Knowledge isn’t always taught. Sometimes, it is given...

Sometimes we think of lineage as something you can only trace physically. Teacher to student, master to disciple, one hand passing to the next. But Malay cosmology has always entertained another possibility – that lineage can also arrive through the unseen. Not learned step by step, but diilhamkan, “downloaded” into the heart and body of a practitioner.

This isn’t as alien as it sounds. If the universe itself is written in patterns and principles, then the human mind and spirit are not merely storage devices – they are receivers. Just as a radio picks up frequencies, some silat masters have long claimed to pick up entire sequences, jurus, even philosophies of their art, directly from that hidden layer of reality.

Science is slowly catching up to what tradition has long intuited. Biologist Dr. Douglas Youvan once suggested that humans are not only transmitters of culture but receivers of deep, coded patterns in nature. His work explored how biological systems absorb information from their environment in ways we don’t yet fully understand. If our cells and senses can respond to subtle signals, then why not our higher faculties? What silat masters call ilham might be an expression of this same principle – information carried not by books or voices, but by resonance.

Skeptics might call this fantasy. But then, how do we explain the uncanny similarities of movements across different schools that had no contact? How do we explain a guru who never trained under a particular lineage yet produces forms almost identical to it? In the Malay world, such phenomena are often not questioned but recognized as part of the larger cosmological order.

And here’s the crux: authenticity isn’t determined by whether it was “downloaded” or “taught.” It is tested through practice, verified by peers, and measured against the principles of tauhid. If it aligns with truth, uplifts the soul, and strengthens the body and community, then it is real enough.

Lineage, then, may be both horizontal – from human to human – and vertical, from the unseen to the seen. The question is, are we ready to accept that knowledge, like silat itself, doesn’t always walk the straight road, but sometimes descends from above, like rain.

Pak Ku Nara
17 August 2025

#SilatLineage #WarisanMelayu #AppliedSilat #IlmuBatin #SpiritualTransmission #HiddenKnowledge