The Question of 'Daulat' ~ and the Truth shall set you free! (updated & reposted)

M. Bakri Musa

M. Bakri Musa recently posted the first part of an in-depth review of a very significant book by Zaid Ibrahim which candidly and lucidly discusses the tradition of royalty (and the quasi-religious mystique surrounding it) vis-a-vis the Malaysian Constitution.

Zaid's book is titled Ampun Tuanku: A Brief Guide to Constitutional Government and it was published on 25 June 2012 under his own imprint, ZI Publications. Interestingly, the work is 256 pages long, coinciding with its launch date of 25th June. Is there a numerological significance here?

For a start, 2+5+6 = 13 and 13 symbolizes death and rebirth in the Tarot. The Mayan calendar favors the female 13-moon cycle (women menstruate 13 times a year). But before I get carried away on a tangent, let's quote a section of Bakri Musa's latest blogpost, pointedly headlined "The Sultans' Daulat is a Myth":

As a youngster in 1960 I had secured for myself a commanding view high atop a coconut tree to watch the funeral procession of the first King, Tuanku Abdul Rahman. My smug demonstration of my perched position drew the attention of the village elders below. They were none too pleased and immediately ordered me down. “Sultans have daulat,” they admonished, “you cannot be above them.” Apparently even dead sultans maintained their daulat. I did not dare challenge my elders as to what would happen once the king was buried; then we all would be above him. To put things in perspective, this attribution of special or divine powers to rulers is not unique to Malay culture. The ancient Chinese Emperors too had their Tianming, Mandate from Heaven. That however, was not enough to protect them.

Zaid Ibrahim

Even though it has deep roots in Malay society, this daulat thing is a myth. The Japanese, despite their own “Sun Goddess” tradition, had no difficulty disabusing Malay rajas and their subjects of this myth. The surprise was not how quickly the sultans lost their power and prestige, or how quickly they adapted to their new plebeian status during the Japanese Occupation, rather how quickly the Malay masses accepted this new reality of their rajas being ordinary mortals sans daulat.

Only days before the Japanese landed, any Malay peasant who perchance made eye contact with his sultan, may Allah have mercy on him for the sultan certainly would not. When the Japanese took over, those rajas had to scramble with the other villagers for what few fish there were in the river and what scarce mushrooms they could scrape in the jungle. Nobody was bothered with or took heed of the daulat thing. So much for it being deeply entrenched in our culture!

To pursue my point, had the Malayan Union succeeded, our sultans today would have been all tanjak (ceremonial weapon) and desta (headgear); they would have as much status and power as the Sultan of Sulu. 

Across the Strait of Malacca, hitherto Malay sultans are now reduced to ordinary citizens. They and their society are none the worse for that.

Thinkers like Zaid Ibrahim and Bakri Musa represent the cutting edge of the evolving Malay psyche. Having broken free from the totem and taboo of their own upbringing - their cultural and social tempurungs, as it were - they are poised to articulate a rational, more enlightened perspective, thus showing the way forward for their less liberated compatriots.

In effect, Zaid's latest book - and Bakri Musa's learned commentary on it - are valiant attempts to demystify what has long been shrouded in quasi-religious or mystical ritualism, in effect, a residual form of superstitious awe surrounding the concept of royalty itself. They are among a handful of well-educated, clear-headed, eloquent writers who have done the unthinkable by sneaking a peek behind the stage curtains and exposing the elaborate machinery installed by wily wizards to reinforce a deeply entrenched tribal belief that God rules on earth through the ancient institution of monarchy.

For that is literally how monarchs came to be revered and even worshiped in every culture you find on earth. It begins with a visionary leader - it could be a wizard or warlord or both - proclaiming that God rules through him (or, more rarely, her). Over time, this sentiment is restated as "I rule on God's behalf." Fast-forward a few generations, and it is reduced to, simply: "I rule!"

In historical times, the ruler is often confronted with the frightening prospect of being assassinated (as in the case of Julius Caesar and many other emperors), in which event his successor (especially if young and inexperienced) is turned into a puppet king, controlled by grand viziers, senior courtiers and palace officials.

