Anthony Bright-Paul

Biographical Information

"Anthony Bright-Paul has rendered real service in updating and reissuing his book, "My Stairway to Subud," first published in 1965. "Stairway" brings vividly to life the author's personal journey through the Vedanta and the Gurdjieff "Work," a path that in 1957 finally led him to embrace Subud, a spiritual movement then newly arrived in the West. Anthony Bright-Paul, still only in his twenties at the time, had already studied the Gurdjieff system for some half dozen years under the direction of J.G. Bennett, and was unaware that earlier that year his mentor had secretly received a direct contact with the latihan kejiwaan (training of the soul) from Hussein Rofe, himself a pupil of the Indonesian Master, Pak Subuh, soon to be widely known around the world simply as "Bapak." Typical of the honesty which Anthony brings to his book is his acknowledgement of the scepticism and resistance with which he first responded to the proposed transition from the Gurdjieff Work to the apparent simplicity and ease of the surrender to the Will of God, advocated by Muhammad Subuh. All his doubts were in due course swept away by his experience of "the great force which rained down in and around me," which left him "feeling elated yet detached and deliriously happy.""