai's point of view, it is important to stress that he is a “kyai perdikan " — which is to say he is not “kyai” in the Islamic sense common to rural Java, but rather kyai by virtue of heredity in that he lives in a perdikan desa (a village which has been tax free as a concession to its support of religious institutions located there). Personally I suspect that the pesantren style within which Pak Kyai taught his pupils is in line with a tradition going much farther back than simply the rural Islamic schools. I think the functioning of pesantren bears some resemblance to the “men’s house”, the initiation houses for male youths, of very early Indonesian culture — enough so that I suspect there has been considerable historical continuity underlying Java's religious transitions.
17. The material here is from an interview with Pak Zaid Hussein at his home in Jakarta on July 30, 1973.
18. The material is from interviews with Pak Arymurthy in Jakarta on July 22, 1973 and from several meetings with Pak Joyosukarto in his home in Magelang during June and August of 1973.
19. The issues implicit in organizing spiritual groups have never completely been put to rest. In fact it is unlikely that they ever will be. There are still many groups within Sumarah which are suspicious of attempts to codify and control what they feel can never be controlled. This is an issue which has continued right along with the internal efforts the Sumarah association has been making to avoid turning into a “cult of the individual" as so many self-professedly mystical groups seem to.
20. In periodizing, I am entirely responsible for my theory about the relationship between the transitions of 1957 and 1966. I got some positive confirmation of the theory as I am putting it here, but it beats noting tliat this, in particular, is not an official Sumarah periodization or interpretation. Sumarah's periodization is based on its spiritual perspective, not just on apparent social forms.
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21. The roots of the problem between Surono and the rest of the organization can be traced to the 1957 ' congress. The reports of the congress seem relatively clear.
22 Material about Surono is based almost entirely on interviews with him at his home in Yogya in 1972 and 1973.
23. The efforts to convert spirits is not unique by any means. See the description of Milarepa’s conversion ofTseringma in W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa, London, 1973, p.235.
24. The mystical sects centering on the Yogya kraton, and by extension on Nyai Loro Kidul, vigorously deny Dr. Surono’s assertions about the conversion of many of the spirits in those realms.
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