Great video! I've recently been interested in non-dualism and I feel that it has a similar principle to Kierkegaard's religious stage, you realise that "God" or whatever you want to call it is to be found by perceiving inward not searching outwardly. God is no other but the self. Do you know much about non-dualism? I'd be interested to see your thoughts on it
Just take care that the inward not only is a sneaky way of hedonism and selflove. In my experience God has to be more than the self, even though the self is created in Gods image. For Kierkegaard the self is kind of a duality between the finite and the infinite, the self is the reflection on that dualtiy. Even though i am not sure if K. is a dualist.
I loved Kierkegaard and his stages for decades. But now I find it too Lutheran, and consider Beauty as a convertible name of God, making Beauty a focus and a form of prayer. This is a kind of divine aesthetic life.
It sounds like the religious stage could be called mystical instead which transcends the organizational and conventional aspects of religion. In some ways this schema seems like the Hindu concept of life stages.
Even though Kierkegaard was a Christian, the religious stage does seem to entail a more mystical set of commitments, rather than conventional dogma. However, Kierkegaard also tells us that we, at the end of the day, must embrace the “absurd.” God, who is infinite and eternal, at the same time, became a human being and entered in our earthly time. It is the ultimate paradox according to Kierkegaard, but we must take that leap of faith. So you are right, it does transcend conventional aspects of religion, which I really like. People need to become aware of the mystery of being again.
Kierkegaard actually divides the first and last "stages" or levels into two: The Aesthetic into immediate and reflective (the latter much omitted on the video) and the Religious into religion A and Religion B, which represent A: common religiousness and B: Christianity, a faith in God-Man Jesus Christ who actually walked on the earth 2000 years ago. A whole another theme is the critique of the spiritless established Christendom by Kierkegaard. He did not criticize the dogma, but that "nobody believe the dogma".
The purpose of religion, even those manifestations that have become dogmatic and spiritually oppressive, has always been the search for a transcendental point of view. "Religion"'s narrow definition and negative connotations are likely more recent than Kirkegaard and irrelevant to him anyway as he was acutely Christian.
