INTRODUCTION

      In my mind I can picture what the world was like in other times, and I am fascinated by what those people who lived before us might have felt in their hearts. To imagine that Pythagoras, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Michelangelo, Shelley, Shakespeare, Emerson, and so many of those we revere as our teachers and spiritual leaders actually walked on the same ground, drank the same water, watched the same moon, and were warmed by the same sun as I am today intrigues me considerably. Even more intriguing is what these greatest minds of all time would like us to know.

      I have come to the conclusion that in order to effect deep inner spiritual change in our world, we need to know and live in our personal lives the wisdom these eminent teachers from our past have left us. Many of these profound teachers were considered troublemakers, and some were even put to death for their beliefs. Their teachings, however, could never be silenced, as evidenced by the variety of topics from differing historical eras that are in this book. Their words live on and their advice for having a deeper and a richer experience of life is here for you to read and apply. This collection is a compendium of the wisdom from those topics and times, and what I feel those wise and creative thinkers are telling us now about how to create deep inner spiritual change.

      In a sense, those of us who now occupy Planet Earth are in many ways connected to all those who lived here before us. We may have new technologies and modern conveniences, but we still share the same heart space, and the same energy or life force that flowed through their bodies now flows through ours. It is to this mind picture and shared energy that this book is dedicated. What do those ancestral scholars, whom we consider the wisest and most spiritually advanced, have to say to us today?

      Their observations of life’s greatest lessons are in the prose, poetry, and speeches that they left for us to read and listen to. Though they lived in a separate time with quite different living conditions, they still speak to you and to me. In essence, these brilliant minds of our past are still with us through their words.

      I have chosen to highlight sixty of our ancestral teachers, all of whom command my admiration and respect. They are a diverse group, representing ancient, medieval, Renaissance, early modern, and modern times, from all around our world. Some lived into their nineties and others died in their early twenties. Male, female; black, white, Native American, Far Eastern, Middle Eastern; scholars, soldiers, scientists, philosophers, poets, and statesmen, they are here, and they have something to say to you personally.

      The choice of these sixty people in no way infers that those who are not in this book are any less significant. Each selection and each contributor were simply my choices to illuminate these subjects. It is as simple as that. Had I included all the great teachers of the past, you would need to rent a trailer and a crane just to lift this book, so prodigious are the offerings of our ancestors!

      I have written each piece in a way that explains how these noble masters’ works might benefit you directly, here and now.