What Mahathir accomplished with his constitutional amendments of 1983 and 1993 was to effectively castrate the monarchy in Malaysia, making it essentially a ceremonial institution - purely symbolic and without political clout. To appease the Sultans, they were encouraged to engage in busyness and offered lucrative contracts which they could then farm out to professional contractors - in the process earning fat commissions to support their extravagant lifestyles. Every so often they would be put on public display as living symbols of national unity; but, over time, their roles were further reduced to "defenders of the faith" and, by extension, emblems of tribal supremacy.

In classifying the Sultans' daulat as "a myth," what Bakri implies is that their hereditary power is not grounded in reality - existing only as an idea in the popular mind. This again suggests that Zaid Ibrahim and Bakri Musa are contemporary thinkers well-versed in logical deduction, analysis, and empiricism. To such minds the word "myth" carries negative connotations: anything mythical, as such, bears greater resemblance to fiction rather than fact.

From the cosmomythological viewpoint, cold facts and bare figures serve only as a reference, as a navigational tool; they are no substitute for the multidimensional complexity of life itself, and the myriad stories that constitute the life of each nation.

It is akin to proclaiming that the divinity of Jesus is a myth. Those who have been raised in a religious tradition that deifies the personality of Jesus the Christ will, most likely, feel offended, if not threatened.

My own take on the question of royalty - in general terms, without limiting the discussion to the constitutional monarchy in Malaysia - is that it certainly helps to zoom out and view the advent of monarchism in a wider historical and mythological framework.

This doesn't take us very far back in time - at most six or seven thousand years. From the Sumerian creation epic Enuma Elish (meaning, literally, "when the gods walked the earth"), we learn that the first monarchs were actually the hybrid offspring of theogamous affairs between gods and human priestesses. Over time, even goddesses were tempted by the heady appeal of mortal flesh: the goddess Ninsun, consort of Lugalbanda, had a fling with an Adapa (a human high priest) named Kullab - and thus Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, was born two-thirds divine and one-third mortal.

But were the Sumerian gods and goddesses truly "divine"? Or were they, in fact, representatives of a more advanced civilization - one among many that had mastered interstellar space and non-linear time - and were embarked on the systematic colonization of remote life-supporting ecosystems?

Even so, what constitutes "divinity" remains unanswered. The word "divine" has its etymology in the Old French (12th century) word devin and perhaps the older Latin term divus - and its origins can be traced to the earlier Sanskrit (1700 BCE) deva (male) and devi (female) - meaning deity. However, in the Buddhist teachings, a deva is defined as "one of many different types of non-human beings who share the characteristics of being more powerful, longer-lived, and, in general, living more contentedly than the average human being."

Jesus and Krishna (courtesy of Arjuna Zbycho)

Most esoteric teachings hint at the distinct possibility that as humans evolve spiritually, they gain access to a vaster range of frequencies. As each soul attains self-mastery. it becomes reintegrated with multidimensional aspects of itself, ultimately attaining to Wholeness (or Holiness). Such Master Souls are said to occasionally volunteer their services in dense, benighted zones wherein they may be perceived as devas and devis offering inspiration and guidance from a safe distance - or else they may opt to physically incarnate as mortals, bravely and voluntarily taking on the trials and tribulations of fleshly existence.

As "heavenly emissaries" or avatars, it is only too easy to succumb to temporary amnesia and begin to get addicted to the euphoria of mass adulation. One doesn't need to incarnate as a god or goddess - even as a pop star or movie queen like Michael Jackson or Marilyn Monroe, the pressures of massive popularity and excessive fame can weigh heavily on the most evolved souls.

Arrogance and, ultimately, contempt for the Great Unwashed inevitably sets in - and even the best of intentions will not insulate us from spiritual entropy - turning dark from despair and succumbing to destructive tendencies. Hence the Fallen Angel metaphor which can be applied to anyone of noble birth who gets ensnared by the density and dimness of the manifest world, and becomes feral, turning predator instead of liberator, tormentor instead of mentor.

