The book is based on twenty years research and, crucially, the author has been helped to understand what is encoded in key texts by a high level initiate of more than one secret society, in one case initiated to the highest degree. Leonardo, Newton, Washington, Napoleon and an astonishing number of the great men and women who have made history are shown to have used the secret techniques to achieve altered states that have been nurtured and preserved by the societies. There, they believe, they access a higher intelligence and see the world as it really is. Great works of art, scientific discoveries and historic decisions are shown to have arisen out of these altered states - and with a remarkable unanimity of purpose. This history is crammed with more esoteric believe-it-or-nots than any book since Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine , but it does also have a serious, philosophical undertow, which is the suggestion that with a slight shift in consciousness, the world and its history can be seen to be very different to what we have been brought up to believe.