Interviewed by Halimah Martin and Halimah Collingwood
In this Interview, nonagenarian, Oswald Lake, former CA Regional Chair and USA Chair, who is now part of Subud Santa Cruz, tells the story of how he came into Subud:
Asa and I spent two years in the desert in Eastern Washington at an Atomic Energy Plant. Our first child, Johnny, was born there.
After I got my regular Army commission, I realized that I had to make the decision to either keep the commission or keep Asa. And I always teased her: “I kept the wrong one.” I left the Army.
We didn’t want to go back to St. Louis so we moved to Santa Monica, California in 1952. We bought a house. Larry was born in Santa Monica. The house wasn’t right, so we bought a second house, later selling the first one. We did some remodeling. Johnny and I would go there on weekends and work on it. We finally moved in and William was born in February. In March of 1954, Johnny drowned in the swimming pool of a neighbor’s yard. We didn’t even know the pool was there because the house was up on top of the hill. So our number one son was gone. He was 2 ½ years old.
It affected both of us in different ways. For example, I was talking to an Episcopal priest in Santa Monica. I found out later that he had lost a child, too. I said, “How do you get over this?” He said, “You don’t. You get around it.” Wow! And I have used that (philosophy) in more situations. When I have a problem, I don’t try to get over the problem, I get around it.
Asa, on the other hand, was still looking for an answer to “why?” And she never really did get it, but she kept reading and searching and looking for some other source of religious…I don’t know what you call it.
A professor moved in next door to us. He taught at Santa Monica City College and had a wife and four kids. They were nice people. His name was Bill Jones. He was also searching. So Asa and Bill would yackety-yack back and forth: “Oh did you read this book…?” Asa and Bill had actually attended a couple of Gurdjieff meetings and decided that wasn’t for them. I babysat, and it wasn’t for me either. So Bill went to a Hollywood bookstore and asked if any new spiritual books had come in. He was told that they had a new book by John Bennett called Concerning Subud. Bill bought the book, read it, and almost screamed, “I found it!” He and Asa tried to find out where Subud was in Los Angeles and finally found it. This was in 1959. They got hold of Earl Robinson, the contact in Los Angeles.
In those days, probationers’ meetings were not held on a latihan night, they were held separately. So I babysat. I hadn’t read any of this book. Asa and Bill and a couple of others went to a place near downtown for the meeting. The rule in those days was if the wife wanted to be opened, the husband had to give his permission. While I’m reading in bed and the kids are asleep, Asa says, “Honey, I don’t care what you say, I’m going to join Subud.” I said, “You’re going to join what?” She gave me Concerning Subud. I threw it on the night table and there it sat.
I think the probationer meeting was every two weeks. Latihan was on Monday and Thursday. Later, on a Wednesday night, she said, “I signed you up for the next probationer meeting.”
Anyhoo, at that next meeting there were 5-6 people from our little area in Santa Monica, friends, and so forth. I had a station wagon so we took a load and went there with me driving. We walked into this empty house with a bunch of those hard wooden folding chairs and all kinds of people – I mean hippies, beatniks, who knows what – all kinds of people…strange. Pretty soon a man stood up wearing a suit and tie and started talking. That was Earl Robinson. Then, a woman stood up and talked. She was nicely dressed and she wasn’t a hippie – Mary Coddington.
Afterward, it was open for questions. People would stand up and answer the questions. There were members there, too. They had coffee and pamphlets, brochures and things you could buy. Husein Rofé’s book wasn’t out yet. There were 5 or 6 of us all walking out and Earl said to me, “What do you think about us?” I said, “I don’t know what in hell they are talking about.” He says, “Are you coming back?” I said, “Oh yes.” I got the answers to my questions and then I sat for two weeks between meetings. I read the book. I didn’t know what they were talking about. But I knew from within that it was important. So who got us into Subud? Asa did, or I did or what? I don’t know.
We were scheduled to be opened in three months. The group that was ahead of us got opened. When it was our turn, after three months, they said no, Bapak was coming back to the U.S. for a second trip. He was here in 1958 and he was coming back for a ’59 trip. It was decided we would be opened when Bapak was here. Poor Ibu (Sumari, Bapak’s wife). For years afterward, she’d say, “Oh Los Angeles – 200 people!” I don’t know if it was 200, but it was a large group. We’d collected people from various groups of probationers in different California locations over a period of 4-5 months.
They had to rent a bigger hall and they had scheduled us to be opened not all at once but in smaller groups on different nights. They gave us notice about when each of us would be opened. The trouble was, we had a carload of people from Santa Monica. So we all arrived on one day. This would be the first time we’d been around the latihan. We had never heard it.
There were 25-30 men waiting to be opened that night. Glasses off, shoes off, etc., and someone said “Stand up.” Someone said, “Begin.” I mean, I was quiet but what ensued was screaming, hollering, jumping all around me. It was a shock. I’d read Bennett’s book which describes what can happen in the latihan. I knew what was coming, but it was still a shock.
Bapak was there. We were opened by Bapak. Asa was opened that same night by Ibu. In fact, the membership card they gave out had two dates: 1) the date we were actually opened and 2) the date we were signed up to be opened. Whoever typed up the card didn’t know which of the two dates was correct.
That visit and all those openings marked the start of the Los Angeles group. There were other groups, too, maybe Long Beach. There were enough people to have another center but I forget where. San Francisco was the other big group in California and a few other smaller groups around. Then they decided to make California a corporation. All the groups were part of that corporation. And the name of it was “Subud.” I wasn’t in on the organization and structure at that time. This was before SNA (Subud North America).
When any other group wanted to be official – Subud NY, Subud Washington DC – they had to get our permission to use the word Subud. When Subud North America was formed, it had to get California’s permission. The period that I was chairman of Subud in California was when we changed the name to “Subud California.” And when I was chairman of SNA, we changed the name to Subud USA. This was initiated by Bapak, in about 1969. Mexico had grown and so had Subud in Canada. Originally, Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. made up Subud North America. Mexico and Canada each wanted their own national organization.
After latihan, we would hang out at the Olympian Hotel. When we started having corporate meetings, we’d get together with San Francisco and other groups. Sometimes we’d meet in Cambria, at the Cambria Pines, half way between the two big centers. There we’d meet and talk. When you get Subud people together, they can’t shut up!