Yes: there is a simple pattern running all through the natural world and human life. People of old who lived close to nature could see it – and it’s still there, right under our noses, but we moderns just don't see it…

Siti Salamah Pope

Hallo, my name is Siti Salamah Pope, or Salamah (“sa-LAH-ma”) for short.

I live in Perth, Western Australia, and I’m an anthropologist.

More specifically, I’m a cosmologist – of the traditional sort.

THE MESSAGE (Basically, what this web page is for):
As you know, the world today is in a big mess. Global warming, social injustices, corrupt governments, toxic soils, contaminated foods, wars, AIDS and other pandemics, are all moving us towards an unpleasant future.

Yet there are other – good – things happening. As Futurist Robert Theobald said, “Things are getting worse and worse, and better and better, faster and faster. And the future is still in doubt.”

Quite unintentionally I discovered another “good” (meaning constructive) thing – which is what this web page is about

– a Cosmology fit for Gaia.

 

The Pattern of the World.

There are several different labels for what I found. For instance, you can call it a Theory of Everything, a General System, a philosophical synthesis, a conceptual (or metaphysical) framework, and/or a universal model. Better still perhaps, a holistic paradigm. Or simply, Grand Theory.

Of them all, the ‘World Pattern of Process’ probably describes it best.

In any case, whatever you want to call it, all these notions can be attributed to one specific traditional cosmology found in Indonesia.

It is, I think, a Cosmology fit for Gaia.

And – I think – again – that this could change our perceptions of the world and help us to re-envision it as a whole, with humans as a necessary and integral part of it. Rather a cancerous part, today, to be sure – but this is what needs to change.

To learn about this Pattern, this cosmology, have a look at some of the papers I’ve published. Some of them are being put up on line now, others will join them soon.
They are listed below:

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Since publishing these papers, I have mainly been working on a book to describe as much as I know of the World Pattern, and the ethical and human values implications of this as a Cosmology fit for Gaia and as another – and very different – paradigm for the post-secular world.

It is called The Pattern of the World

It is now completed and available as a free 3MB download below.

The Pattern Of the World

email:salamah.pope77@gmail.com

The Metaphysic – an Ancient Indonesian Cosmology - and me.

An idea of Jung’s – that, having experienced it, I really, really appreciate – comes from his book, Answer to Job. “One never possesses a metaphysical belief" he says, "but is possessed by it”, , with heavy emphasis.

How I became possessed by metaphysic in the first place happened, when – a defining moment! – the spiritual force of the Subud spiritual latihan energy got into my head one day in Vermont, New England, in September 1978..

What, where and how this happened I have written about in detail elsewhere (in the e-book, FourSight: Re-Envisioning Everything - Including Us - Holistically) to be found through a link lower down the page. In short, the Subud experience of a far higher and greater consciousness showed me that everything evolves according to the same fourfold pattern of process.

The law of entropy we know about: but the law of evolution – the upward trend – we don’t. And it was this that I was given to see, one fine morning in the green hills of Vermont, due purely to the workings in me of the spiritual latihan, this divine Energy, found in Subud.
Later I realized that the fourfold pattern of process, as a traditional cosmology, runs right through plant, animal and human life, as it does also the old four Empedoclean elements. This, too, is described in FourSight.

If we could change our minds and, instead of seeing everything in material terms, begin to see things holistically (in other words spiritually as well as materially), then we would have the beginnings of a new and far more constructive paradigm.
Then the world we know, hovering today on the brink of disaster, might not only be brought back to safety but to a far more humane and ethically conscious paradigm.
As it is, I think we are in danger. All of us. Right now.
If we don’t alter our perceptions, and at the same time change ourselves inwardly, then I have little hope that human life – as we know it today – will survive much longer.

If, though, we can alter our thinking, and perceive things differently, holistically – according to this simple, ancient, fourfold, cosmological pattern of process – then I believe there is Hope.

So, for the sake of my children, and my ten grandchildren, no less than all other human beings alive in this world at this dangerous time, I pray that these ideas, which I was given in a vision (and have written up in detail in FourSight), be taken seriously.

 

I have just written the shortest version of it so far, which is down at the bottom of the list of my papers, dated 2006, and titled The World Pattern of Process.

Thank you, for reading this.

PERSONAL PROFILE.

I was born Jennifer Graham Stewart, Jennie for short, in suburban Mill Hill, northwest London, in England, the first child of my Scottish father and Irish mother.
My name was Vivien for several years, when we lived in the USA; it was given to me by Pak Subuh “to become softer”. Now 73 years old, my legal name is today Siti Salamah Jennifer Graham Pope – Salamah for short. The names Siti Salamah are Muslim names, and were given to me when I embraced (as the saying is) Islam.

My name is not the only thing that has changed. During my lifetime I have lived in five different countries – six, if you count Scotland as a different country from England (which it really is)! Some twenty seven of those years I spent living in Indonesia in an intentional community, a compound south of Jakarta called the Wisma Subud.

Subud itself, as a spiritual movement, has occupied most of my life.

Even before that, though, I had found “The Work” of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, which taught me to examine myself, my reactions and behaviours, and how to try and change them. After some three years of sitting at the feet of our teacher, John G. Bennett, I moved on from the Work - and into Subud.

This all had happened because, as a teenager, I felt an empty ache inside me that I didn’t understand. Oh, I was popular, outwardly, and apparently friendly and cheerful. But inside I was miserable, conscious of terrific feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and emptiness. In short, I knew I was an utter fraud.

Even earlier, as a child, my parents had said to me, “There is no God, darling, it’s like Father Christmas. You grow out of it when you get older.” As a teenager, though, I knew there was something missing from my life. There seemed to be no meaning, no purpose even, in my life. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do when I left school. I didn’t even know what I liked and what I didn’t like. I was thoroughly mixed up young woman.

 

So, I went shopping - for God, or Something to fill that emptiness inside me - and that started me on to a search, a Quest, which resulted in my finding the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky system of Work on Oneself.

Which, in turn, led on to Subud.

Which changed everything.

And, eventually, filled up that empty hole inside me, and gave me myself, my Self.

If you're not bored with all this stuff, there is more to be found in

Defining moments,

The Gurdjieff Work,

Jungian psychology,

My family and

Subud, all of which can be seen by clicking the blue linked text.