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. Each contribution is designed to speak to you personally, with specific suggestions at the end of each short essay explaining how you can implement the lessons in your life. I want to provide you with insights that you can apply from some of our most esteemed teachers, rather than have you learn their poetry and prose and passively conclude, “Well, that’s nice for a literature or humanities class, but that was then and this is now.” I recommend that you read each selection with an openness to the idea that these towering minds share the same divinity and life force as you do and are talking to you directly in their own unique language and art form, and that you are going to apply their wisdom to your life beginning today!

As I wrote each of these essays, I looked at a portrait or photograph of the teacher I was highlighting and I would literally ask the individual, “What would you like those of us here today to know?”—and I would listen and surrender. I allowed myself to experience their guidance and my writing became almost automatic. It may sound strange, but I actually felt the presence of those writers and poets with me as I wrote each of these sixty pieces.

Many of the selections in this book are poems. I view poetry as a language of the heart-not just a form of entertainment or a subject to get past in school, but another way to transform our lives by communicating our wisdom to one another. Here are three examples from my own life of how poetry, the language of the heart, has touched me.

Many years ago, when I received my doctorate, I was at a festive celebration where I was given many nice gifts. The gift that touched me most deeply was a poem written by my mother, which still hangs in my office almost thirty years later. I reproduce it here to illustrate how poetry, which doesn’t have to originate in the minds of renowned celebrities, can touch us where we live.

A mother can but guide …

then step aside—I knew

I could not say, “This is the way

that you should go.”

For I could not foresee

what paths might beckon you

to unimagined heights

that I might never know.

Yet, always in my heart

I realized

That you would touch a star …

I’m not surprised!

When my oldest daughter, Tracy, was just a toddler of five or six, she sent me a picture she had drawn in school along with a poem that expressed from her tender heart how she felt. Her mother and I had separated, and she knew the pain that I felt in not living with her every day. This too has been framed and hangs on the wall next to my desk.

Even if the sun stops shining,

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