Subud is a community which systematically obscures its connection to the past, and to the rest of society.

If you accept the Subud mythology, Subud started one night in 1935, and before that, nothing like it existed. According to this myth, Subud came out of nowhere. If you accept the Subud mythology, Subud is also like nothing else on Earth, and its central practice - the latihan kejiwaan - can only be understood by its practitioners. According to this myth, Subud is unique, and incomparable.

One effect of these two myths is to build a steel wall between Subud and the rest of the human world. Like a person who believes she wasn't born of human parents, and is totally unlike any other person in the world, these myths serve to radically alienate Subud from humanity.

Currently, Subud is encountering a crisis in its development and continuity. Subud's membership has been static for many decades, at about 10,000. The Subud population is aging. There are few new members, and most of those are either the children of members, or their spouses. In the UK recently, a telephone survey revealed only one group had a new person seeking to join. This crisis is caused in at least part by the wall of mystification. Remove the wall, and Subud has better chance of not only surviving, but thriving.

Demystifying Subud will have a cost. The cost is that many cherished beliefs will not fare well in the light of close scrutiny. This may make us uncomfortable, but it may be a cost we have to bear. No one said growth was painless.

This site is divided into three parts:

• Kejawen examines the Javanese roots of Pak Subuh's explanations
• Governance looks at the Indonesian influences on Subud's way of operating
• Silat places the latihan kejiwaan in historical context.