Don't want to see Ads? Register for your free dotSUB account here!
Brother David Steindl-Rast's speech at the International Transpersonal Conference
Duration:
12 minutes and 45 seconds
Country:
Russia
Language:
English
Genre:
None
Director:
Altstates.net
Views:
753
(22
embedded)
Posted by:
turiyatita on Jul 10, 2010
Part of speech given by Br. David Steindl-Rast on June, 26, in Moscow, Russia. Video recorded for the http://altstates.net project.
Translate and Transcribe
-
Sign In/Register for dotSUB to translate this video.
Share
- Embed Video
- Embed normal player
- Embed a smaller player
- Advanced Embedding Options
-
Embedding OptionsSize:Language:Embed Code
- Embed transcript
- Embed transcript in:
-
Invite a user to dotSUB
Your invitation to join dotSUB was successfulThere was an error inviting that user to dotSUB
Video Transcription
Show in new window
- We belong together
- and formally that order of the people who belong together
- was drawn very narrowly
- Primitive tribes often considered only themselves to be humans
- and everybody else was "the Others"
- and you could treat them any way you wanted
- but the humans, it was us
- they treated them [...] belongs together morally right
- The circle has widened and widened
- And now this is no longer ethical at all to exclude anyone or anything
- And not only all humans must be included
- but all animals, all plants, the whole Kosmos
- All must be included in order to make ethics really ethical
- To make [morals moral]
- So we have already two elements
- that belong to every religion, doctrine, and morals
- And now comes the third one
- because your emotions also do something when you have this peak experience
- And your emotions come in and celebrate
- "This was beautiful! Let's celebrate!"
- And this is the beginning and the seed of ritual
- Ritual is the celebration of mystic union
- And even if you're [...] of religion, again, many of you had a peak experience
- somewhere on a bench in one of those beautiful parks here
- in Moscow
- sitting on this bench and suddenly have this beautiful experience
- of Oneness with God
- Well, on your way to work you might want to make your little
- detour and visit this bench and
- just have another "Oh I sat on this bench and I had that good feeling"
- And every time you go by it would be that you have that good feeling again
- That is a little pilgrimage, so you have already a ritual in your life
- Or on your birthday you celebrate
- or on some anniversary you celebrate
- what happened then [...]
- And that is a really [...] calendar
- the beginning of it
- So from your own experience you know that
- inevitably from the peak experience, from the mystic experience springs all the elements that are associated with religion
- But now you [...] those on, and community takes over
- because religion is always a matter of community
- spirituality is also a matter of community
- And now the community as a whole sets limits
- and boxes things in
- and makes things hardened
- For instance, doctrine which formally just always referred you back
- and reminded you of the original mystical experience
- becomes doctrinea
- "And it has to be this way and everybody who says it differently must be wrong."
- So suddenly it has become dogma
- The same with ethics:
- Formally it was just one way of expressing
- how one acts [when one] belongs together
- Now it has to be done exactly this way it has always been done
- even though the circumstances have changed completely
- And that becomes now moralism
- —another "-ism"—and
- ritual which formally was the celebration, a spontaneous celebration
- often mystic experience in whatever form it needed to be celebrated
- and wanted to be celebrated
- suddenly has become "you have to do it exactly in this way"
- "and you have to hold your hands exactly in that way"
- "and you have to follow exactly in this way"
- "and walk exactly in this way"
- And suddenly it has become ritualism
- And this is no longer a ritual
- It is as if the life-giving waters, this gush full of the mystic experience
- suddenly freeze
- I see all these beautiful fountains here in Moscow
- And I imagined in winter either they shut them off
- or they are really ice sculptures—whatever happens—
- but I see some of the religions in the world
- and they're all not excluded
- in many ways like one of those frozen fountains
- So what do you do with frozen life-giving waters?
- You have to thaw it up again
- you make it liquid again
- How can we do that?
- Only with the warmth of our own heart
- Only with the love of our own heart
- And that's the only warmth that can turn frozen water
- living water, spiritual water
- into a life-giving water
- So religion is not simply like a train that you get on
- and then we'll get you there
- but it is a gift and at the same time a task
- It is the task to make it what it is meant to be
- It gives you watch, it gives you watch,
- it brings you watch from the original inspiration
- but you have to make it your own
- but with your own life
- brought with your own warmth of your own heart
- The two always go together
- So once we see that
- once we see how we get inevitably from
- the mystic experience to religion
- that we also see that [friending] God
- what is God
- is a task of the human heart
- is a task of our love
- And so we can ask now the question
- the second question
- We answered the question of [what] God [is], [that it's] an open-ended search
- And now we ask, "How do we experience God?"
