What Is Enlightenment? Theories about Knowing Yourself Beneath Your Societal Identity, God and the Unseen Realm from Plato, Isaac Newton, Jean-Jacques

"Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment? is a short piece written by Immanuel Kant in 1784. It is a profound and candid explanation of the importance of being your own self, and thinking for yourself. He describes this as a state of enlightenment.... ...Over 2,000 years ago Plato suggested that there was something special about each individual; that there was something magical that lay within each of us, something that gives us happiness, knowledge, and the key to the world. That magical something is our soul. He said that so many people are caught up in the world around them, that it is as if they are chained within a cave with reality being so distant and blurred that it can only be seen as shadows on a wall. Throughout the years many other philosophers and physicists, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, have repeatedly suggested the same thing. They say that to find peace, comfort, passion and happiness, people must look inside and get to know themselves, or their soul. And that within our selves lay limitless knowledge about what we cannot see or touch in the physical world. Our soul exists somewhere that is beyond empirical reasoning. Many believe this is where God resides. Others simply call it the Other World. This book examines these theories and suggests ways to help everyone turn away from just seeing shadows on a cave to seeing full reality; to seeing ourselves and our soul... " (From the Introduction).