Brother David Steindl-Rast's speech at the International Transpersonal Conference

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Duration: 12 minutes and 45 seconds

Country: Russia

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives

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.

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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…

Brother David Steindl-Rast's speech at the International Transpersonal Conference

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