- And here we could say
- —we could switch for a moment, I'm going to come back to the meaning
- when we answer the third question—
- But now try to answer the second question
- and there I would say
- How do we experience God—again, from your own experience
- You know that we live in a given world
- every moment is a given moment
- Your own being here is a given, as we say
- it's a given fact
- You have not made it, you have not earned it
- you haven't paid for it
- you haven't contributed to it
- It's given, it's simply here
- It's given.
- And that confronts us with [...] of experience of Divine
- and through grateful living
- if the whole world and everything in it
- is a given—and nobody can deny that!
- (you don't have to be of this religion or that religion, this conviction, that conviction
- this ethnic background or that)—
- Every human being would have to face the fact
- that we live in a given world
- If it's a given world
- then we can experience it through grateful living
- And the first thing that we experience
- is that it comes from a totally mysterious source
- which we could call the Source
- or the Giver
- if you want to personify it
- but there it is:
- we're [finding] ourselves in a given world
- and so that's this mysterious Giver
- this mysterious Source. We know nothing about
- except that if you explore it
- —science explores it, spirituality explores it, poetry explores it, arts and music
- everybody explores it—
- and [that's] more and ever more and ever more
- and becomes more
- And this dimension of more and ever more is one aspect
- of the Giver
- or the Source of everything
- But then out of this Source comes everything
- there is
- And of this everything there is
- there is also more and ever more; we come to no end
- the hundred thousand things
- as the Hindu tradition calls it
- There's more and ever more and ever more
- all of those
- are honest gifts that you and I, we are part of it
- And that is also divine in a sense because
- it'll never come to an end
- in that sense, divine.
- And that is the Gift.
- So we experience it more and ever more—which is a term for the Ultimate
- is a term for God—
- on the one hand, as the Source or the Giver
- on the other hand, as the Gift
- And now we can
- —The natural thing is to give it all back
- through this dynamic energy
- that wants to give it back
- and you don't have to say "Thank you!"
- Grandchildren show themselves grateful—they don't show themselves grateful by saying "Thank you"
- when you bring them the gift
- and they say "Thank you" but then play with something else
- you would say they were very well trained
- but you will not say they were very grateful
- But when they play with it!—they never say "thank you" but play with it all afternoon—
- you will afterward say they did really thankful work there
- so the same with us
- We don't have to say "Thank you"
- We don't even have to go to—
- we would want to go and sing praises
- but if you forget to do that—we show ourselves grateful by what we do
- A mother shows herself grateful by being a mother
- flower shows itself grateful by blooming
- these beautiful chrysanthemums here
- A bird shows herself grateful by singing
- A scientist shows himself grateful by doing science, and so forth
- A musician, by making music
- A dancer, the dancing
- We show ourselves grateful by what we do
- by this dynamic element
- Andrew Cohen spoke last night
- He spoke about the Unmanifest and the Manifest
- and this dynamic element
- The Unmanifest is the source from which everything comes
- The Manifest is everything there is
- and dynamics is the love and the creativity and all the energy that we put into it
- and those of you who are familiar with the Christian tradition
- inevitably have noticed already that what we are talking about is
- what in the Christian tradition we call God
- or Father
- I also say Mother
- Father, Mother, God, [...], Logos, and the Holy Spirit
- And you have this beautiful Rublyov icon of the Trinity
- and that is the most beautiful image of the Trinity that should come to mind in this context
- For what's important about this is that the moment we started asking
- how do we experience God
- We have gotten to a new emerging God-image
- and it is obvious emerging
- It is emerging in our time in this sense
- that more people than before become aware of it
- But it is obvious emerging
- You can say, and then we have emerged [...]
- No, it is emerging because you go on and on and on and on
- to ever new discoveries
- In that sense it's an open-ended notion of God
- an open-ended God view
- and it is a God view in which we are totally
- immersed
- It is no longer a God outside
- We can no longer live in our time
- when we know that everything hangs together with everything
- We can no longer with the God that is somebody else…


Report this video as offensive