Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

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make obvious to all that “all things are one” and that thus the whole cultural systemis validated. He is the life force, he is Vishnu the creator, he is the lingam. He is thesource of sexual vitality and communes nightly with mother earth throughintercourse with wives who are the four winds - they are the directions of thecompass symbolically brought together in harmonious balance under his roof. He isthe only link between the natural and social orders and his power and legitimacy reston that contact. 4Ideally the power of the monarch rests not in control over people or resources, butthrough this contact with the divine. At the same time, the power he has is concreteand exists as a pure essence pervading the universe and remaining quite apart fromconceptions of good and evil. Power simply is. Exercise of power is then a matter ofaccumulating and concentrating through attainment of a state of mind. BenAnderson has suggested thatThis conception of the entire cosmos being suffused by a formless, constantlycreative power provides the essential link between the “animism” of theJavanese villages, and the high metaphysics of the urban Javanese syncretictheological tradition. 5The ideal of the tradition is reflected in the pervasive tension within the traditionalorder between alus or refined behavior which is controlled and smooth and is themodel for prijaji and kasar or coarse and rough behavior which is the common imageof peasants. In the wajang, daemons are emphatically kasar, they constantly dissipatepower and always lose to alus heroes who concentrate their power through mysticalmeditation. The epistemological foundation of mystical awareness lies in convictionthat knowledge, which is the source of power, is a stripping” away of veils” to reveala transcendent which is obscured by ordinary consciousness. The image of “strippingveils” is from the Islamic tradition of Sufi mysticism, but applies just as well to theJavanese. Van der Kroef states thatThe “good life” as Javanese gurus and mystics have viewed it through theages, and as they have instructed king and peasant, is the progressivedissolution of the barriers to unity between man and cosmos ... the perfectunity of the divine order in which all “contradictions” are resolved ... Athorough understanding of the antithetical elements surrounding man is
egarded as the path to spiritual stasis, the selamet condition of mind calledsemadi among the Javanese. 6And as Moertono puts itTrue to all mysticism, these syncretic ideas seek to prove that all things areonly aspects, saktis, emanations, and only integral parts of the all-embracingOne ... 7The drive behind this drive to reconcile oppositions is in belief that it is throughmystical awareness that power flows from the natural sphere of order into thehuman sphere of society. Awareness translates into social order asThe perfect state and the perfect society ... is therefore not a goal to beachieved through hard work and rational planning, but in analogy with theprogression from one mystical state to another - through the application of akey, a kuntji, the magically loaded formula. 8The knowledge sought is not in “the slightest degree heuristic or pragmatic”, butinstead emphatically intuitive and supra- rational. 9 Mystically achieved awarenessis considered a stock of techniques for maintaining cosmic equilibrium and itscorrelate of social order. 10In all of this, man is seen very much as a cipher, as an agent of “immutable cosmicforces which essentially operate through him.” 11 Even the divine ruler emerges as atool of larger purpose - his role is not to exert individual will, but to function as anode through which the universal touches society. 12 For the Javanese mystic,learning and acting are a matter of discovering the self as a mere agent of the cosmos.The ego becomes nothing, but the self is then comprehended as a specific point ofcosmic convergence.Of course all of this is idealization and social reality merely orients itself toward andnever embodies the ideal. Still, mysticism has always been profoundly alive for allstrata of Javanese society so that the ideal of oneness with God has broad appealeven though “mysticism is considered wadi (dangerously secret) and is thoughtavailable only to the selected few.” 13 In traditional villages the correspondence ofmacro-cosmos and micro-cosmos paralleled that of the state and each community
Page 1 and 2: Javanese Mystical and Marxist Diale
Page 3 and 4: UNITY IN DIVERSITYPossessed of tran
Page 5 and 6: Although the pogroms of 1966 were u
Page 7 and 8: through a process of musjawarah-muf
Page 9 and 10: The contrast is rooted profoundly i
Page 11: entrepreneurship remained confined
Page 14 and 15: undertook to carry out were too lim
Page 16 and 17: ut even in the earliest phases Isla
Page 18: THE NAIL OF GODFrom this sketch of
Page 23 and 24: The real and the really real are cl
Page 25 and 26: evolutionary fervor rather than pro
Page 27 and 28: Permai, an active mystical-politica
Page 29 and 30: doctrines themselves did not change
Page 31 and 32: is a release for the whole body and
Page 33 and 34: THE MASS LINEIdeas have no meaning
Page 35 and 36: communism, began to turn toward the
Page 37 and 38: Without the image of the PKI as pat
Page 39 and 40: The Party presented itself as a syn
Page 41 and 42: Sukarno's role in protecting the Pa
Page 43 and 44: argued that the nationalist revolut
Page 45 and 46: By this time the PKI had already ca
Page 47 and 48: the application of principles, to b
Page 49 and 50: some tendency for class and religio
Page 51 and 52: only a very few really understood t
Page 53 and 54: The main effect of Indonesia's Basi
Page 55 and 56: Trompet Masjarakat, the main Suraba
Page 57 and 58: eported the incident as the Kanigor
Page 59 and 60: Out of this third “white terror
Page 61 and 62: The test for PKI strategy came with
Page 63 and 64: In outlining the fundamental cleava
Page 65 and 66: the strategy of the PKI in the peri
Page 67 and 68: enough that the public accepted equ
Page 69 and 70:
progress. That conclusion might app
Page 71 and 72:
contradictory things are actually s
Page 73 and 74:
Measured by rational utility and re
Page 75 and 76:
forms without a sense of the underl
Page 77 and 78:
of academic work by fleshing out un
Page 79 and 80:
In the years before the coup the PK
Page 81 and 82:
18. Hans Schmitt, "Post Colonial Po
Page 83 and 84:
36. Legge, Indonesia, p 143. The di
Page 85 and 86:
48. Hildred Geertz, "Indonesian Cul
Page 87 and 88:
NOTES: THE NAIL OF GOD1. Clifford G
Page 89 and 90:
18. Benedict Anderson, "The Languag
Page 91 and 92:
the masses, and the development of
Page 93 and 94:
4. Ibid. p 298.5. George Lichtheim,
Page 95 and 96:
this point, Aidit 's defense was th
Page 97 and 98:
39. Aidit, Problems, "Indonesian So
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52. Alimin, "Orang Tani dan Proleta
Page 101 and 102:
75. Aidit, "Main Conclusions" (.TPR
Page 103 and 104:
100. Selosoemardjan, Social Changes
Page 105 and 106:
129. Obor Revolusi February 15, 196
Page 107 and 108:
conservative in that they only reac
Page 109 and 110:
32. Hegel, Phenomenology, p 11633.
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--. "The Key to Food and Clothing:
Page 113 and 114:
--. "Peasant Movements in Colonial
Page 115 and 116:
--. The Religion of Java. New York,
Page 117 and 118:
Kartodirdjo, Sartono. The Peasant's
Page 119 and 120:
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Structural An
Page 121 and 122:
Pauker, Guy. "Current Communist Tac
Page 123 and 124:
Smail, John RW. "On the Possibility
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Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

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