the sects, then, place emphasis on the kind of social relationship one finds when two people occupy (relatively) adjacent rungs on the social ladder—the father-son, teacher-pupil, leader-follower relation. It is an emphasis of which the essential consonance with bureaucracy, particularly with the kind of personal bureaucracy one finds in Indonesia—what the politicized Indonesians despairingly call bapakisme, “fatherism,” when they see it in operation in the government ministries—is fairly obvious. Similarly, the normative social theory the sects support is congruent with the needs of a rank-conscious class of white-collar administrators with idealistic pretensions. This theory is based on two considerations. The first is the fact that, since the divine in each person is identical, at the ultimate level of experience there is no individuality because the more advanced one is spiritually, the more one has a genuine fellow-feeling for others, a comprehensive sympathy. The second is that, since people (and groups of people) differ in spiritual advancement, not only does the range of their sympathy vary but also their fitting place in society is correlated with their presumed religious status, with the result that some people are appropriately leaders and others followers, some properly till the soil, while others are traders, clerks, carpenters, or school teachers, the health of society being dependent upon the right relationships between the various groups.
Statements of the first theme, the identity of all individuals on the ultimate level of experience, are easily enough found, for this is one of the most consistently expressed beliefs. For example:
Sudjoko (at a Budi Setia meeting) then expanded on something in the text (a reading from a “science” magazine having just been completed) about “first person,” “second person,” “third person,” saying that they were all really one for a prijaji who already was alus in his feelings. “Last night we went to see the movie, Sampson and Delilah. My friend and I and all of us who went together were as one.” Harijo said that what the reading meant was that we were all creations of God. Wirjo said that what was explained in the reading was “aku” and “dèwèké,” “I” and “he.” He said that when he looks at three people hé sees three forms or shapes, three people different in body and outer aspect, but in the depth of their thinking and feeling they are the same. He said: “Their outer form I see is different, but their ‘insides,’ their selves, are all the same; they are one.” He said that the important thing to remember is that the true self was only one for all men and came from God; and Wasisto then said that individuation comes only from “opinion” and from the existence of the individual will, but the real self is connected with God.
Often this thought is put in terms of the difference between proximate and ultimate rasa, between the everyday feeling of self, of nationality, and the underlying feeling of unity with all, as for example in this discussion of a passage from Dudu Kowé, the Kawruh Bedja magazine :
The gum makes a number of points. Everyone has a feeling (rasa) of his own native country, and this is deep in his heart. A good example of how deep this goes is the Jews. For centuries they wandered, exiles from their own country; but the rasa remained and then finally they got their country back. All men are the same at base in ultimate rasa. It is only partial rasa which is different—as the handshaking and etiquette of the Javanese are different from those of the Dutch. Also, the rasa can be very wide or narrow, depending on the individual. For example, there are people in Djokjakarta (where the magazine is published) who are upright and polite in the Djokjakarta style, but their rasa is only as wide as Djokjakarta. If they go off to Solo, they start chasing prostitutes. Only one man ever really got above local rasa entirely and felt at one with all humanity: Mahatma Gandhi. (More commonly, Muhammad, Jesus, and Buddha, at least, are allowed within this select circle.) He had no native land. Most of us do not get that far, however, and so should just try to be tolerant.
Usually this is summed up in the ethical imperative that one should spread peace in the world from the center outwards, from the self in ever-widening circles through family, neighborhood, village, country, and world, as ripples in a pond spread circularly away from their point of origin. One calms one’s heart, then orders one’s family, and so on. And the reverse is true also: if one is upset or disturbed, one naturally upsets and disturbs others. Thus refinement of personal emotion, the quest for personal enlightenment and peace, is at the same time a social effort, for it eases the process of rukun, cooperation among different individuals with, in part at least, different feelings. A society of perfectly alus men would be a perfect society because it would be a perfectly polite and perfectly altruistic society, everyone feeling as one with everyone else and as sensitive to others’ feelings as to his own.
In the absence of the second consideration—that resting on the actual differences in alus-ness among individuals—this kind of utopia would seem to imply a normative social theory stressing, as did primitive Christianity, the equality of all men when seen sub specie aeternitatis; but in the presence of the second consideration it leads rather to an organic view of “every man in his proper place,” a clear statement of which has been cited at the beginning of our discussion of the prijaji, the informant being the guru, more or less, of Budi Setia. A similar statement is part of the involved Ilmu Sedjati creed.
