Dawn Chorus Publishing

We have been waiting for someone to write the book about Subud which will reach beyond the narrow circle of Subud into the world of the general public.

Of all the books about Subud that I have read recently, Emmanuel Elliott’s new book The Dawning offers the most promise of being able to “break through”. Other recent memoirs and autobiographies have been interesting and worthy but do not seem to have had the impact required to reach that wider audience.

In the early days of Subud there were some books that were published by general publishers and which reached a general audience, John Bennett’s Witness is one, but even these did not hit the bestseller lists and bring news of Subud to a very wide audience.

Will Emmanuel’s new book pull it off? Emmanuel tells of a dream he had during one Ramadan when Bapak pointed at him and said, “This is the man to tell the world about Subud.”

Emmanuel’s previous books Revelation Subud and Latihan achieved wider distribution than most Subud books, but will the new one make the New York Times bestseller list, or get him interviewed on Oprah? We will see…

The book is sub-titled A Grace Untold and The Third Secret of Fatima and the Coming of Subud. So all this tells you exactly where it is going. It is about the latihan and connecting its arrival with other events such as the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Fatima.

People familiar with Emmanuel’s earlier books will know that he has written about a “crisis” period in his life when he had many vivid and meaningful dreams, visions and experiences. We have been running some of these in Subud Voice in recent issues.

The new book recounts some of the earlier experiences. This is necessary because this book will undoubtedly reach a new readership unfamiliar with the earlier books now out of print. Also it is necessary for Emmanuel to tell again some of these experiences in order to provide a foundation for what follows.

In the later parts of the book Emmanuel goes on to talk about some illuminating experiences he had when he visited Medjugorje, the place in Bosnia-Hercegovina where the Virgin Mary has appeared to a group of young people.

These experiences led him to explore the relevance of Fatima and other apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Subud. He also writes about what he sees as the connection between Subud and the Second Coming of Christ.

It is well-known that there was a “Third Secret” of Fatima. As well as other prophecies and messages given to the children, the Virgin Mary entrusted them with a “Third Secret”, which was to be revealed by1960 at the latest.

Subud, of course, appeared dramatically in the West in 1957. In many people’s minds there was a connection between Bapak’s arrival and the imminent release of the “Third Secret”. Several people connected to the higher levels of the Catholic Church indicated to some Subud members that they knew what this “Third Secret” was and that it could be interpreted as foretelling the arrival of Bapak.

The Catholic Church’s announcement that it was not going to reveal the secret fuelled speculation that it did refer to Bapak and that this represented an embarrassment to the Church, perhaps even threatened its sense of survival.

This particular piece of Subud “lore”, the connection between Bapak’s arrival in the West and the release of the “Third Secret”, used to be often discussed in Subud, but in recent years seems to have “gone off the radar”. Emmanuel’s book serves a useful purpose in reminding us about it.

In recent years the Church has claimed to have released the “Secret” and that it refers to suffering and persecution directed against Christianity. In particular it has been specifically identified with the last Pope upon whose life an assassination attempt was made.

But some people doubt that the information released by the Church is complete. Although expressing himself with deference and courtesy, Emmanuel makes a strong case for what he clearly sees as a “cover up”.

Possibly, the fact that the book challenges the Catholic Church will be a legitimate selling point for it, although I do not think Emmanuel has manufactured a controversy in order to merely attract attention or make sales. No, I believe he has brought all this forward with a spirit of sincerity. Nevertheless, it could certainly help the book in the market place to have an “issue” that people can grab on to.

This is the sort of thing that might get you on Oprah, and then you can bring up the latihan. There is a lot of clamour out there in the marketplace these days and you have to have something that will get you noticed.

Hopefully, people will then go beyond the “issue” to an interest in Subud and the latihan.

I am always surprised when people say they do not like Emmanuel’s books. He is aware of this himself and he writes in The Dawning that some Subud members

were worried that my experiences would strike the average reader as quite simply unbelievable: the product, perhaps, of an over-active imagination, spiritual delusion or mental aberration. I even heard of one person who opined that the whole saga was a tissue of lies!

I never myself have experiences like those Emmanuel describes but I am glad someone else is having them since they are surely a testament to the authenticity of the latihan.

Over the years I have read or been told many “experiences” and I have developed a “nose” for those I think are real. For me, one test of a “real” experiences is that there is usual some odd, amusing or incongruous detail; something that does not reflect well on the person telling the story; or some detail you would not expect to find in a “spiritual experience”.

The “classic” example of what I mean by this is Bapak’s experience when he tells of being faced by the whole ocean, and then drinking the whole ocean, whereupon he belched and his “burp tasted of sea water”. Now, nobody is going to make up that detail, at least not anybody who wants to present himself as a “spiritual person”.

Lately I have been reading about the New Testament and how scholars use various tests to evaluate the authenticity of passages in the Bible. One of the tests is called “The Test from Embarrassment” and this means that stories which reflect badly on the early Christians are likely to be authentic. (Such as when Peter denies Christ.) So I find I have spontaneously rediscovered the “test from embarrassment” as it applies to Subud literature.

I find Emmanuel’s experiences honest and convincing. He always makes us aware of his mistakes and failings while at the same time telling us of his extraordinary experiences.
Perhaps this is the book that will break through. Perhaps the world is now ready?

Are we?

Harris Smart