Challenging the triumphalist narrative of Enlightenment secularism. According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a past dominated by religion and superstition. But in Let There Be Enlightenment, Anton M. Matytsin, Dan Edelstein, and the contributors they have assembled deftly undermine this simplistic narrative. Emphasizing the ways in which religious beliefs and motivations shaped philosophical perspectives, essays in this book highlight figures and topics often overlooked in standard genealogies of the Enlightenment. The volume underscores the prominent role that religious discourses continued to play in major aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought. The essays probe a wide range of subjects, from reformer Jan Amos Comenius’s quest for universal enlightenment to the changing meanings of the light metaphor, Quaker influences on Baruch Spinoza’s theology, and the unexpected persistence of Aristotle in the Enlightenment. Exploring the emergence of historical consciousness among Enlightenment thinkers while examining their repeated insistence on living in an enlightened age, the collection also investigates the origins and the long-term dynamics of the relationship between faith and reason. Providing an overview of the rich spectrum of eighteenth-century culture, the authors demonstrate that religion was central to Enlightenment thought. The term “enlightenment” itself had a deeply religious connotation. Rather than revisiting the celebrated breaks between the eighteenth century and the period that preceded it, Let There Be Enlightenment reveals the unacknowledged continuities that connect the Enlightenment to its various antecedents. Contributors: Philippe Buc, William J. Bulman, Jeffrey D. Burson, Charly Coleman, Dan Edelstein, Matthew T. Gaetano, Howard Hotson, Anton M. Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter

Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter

Enlightenment has fascinated people for millenia. *Let Your Soul Sing* overturns the commonly held belief that enlightenment is a state of consciousness possible only for a few rare individuals living in a forest or monastery. It points out that enlightenment is in fact the most natural state of life, available to everyone through simple, effortless meditation techniques that expand human awareness and perception of the truly unified reality of life. This book follows the author s journey on the path of enlightenment and also gives accounts of athletes, artists, musicians, and people from all walks of life who have had spontaneous experiences of higher states of consciousness at some point. Many never had a framework to understand their experiences or to systematically develop them. *Let Your Soul Sing* lays out the systematic knowledge of seven states of consciousness and how they can be easily unfolded through the experience of transcendence. It highlights extensive scientific research that confirms the development of health and brain functioning gained through meditation, and also explains how individuals experiencing inner peace simultaneously contribute to the creation of world peace. The style is easy reading, with anecdotes, quotes, short poems, and analysis of recent world events woven throughout. For more information and to download 2 free chapters, visit: http: //www.enlightenmentforeveryone.com/ "A beautiful synthesis of heart and mind, this book is written from the personal and truthful perspective of an individual who has absorbed the depth and breadth of Maharishi's extraordinarily profound and practical knowledge. It reveals how growth toward enlightenment is expressed through tender, subjective experiences of the transcendent. It also shows how enlightenment may be understood from a completely objective scientific point of view as the progressive refinement and development of total neurophysiological functioning." Dr. Keith Wallace Founding President and Trustee of Maharishi University of Management, Dean of the College of Perfect Health and Professor of Physiology, and author of The Neurophysiology of Enlightenment. "This book is a profound gift. Beautifully written, it gently opens our eyes to who we truly are and guides us in accessing the divine wisdom, peace and bliss within each one of us. Ann Purcell weaves the teachings of Maharishi with her personal journey to provide the keys to transformation." Amy Hatkoff Child and family advocate, parenting educator, filmmaker, and author of The Inner World of Farm Animals; You are My World: How a Parent's Love Shapes a Baby's Mind; and How To Save The Children. "Let Your Soul Sing is a brilliant and simply written reflection on how to live a life of joy, balance, and wholeness. As such, it is a roadmap to personal fulfillment, creative expression, and a gentler, kinder, more balanced world. While Let Your Soul Sing is for everyone, women in particular will find their own essential, divine, nourishing nature reflected back to them through this book." Candace Badgett Chairman of the Global Mother Divine Organization, President of the Global Health Foundation for Women, and Director of The Raj Ayurveda Health Center and Spa"

Carrick Ares grows up without any particular beliefs in anything. He is boring, and proudly so. Yet when he suddenly dies in a car accident, he experiences what he feels to be the afterlife. It then causes him to go through a huge existential crisis. The only person with whom he speaks about it is a psychiatrist, Paul Turnstone. They together explore the theories Carrick has about life. Carrick goes mad and thinks that he finds the truth of existence. Struggling to dress himself, hinders not his adamance that he knows the answers to the biggest questions of life. He produces a book, The Religion of Self-Enlightenment, which becomes the expression of his theories. It discusses exactly how to heal the crises which are now plaguing individuals and the wider world.

The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters tells nothing less than the story of how the modern, Western view of the world was born. Cultural and intellectual historian Anthony Pagden explains how, and why, the ideal of a universal, global, and cosmopolitan society became such a central part of the Western imagination in the ferment of the Enlightenment - and how these ideas have done battle with an inward-looking, tradition-oriented view of the world ever since. Cosmopolitanism is an ancient creed; but in its modern form it was a creature of the Enlightenment attempt to create a new 'science of man', based upon a vision of humanity made up of autonomous individuals, free from all the constraints imposed by custom, prejudice, and religion. As Pagden shows, this 'new science' was based not simply on 'cold, calculating reason', as its critics claimed, but on the argument that all humans are linked by what in the Enlightenment were called 'sympathetic' attachments. The conclusion was that despite the many tribes and nations into which humanity was divided there was only one 'human nature', and that the final destiny of the species could only be the creation of one universal, cosmopolitan society. This new 'human science' provided the philosophical grounding of the modern world. It has been the inspiration behind the League of Nations, the United Nations and the European Union. Without it, international law, global justice, and human rights legislation would be unthinkable. As Anthony Pagden argues passionately and persuasively in this book, it is a legacy well worth preserving - and one that might yet come to inherit the earth.

This introduction explores the history of the 18th-century Enlightenment movement. Considering its intellectual commitments, Robertson then turns to their impact on society, and the ways in which Enlightenment thinkers sought to further the goal of human betterment, by promoting economic improvement and civil and political justice.

Throughout the book he relates the Enlightenment to Protestant Christianity, for it is out of the clashes and reconciliations between those two systems that 19th-century American culture--a culture that lasted almost to our own time--took shape. Defined so broadly, the religion of Enlightenment obviously included many different kinds of people--deists and skeptics and liberal Christians, aristocrats and democrats, conservatives and revolutionaries. May divides the European Enlightenment into four major categories, and shows how each had a different effect in America. Obviously some ideas could be transmitted more easily than others to a society overwhelmingly Protestant and rapidly becoming democratic. May shows how the Enlightenment affected the thoughts and actions of major figures like Jefferson, Franklin, and John Adams, but these familiar figures are treated against a background of less well-known people--doctors and ministers, scientists and planters and politicians.