He (the gum of Ilmu Sedjati) said that there were five kinds of roles in the society: “chief,” which may be of a family only or of the whole state, such as President Sukarno; “soldier”; “priest”; “common people”; and “teacher.” There are proper feelings appropriate to each role, and people thus differ in their appropriateness to fill them. Patience and a broad view are held to be the proper characteristics of a chief. He said that a chief leads and must deal with many different kinds of people, and so must be patient. “He deals with people who are red, who are green, who are white; those who are good and those who are bad; and what he needs in order to get them to do what he wants them to do is patience.’’ The characteristic of the soldier is courage, and of the priest detachment. (These two roles seem a resultant of Hindu caste theory and have little importance in the system generally; and the latter has no obvious actual referent in the society, there being no priests.) The characteristic of the common people is ac-quiesence (trima). The whole duty of the people, he said, is to obey the government. Decisions are taken by people high up in the government who are clever and educated; and the duty of the people is merely to carry them out. Since the common people lack experience, they must always accept the orders given to them by the government. The government can never be wrong; and the people never make important decisions. (Individuals in the government may be wrong, but the government itself cannot be; and one may never go against it even though one may disapprove of specific people in it.) Even in a democracy, if the people want something they have to beg or request the government for it. If the government doesn’t accept their request, that’s all there is to it. The people must sit quietly and do what the government tells them. Lastly, uprightness is the ideal characteristic of the teacher. These five characteristics and the attendant roles are the basis of society, but there is another major mode of division according to the way people get their living: whether they are peasants, workers, or clerks. . . .
This sort of theory is common to most of the sects. In one Setia meeting a retired pawnshop clerk said that as he saw it there were three elements in the effort to make society peaceful: stability in the civil bureaucracy, adherence to one’s ascribed duties in life, and uncomplaining acceptance of authority. In relation to the first he pointed out that Java no longer had a king and that the proper line of authority now descended from the president down through the resident, regent, village chief, and so on; and he said that this must be kept stable at all costs. As for the second, he said that we all have work we must do according to our station and must carry it out in order to make society peaceful. The third merely indicates that we should trima— receive orders and decisions from above without comment and without complaint—kuUnia meneng, to customarily keep quiet.
Admittedly, however, this pure and elitist view is somewhat ultra-montane even for a prijaji nowadays; and there is usually rather more of an attempt to fit old values to new situations, for example in trying to view the major political parties in organicist terms as necessary parts in an integrated state, each with its own functions.
He (the guru of Ilmu Sedjati) said that some people support the Communist party, some the Nationalist, some the Socialist, and some Masjumi (the Islamic party), and each person says the other is no good. But the Communist party is good; it is the defender of the country, the fort or wall of the country. The Nationalist party is good; it is for nationalism and for humanitarianism. The Socialists are good; they are interested in bettering the economy, in industrialization. And Masjumi is good; it is interested in government and religion. . . . They must all work together, rukun; that is what is important.
this leads into the last basic proposition I have attributed to prijoji mysticism: universal tolerance, a relativistic view of religious beliefs and practices. Mystics always insist, sometimes quite passionately, on their freedom from fanaticism. They argue that the ultimate rasa is not fanatic but calm, cool, and peaceful in feeling tone, and that no fanatic can even understand their “science.” All religions are good, but none is good for everyone; “many are the roads.” Perhaps the most basic conflict between the sects and santri Islam is the universalism of the latter, a view which goes down very poorly indeed with both prijajis and abangans. (That a prijaji means santri when he says “fanatic” is fairly clear from the answer one often gets when one asks a prijaji if he does the prayers or fasts in the Fast. “No, of course not,” he says. “I’m not a fanatic!”)
Prijajis move easily among the different sects with more or less total unconcern (which makes the effort after secrecy of a few of them—in Modjo-kuto, Ilmu Sedjati and Kawruh Kasunjatan—rather a mockery). One of my best informants on these matters, now a guru in Kawruh Bedja, was at one time or another a member of every one of the sects in Modjokuto, “sampling” them. He even spent a few months in a pondok to see what the santri “science” was like. (He didn’t like it, he said; they were too “fanatic” and didn’t share his relativist view.)
