Steindl-Rast’s Keynote Video on Integral Christianity

„We all have mystical experiences – A mystic in not a special type of human being, every human being is a special kind of mystic. And that means You.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

In 2018 Integral European Conference we had the privilege to hear and meet Brother David in person as one of our keynote speakers talking about integral christanity and universal spirituality. His humbleness, gratefulness combined with great wisdom and deep understanding of different spiritual aspects makes him a very creditable lecturer.

He was born on 12 July 1926 in Austria but in 1952 he moved to America with his family. Later became an American benedictian monk, roman chatholic teologist, antropologist, psychologist and writer of more than 500 articles, 30 books. He is the cofounder and spiritual leader of Network for Grateful Living organisation that aims to increase the influence of gratefulness as transforming power in the lives of individuals and society. (https://gratefulness.org)

By defining the world „religion” we get a clear sense by Brother David of what this world origially means: „To retieing our bonds that has been broken. Our religiousness is a process of tieing again the bond between us and our true self. Between us and all others. Between us and the ultimate reality.”

In his talk Brother David explains how do we get from religiousity to all the religions and how a „peak experience” led to the different explonations and different churches. We can understand how rituals come to the picture but what are the shadows of becoming rigid in them. It is heartwarming to hear that to find the way back to the religious/spiritual experience from moralism, dogmatism or religiousness is actually by warming our hearts.

If you wish to grasp the significance of the 3 questions of Why? What? How? and how they are related to integral christanity and universal spirituality, then watch this video:

With Love, The IEC team