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

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…