All religions, the head of Budi Setia said, are the same in that they concentrate on the holy power. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Mazdaism— all have at least a grasp on the truth. Only materialism is wrong completely. The head of Kawruh Kasunjatan said that his religion was an international one and would admit Christians, Moslems, Chinese, and Europeans without their giving up any of their beliefs. Ilmu Sedjati attempts to include four religions—Christianity, Islam, Theosophy, and Intellectual Free-thinking— within its system. Sumarah claims that any fanaticism among its members disrupts the entire meditation meeting, and that fanatics are banned from joining.
This kind of relativism is also based on the idea that at the most fundamental level of feeling everyone is the same.
He (a high prijaji not a sect member) said that every nationality has its own feeling (rasa). There is, therefore, Javanese feeling. The trouble with Nahdatul Ulama, for instance, he said, is that since it does not want to translate the Arab-Islam feeling into Javanese feeling it doesn’t mean anything to the Javanese. He said all these feelings have the same end-point, the same meaning, and that if one is a really great man, like Jesus or Muhammad or someone, he can rise above them, but most of us have to follow our own feeling and realize that others have to follow theirs. He said in conclusion that all this (that he had been telling me about a special kind of “Javanese science”) would be hard for me to understand because it was Javanese feeling, but that the feeling of all people is the same underneath. All come from a sperm; all given birth to by their mothers; taken care of by their parents; live through sorrow and happiness; and in the end die. So they are all the same. Only their surface feelings are different.
This is not to say that the ideals projected are always, or even commonly, reached. Perhaps Shaw’s comment that the only trouble with Christianity is that it has never been tried is applicable to religion generally; for certainly there is much rivalry and backbiting among the various sects and a universal intolerance on their part for Islam, often on the grounds of its intolerance. But it is nevertheless true that the syncretistic, tolerant, relativistic outlook toward religious belief fits well with the whole tenor of prijaji mysticism.
Mudjono (principal of the prijaji-run high school), it turns out, is a member of Kawruh Bedja. He said that quite a few people around Modjokuto are interested in this sect, but some of them don’t really follow out its spirit; they just read about it and then go out and play cards, or, at the other extreme, take it as something to force on other people. He said that such imposition isn’t right; that one is supposed to follow it oneself but should not try to force others to do so. For example, if he, Mudjono, wants to sleep on the floor (because Bedja denigrates material comfort, or at least attachment to material comfort), that is all right; but if he makes his wife do it when she doesn’t want to, that is wrong. (His wife said, laughing, that she just couldn’t understand the “science” or really “feel” it, and that maybe she was too young. He replied that maybe she was just slow to understand but would eventually. She said, “When I am angry. I am angry; but Mudjono isn’t, he is patient.”) He said that he himself may have no interest in tea cups (pointing to those out of which we were drinking) or fine furniture but must provide them for others who may not agree with his “science.” One must be patient and just slowly feel the “science.” He said that he was probably the youngest person in Modjokuto interested as most young men were not interested in it very much. (He was about thirty.)
He said that the essence of the “science” was to adjust to others and not want too much, not to have too strong desires. If one wants something and can’t get it, one can just retreat without worrying about it; but if one’s desires are too strong and one is frustrated, then one will be upset. He meditates now and then if the mood strikes him, but not very often or regularly. He said that if one gets rid of attachment to things one can cooperate (rukun) with others. Thus no one will be disappointed (gela); and so a wider and wider circle—house, neighborhood, village, world—can be unified, can rukun.
Prijaji mysticism can, therefore, be summed up in terms of a set of fundamental ideas. Behind the kasar feelings of everyday life lies an alus feeling which is at once the individual’s true self and the manifestation of God within him. One can and should experience this ultimate feelingmeaning both by means of asceticism and meditation and through study and speculation; and such experience leads to personal power to accomplish one’s ends, whatever they may be, in this world. People differ in their ability to carry out such discipline and thus differ as to their proper social rights and duties in a well ordered society. Despite this difference, and despite the differences in mundane feeling among individuals and among groups, at base people are identical one with the other. Therefore, by calming one’s own emotions one is not only initiating a process which, depending upon the »338«
degree to which it is successful, will spread away from oneself through family, village, and nation to the whole world but also striving after the feeling one shares with everyone else. Finally, because of the ultimate identity and proximate relativity of feeling, tolerance in religious matters is the ideal; although the means differ, the end is always the same. This, in any case, is the creed—its realization is another matter.