Tennyson's classic poem, The Lotos-Eaters, graphically describes a major occupational hazard of adventurism and the empire-building impulse. In Australia this phenomenon is known as "going troppo"... succumbing to the tropical heat and behaving erratically, even self-destructively. One easily gives in to spiritual lassitude and decadence - and this is more or less what happened to the remote descendants of the original Anunnaki bloodlines - those with claim to a bigger proportion of superhuman DNA, inherited from the Sky Gods.

Many of the royal houses in Malaysia (particularly those with Minangkabau roots) claim descent from Alexander the Great (whom they call Iskandar Zulkarnain). Who knows if this is true, but Alexander himself was the offspring of the Macedonian King Philip II and his fourth wife Olympias. His birth was preceded by omens, suggesting that his true father was Zeus, the supreme Olympian god.

My contention is simply this: enlightenment, illumination, nobility, divinity are words that describe software upgrades.

In the very early stages of planetary colonization, the extraterrestrial bloodlines took great pains to maintain genetic purity - and that's why incest was prescribed among those of exalted genealogy. Among ancient Egyptian royals, brother-sister marriages were common; and in more than one instance, mothers were known to marry their own sons, giving rise to the vulgar expression "motherfucker"). Only much later did incest become proscribed, when the "divine" gene pool got too diluted, resulting in too many deformities.

At some juncture, it became apparent that superior intellect and physical prowess were not transmitted exclusively through the chromosomes; that a powerful influence - for example, a new belief system or school of thought - could also replicate itself through empathetic resonance.

In effect, the genetic offspring of an aristocratic marriage will not always inherit the desired traits; often, especially among overly incestuous bloodlines, a dramatic degeneracy occurs. The child of a peasant, if exposed to uplifting influences - say, he or she hears an inspiring story retold by an itinerant troubadour at a tender age - can mutate unpredictably and lay claim to an entirely unexpected destiny, that of a cult hero, perhaps.

In other words, ideas are akin to free-floating cultural memes - and anyone who happens to be paying attention can download these ideas and experience a radical software upgrade. This is completely borne out by the paradigm-shifting discoveries of the late great mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot - who presented the world with fractal geometry, which in turn led to cutting-edge speculation about the holographic nature of all reality.

What this ultimately means is: the traditional notion of hierarchy is entirely illusory. No single entity can legitimately claim to be superior or inferior to any other entity. Each entity is simultaneously unique and universal - just as no two snowflakes or sets of fingerprints are identical.

Indeed, every single one of us is an integral component of the whole in an electromagnetic spectrum of infinite possibilities. The caste system, for instance, was unfairly favorable to an elite Brahmin priesthood - and it was purely in their own self-interest that they conspired to propagate this erroneous view of reality down the generations, effectively exploiting and enslaving billions.

Anyone can, as I did many years ago, stumble upon the realization that each of us has the sacred duty to reclaim our individual sovereignty, dignity, integrity, royalty and divinity. By so doing we attain to self-mastery - which means we regain control of our own destiny as autonomous, free entities in a beautifully and perfectly anarchic universe. (Anarchic actually means "free of judgment and external rules" because the word Archon refers to a judge or ruler).

The true Master is master only of himself or herself - not of other sovereign entities. When this definition of Master is reinstated within our everyday consciousness, the concept of Slavery will be limited to the domain of electrical engineering, wherein the master-slave configuration applies only to current regulation.

Bakri Musa concludes his essay with this bold declaration:

"In a democracy, daulat (sovereignty) resides with the people, not the rajas. Our constitution is clear on that point, as Zaid repeatedly reminds us. We must constantly defend this principle lest it be eroded."

I am in wholehearted agreement, even though we approach the subject from wildly different perspectives.

BAKRI MUSA: THE SULTANS' DAULAT IS A MYTH (PART 1)

BAKRI MUSA: THE SULTANS' DAULAT IS A MYTH (PART 2)

BOOK REVIEW: ZAID IBRAHIM'S AMPUN TUANKU

[First posted 30 August 2012. Reposted 29 November 2014, 25 June 2015, 

23 December 2016, 14 May 2018 & 27 April 2022]

HOW TO SAVE THE EARTH IN 10 MINUTES (revisited)

From a talk by Antares at the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, 18 October 1992

I HAVE TEN MINUTES so let's dispense with formality. Now why am I standing here talking to you today? Who on earth am I anyway? Well, I'll tell you: I'm an essential part of you. I breathe the air you breathe. I'm connected to every living cell on this small planet. I've got billions of names (scientific as well as unscientific ones) but the one I'm using right now is Antares.

