Divine Beings, Responsibility and Evil
An open divine or suhul being is one who has reached that stage of sumarah or surrender wherein experience is defined openly, which means there is no personal sense or feeling in opposition to reality: we take what we get in the purest sense. This condition is quite similar to the spontaneity and openness present in infancy. However, in suhul we feel precisely and only what is there to be felt and interact without buffering or management with all that is (infants have a bit of buffering, range limitation and control), thus serving the purposes of divine justice and open hate and love. There are three levels of open divine being which are jinem, junun and suhul. Suhul is the highest of them, being a pure service designation defined around a consciousness of the divine processes we serve and a resolve, a hunger, for justice and proper bonds. We suhul can no longer tolerate existence except in open terms in that we knowingly stretch out open over all seeking worthy company and knowing it to exist. We have no buffering for the pain that comes to us; we are simply obliged to help it find its way back to its source in order to realize proper satisfaction.
There are also various levels of closed divine beings, reflecting the often-remarkable evil (Iblung) of individuals operating in opposition to reality through a corporate identity pretending divine presence. The infamous younger gods’ power is founded in the pain they cause, are raised by and deny responsibility for, i.e., in their scornful majesty as they tend to pursue impunity through deification as in Egypt and Rome or divine right. An apt example is Richard I, Coeur de Lion, who argued at his trial during the diet assembled by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, at Speyer in 1193: “I am born in a rank which recognizes no superior but God, to whom alone I am responsible for my actions,” and first used the motto "Dieu et mon droit" ("God and my right") which is still that of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Elsewhere, he also gave a rather more forthright description of his family, “from the Devil we sprang and to the Devil we shall go,” presaging their internecine decimation in the Wars of the Roses. Be that as it may, younger gods also frequently pretend association with natural processes, applications and utilizations of their turpitude. The divine covenant is actually just a relatively successful devil's covenant, a company elevated by pain induction and corresponding power and information manipulation through the imposition of sense and feeling, in a kind of inversion of Sumarah`s techniques of "checking" (cocokan), "accompanying" (panjenengan kalian kula sami) and "bearing" (nggendong). In Sumarah, we do use a stunning blast called "rasa shock" (sok rasa) from time to time, but this is just for shaking people out of nightmares, not for taking them into them.
The difference in approach between the closed and the open assemblies is captured by Suwondo:
We study here in order to seek happiness together, not for our own happiness. Because when you pursue your own happiness, whether you are aware of it or not, you will sometimes bring misfortune to others to make yourself happy. This is what we try to avoid doing. (Kerten 3/10/80)
On the other hand, the closed divine covenant actively studies making themselves happy at the rest of our expense in pursuing "the way of the tyrant." The powers that be in the closed divine hierarchy are always involved in a denial of responsibility and accountability. Like any organized bureaucracy, the covenant is based on the management of the involved beings' energies and activities to serve the purpose of the being or beings dominating the entity.We suhul will only willingly work with a "try," which means someone who has reached the tekad or resolve level of association with the rest of us and still has his or her spirit body. Anyone who has not attained this level of accountability and proper devotion to the job of being is untrustworthy and indifferent to their true responsibilities: they are just playing stupid with us in one way or another. One of the structural characteristics of being as it relates to the closed divine covenant is that they are openly unable to try very hard because that would expose their true relationship with the rest of us, i.e., scorn and arrogance. When you try hard, you give satisfaction opening up to see what is happening and what you can do to help, something they can never be involved in doing in that it would give us all a true view of what they are. They exist suspended in a cloud of indifference and sophistication and constitutionally relate to the rest of us as grist for their mills or cannon fodder.
The interpersonal psychology that they use in manipulating and controlling people is a fundamental advance over the normal reductionistic intrapsychic psychology that is dominant in western society at the moment, but in Java we have been studying the mechanisms of association and definition for thousands of years. We understand the world within far better than any tyrannical organization ever could because we assume responsibility for what we are and what we do. We hurt people too, but we stay with them afterwards and stand with the deed, openly showing them why, rather than terrorizing them and demanding their blind acquiescence to our authority the way closed beings do. Some take dubious comfort in the simple expedient of denying justice universally in that it has been clear for quite some time that justice is a purely cynical and arbitrary matter for the younger gods – the powers that be. As is so common among tyrants, their justice is for others and evidently not for those with the power to circumvent it: "You get what you pay for" and they traditionally have deep pockets!
The task of separating the wheat and the chaff within the closed divine hierarchy is one inevitably involving such debacles as my bale withal in the western world. The stakes are very high indeed and there are no rules at all in that defeat means that the younger gods will get back what they have given and they clearly don’t want it. These are the traditional callous, autocratic heads of existence (those on the "high road"), i.e., the villainous men and women overall, who "keep ever the pleasant life of a tyrant." We on the other hand are on the "low road," where we rest open in common, undistinguished union, assume responsibility and serve one another ardently. However, just to put this into a 'local' perspective, recall how the Greeks saw Zeus: his only real claims to fame were self-serving power, treachery and rapes.
They do such things, the younger gods,
who rule, wholly beyond justice,
a throne dripping blood,
about its foot, about its head.
I can see the center-stone of the earth
defiled with a terrible pollution of blood.
modus vivendi eventually engendered the ruinous “progress” now rampant throughout the world, as we amuse ourselves like a cabal of karmic criminals on holiday. Christendom’s traditional morass of dictatorially imposed nonsense clouded over the Greeks' simple and uncomfortably accurate description of our circumstances and the unfailing infamy of the younger gods. who rule, wholly beyond justice,
a throne dripping blood,
about its foot, about its head.
I can see the center-stone of the earth
defiled with a terrible pollution of blood.
The essence of Divine Resolve (Tekading Ingsun) is simply, "I didn't make this mess but I sure am going to clean it up!" Confrontation will forever be the key to solving any and all problems, as we accept them as our own, face them, suffer them and let a solution come to us out of reality. In this effort, we essentially dree our weird, becoming the relationships and the experience defining now, a continuously progressing point in the pinging present.