"He went into something almost like a dynamic meditation – shouting, running, jumping, just a pure play of energy for no reason at all.

"And then he fell into a deep silence, the deepest he had ever dreamt of, and when he woke up in the afternoon, just three or four hours afterwards, he was totally a new man. That happening changed him. He was no more a Mohammedan, he was no more his old personality, his old self.

"He started teaching his close friends. To whomsoever he said this was a meditation, they laughed. But his intimate circle of friends were persuaded by him…'At least you should give it a try.'

"A few tried, a few succeeded – and this happened just thirty years ago.

"After the experience, one feels utterly relaxed, no tensions in the mind, no tensions in the body. And a great joy arises from your interiority, not dependent on anything outside you. You are for the first time a universe unto yourself. For your happiness, for your joy, you are no longer dependent. You alone can live on a deserted star, joyously.

"Slowly, latihan became a world movement. But there were a few basic flaws in it; hence, the movement has disappeared – like a fashion that has come in vogue and now it seems to be some historical fact – and it has happened just within these thirty years.

"First, Bapak Subud could not explain it, or why it happened to him. He was not religious, he was not philosophical, he was not interested in the esoteric side of life. The mysteries of life had never been a challenge to him. He was a very earthly man. He simply said, 'It descended upon me from beyond. I don't know why – I have no explanation for why I was chosen.'

"But because it happened to a man who knew nothing about meditations, who never meditated – at least according to his conscious memory – it was natural that the method, the technique, must have some weaknesses, some loopholes. It is not a device created by a master; it is a very accidental thing.

"Mohammedans cannot explain it for the simple reason that Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews don't believe in a series of lives; they believe only in one life."