I've been around the Sun more than five dozen times. But my genetic memories go all the way back to what scientists call the Big Bang. What do I do? That's a very good question. Well, I breathe and eat and shit and move about like everybody else. But mostly I just think and dream and feel. And I'm amazed and amused by this phenomenon called Life.

Once in a while I get terribly depressed. Then I get angry and scold a few people and I feel all right again. In short, I'm not a specialist. I can see the woods as well as the trees.

Trees! You were probably wondering when I'd get round to talking about our rainforests. In a minute I'll mention them. But first let me finish telling you why I'm standing up here talking to you today.

I lived in Kuala Lumpur for 22 years, in the Ampang area. When I first moved there in 1970 the street in front of my house was so quiet I could rollerskate on it. Now it's lined with 26-storey condos and jammed with cars. So I decided to move to the hills, to a place called Magick River. Everywhere you look all you see is beauty.

Occasionally I go back to KL and when I happen to catch the 11 o'clock news on TV - I can't believe all that stuff is happening in the same Universe. War, famine, hurricanes, plane crashes, stockmarket crashes, oil spills, earthquakes, floods, massacres... there's been a lot of speculation about the Millennium, about the End of the World, the End of History.

Don't worry, it means a new cycle is starting. It's really up to us to shape it. How do we do that? With our thoughts, with our deeds, with our willingness to help in the healing process. But ultimately our Vision has to be centered in the heart - not just in the head. We have to think beyond national boundaries. Earth is one world. Our vision must become whole, holistic, holy - which means we must experience being part of the Whole. We can't depend on slogans, no matter how clever they sound.

But before anything constructive can be done, we need to overcome our own fears. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of change, fear of routine, fear of loss, fear of death, fear of trusting our own inner authority.

Okay, time to talk about trees. A few miles up and down the road from where I live you can see logging trails winding deep into the hills. Magnificent jungle giants being cut down and taken out to be turned into chopsticks for the Japanese. Why don't they learn to eat with their fingers like civilized people?

Now these concessions are adjacent to areas designated as Permanent Forest Reserves. It's a water catchment area, for heaven's sake. No wonder all the once-crystalline rivers now turn into kopi susu tarik (Malaysian capuccino) everytime it rains heavily.


One afternoon many years ago I rode my motorbike up a dirt track and found myself in a deserted logging camp. There was a huge pile of logs lying lifelessly about. Something snapped in my head. I saw it all so clearly: a few businessmen and politicians getting obscenely rich by plundering our rainforests - heedless of the catastrophic consequences to everyone else.

Toothpick factories where shady 300-year-old trees once stood. Assembly-line houses, condos and shopping malls sprouting everywhere. Sterile wastelands they call industrial parks. Sheer ugliness obliterating anything natural, anything truly beautiful. Dishonesty and greed and hardnosed cynicism in every boardroom of every corporation big enough to make a dent in reality. All of this came to a sudden focus in one astounding revelation.

These Umnoputra and Umnoputri with their logging concessions... why on earth are they so anxious to destroy a major watershed? To make big bucks of course and for what? To buy a big house and a couple of Porsches and a SUV with a mobile phone or two and then on weekends they can roar through the jungle armed with shotguns so they can shoot down a few wild mangos. I swear this actually happened in front of my house.

And their kids with baseball caps on their heads and Nikes on their feet... why, they just wanna be all-American Malaysians. That's what they grew up absorbing in front of their TV sets. And the most incredible thing is... these people form the ruling class. Good heavens, the world is in the wrong hands!

I'm not just talking about this country. I mean the whole goddamn world is in the wrong hands. It's in the hands of individuals who stubbornly insist that MIGHT IS RIGHT. And why shouldn't they. They're VERY POWERFUL PEOPLE. Or so they've managed to make a lot of us believe. Now how did it happen? How did our planet fall into the wrong hands? I think I know how it happened but I have only ten minutes, so you'll have to fill in a lot of blanks. I can only give you the barest outline of the story, so please pay close attention.



