Literature is the song of our common humanity sung throughout time by thousands of brilliant voices. Literature inquires into the nature of life, through the incandescent lens of language. It tells the poetic, dramatic, eternal tale of our common existence.

To study literature is to expand your awareness, to experience what life is and what human beings are capable of. Literature chronicles human trials and triumphs — the victories that transcend our physical, mental, and spiritual limitations. Literature is our window into life’s most compelling truths. It knits the world together into one inseparable family. As the poet Ezra Pound said, literature is “the news that stays the news." 

To study literature is to explore the imagination. We must love both truth and beauty — which, according to the poet John Keats, amount to the same thing and which literature supplies in abundance. We must love language, for language is the palette from which writers paint the human spirit. Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Alice Walker — these are among the writers who give us new eyes into what is joyful, cosmic, beautiful, and worthy of intellectual pursuit.

Literary study at Maharishi University of Management fulfills the goals of the best liberal arts programs, but with a wider vision. You'll understand the source of all literature — the silent field of unbounded creativity and intelligence deep within. You'll understand the goal of literature — to refine our sensibilities and promote growth of higher states of consciousness. And you'll directly develop your own creativity and intelligence from within, so that you are increasingly able to meet great writers at their own level — while creating great works of your own. Our program helps culture world citizens who will help create a sustainable and enlightened world.