ONCE UPON A TIME (or perhaps an Eternity) the only One who owned anything at all was that entity some of us call God or Wakan Tanka or Great Spirit. Only problem was, there was NOTHING to own since the Supreme Being existed solely in Its Own Imagination. Never underestimate the power of the Imagination.

Anyway at some unimaginable point the Wholly One became aware of Itself. That's when the Big Bang is supposed to have occurred. I say "supposed" because there wasn't any BANG as such. It was more like the Entire Universe waking up and realizing... Hey! I AM!

And so it began to breathe: out, in, out, in, out... expansion and contraction... centrifugal and centripetal force... now where these two Forces overlapped MATTER condensed out of SPIRIT. Are you still with me? Good. Let's fast forward...

Now in one of these pockets of Matter our solar system exists. Counting from the Sun, the third planet is this "bluegreen pearl" we call Earth. Don't ask me for details. There's a Mystery yet to be solved. Let's say that at some point in Earth's early evolution the planet had to be quarantined from the rest of the Universe. Which meant NO DIRECT ACCESS TO THE HIERARCHY OF EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY EMANATING FROM THE SUPREME BEING.

Instead we were saddled with a few penghulus: local representatives known as Kings and Queens. Originally all Royalty was appointed by Divine Decree ("You over there with the spectacles; you'll be the Class Monitor.") The tribe would then anoint the chosen candidate for rulership (and from this comes the word charisma, from the Greek chrisma meaning "sacred oil.") So the word REAL as in REALITY or REALM means ROYAL - APPOINTED BY GOD.

Real Estate should read ROYAL ESTATE: property managed by the earthly representatives of the Supreme Being. No one is allowed to buy or sell or muck around with it without the authorization of a Rightful Monarch.



Sound idea but who's a Rightful Monarch? It's been a hell of a long time since the "Sons of God" came over and mixed their genes with the local primates. These days it gets harder and harder to tell just who was Born for Glory and who's still a Baboon (don't you be fooled by their bow-ties and silk shirts).

I just wanted to let you have the Big Picture. So we can talk about Management Policies on this planet: who has the authority to define the sort of activity that goes on here? Kings and Queens and their Legal Representatives, right? But what do we do when, for example, we find ourselves stuck with a syphilitic braindead ruler whose legal reps are more inclined towards ILLEGAL DEALS? How can we check and balance things?

Well, we could leave it to the Law of Karma, to Divine Justice... in other words, we could leave it to Nature. After all, no matter what we do to this planet she can't die. Sure, she could turn really mean and ugly and unfit for human habitation - but that doesn't mean the planet's dead. That only means WE are dead. Unless we mutate into ninja cockroaches or intelligent poison bogs.

Hey, don't worry, be happy - the Earth will go on spinning quite merrily round the Sun for another 15 million years or so... until the Sun decides to go on vacation or transforms into Something Altogether Different. (Is my ten minutes up?) See... the Earth is quite safe, she's absolutely fine, no worries. However, we do need to consider what's going to become of the human race.



I think the only way we can determine how we - collectively, as a species - would like this priceless piece of prime property called Earth to look is to make sure she's in the right hands. Any volunteers for the job? Come on, don't be bashful. Just hold up your hand, like this...

Congratulations, you've got the job! One of the first things you'll have to do when you take over the day-to-day management of Spaceship Earth is to make sure that people like Chief Ministers and their family members aren't permitted anywhere near a forest with their chainsaws and bulldozers. No one must be allowed to tamper with the ecosystem who doesn't have an inborn sensitivity to its secret life.

There's no such thing as a "thing." It's all energy transforming itself infinitely in a sacred dance we're intimately part of. So how can we describe a field of paddy, fruit-bearing trees, chickens, bamboo groves, fish, mineral-rich mountains, ducks, sheep, wild berries, clear streams, sugarcane, all forms of life support spun out of sunlight, as "commodities and resources"? It's as crass as calling your beloved a meatball.

What's in a name? Well, call someone "enemy" and you can kill him. Call him "friend" and you can love. If we knew the trees in our area each by name, would we turn them into furniture without at least a prayer of thanks?

Times are changing fast. We are the caretakers of Earth. Let's not muck around simply because we don't expect a surprise visit from the Supreme Being, the one and only original owner of everything. Even if you don't believe in stuff like this, do it for yourself, do it for your grandchildren.

And speaking of wrong hands and right hands, what's wrong today can become right tomorrow and vice versa. So we absolutely need to have Cosmic Accounting and Accountability on all levels, public and private.

Secrecy is evil. Why hide the skeletons in your closet? Everybody's got one or two. Open the doors, let in some fresh air and some truth.

Cosmic Accounting requires an appreciation of the largest possible context in which we are conducting our daily affairs. We have to look up from our notebooks and feel the breeze from time to time. Cosmic Accountability demands something called Freedom of Information - or at least an independent press. (I know our irascible friend Dr M once boasted that Malaysia has the freest press in the world. Good sense of humor, Doc. I know how you detest folks like me. You call us "anti-development" and "anti-progress" - even "anti-government" and "anti-national." You got it wrong, Doc. We're only anti your shallow, hollow, densely materialistic and spiritually retarded perspective on reality!)

Seriously though, folks like me - and all green souls gathered here to celebrate our greenery - are just Nature's way of jamming on the brakes. So we won't hurtle over the cliffs of relentless development like a herd of swine possessed by demons of ruthless ambition and greed. There's a time for Action and a time for Quiet Contemplation. But Contemplation must take precedence. Otherwise our actions will lead us all to a hell of our own making.

Finally - and this is the most vital thought I want to share with you - remember the Environment begins with your own physical being. Your body is the first definition of Environment. Then it extends to your home, your bioregion, your planet, your solar system, and so on. Take care of it and be aware.


Be aware of your own Infinite Potential. You may be only ONE individual. But then so is GOD. Don't forget we all came from the Big Bang. And I hope we're all heading for the BIG BANK where we shall claim our divine genetic inheritance which has been accruing interest since 20 Billion BCE or so.

Then we'll ALL be fabulously rich, rich beyond our wildest fantasies... and we won't have to go round chopping down lovely old trees to sell as toothpicks and chopsticks.

Thank you.

Antares © 1992, 2014, 2024

[First posted 11 September 2008, reposted 18 December 2014 & 22 April 2017]

WHAT THIS NATION NEEDS NOW ARE SULTANS THAT SWING!

Live 1988 at London Wembley to celebrate Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday. Dire Straits at their best with a bit of help from Eric Clapton.

Mark Knopfler - guitar/lead vocal
Eric Clapton - rhythm guitar
John Isley - bass
Guy Fletcher - keyboard
Terry Williams - drums
Alan Clark - piano/keyboard

I would support any move to replace our present royal houses with charismatic and truly talented musicians.

Why? Well, musicians have an innate sense of melody and harmony, excellent pitch and rhythm, they're experts at inspiring and uplifting rather than bringing people down... and the vast majority are savvy enough to get off the stage before their audiences start yawning.

Apart from that, I find that most musicians get along fine with each other once they get jamming, regardless of what sort of music they play, and wherever musicians go in the world it's real easy for them to make friends and communicate with other musos.

Our new rotating "Sultans of Swing" can get together a few times a year to do a spectacular nationwide tour to keep all Malaysians dancing and celebrating life and jumping for joy.

This is my personal tribute to Malaysia's TRUE kings and queens. Well-loved performers like (to name but a few at random) Amy, M. Nasir, Ning Baizura, Ramli Sarip, Paul Ponnadurai, Rafique Rashid, Julian Mokhtar, Amir Yussof, Sahara Yaacob, Ella, Jamal Abdillah, Khatijah Ibrahim, Zainal Abidin, Sheila Majid, Sharifah Aini, Ito, Michael Veerapen, Josie Thomas, Francissca Peters, Zainal Razak, Jaclyn Victor, Andy Peterson, Gary Gideon, Albert Sirimal, Vijay David, Azmyl Yunor, Joe Kidd, Poe... the list (which hasn't been updated since 2009) goes on and on but I'm sure you get the picture!

[First posted 12 May 2009]