Book Review - Many Lives, Many Masters

Many Lives, Many Masters is the true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives.

As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Brian Weiss, M.D., after graduating from Columbia University and Yale Medical School, spent years studying the human psychology, training himself to think like a scientist and a physician.He was a consertive physician who distrusted anything that could not be proved by scientific evidence. But when he met Catherine, a patient, who came to his office seeking help for her anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias, he was shaken to the core during the therapy sessions that followed. For the first time, he came face-to-face with the concept of reincarnation and rebirth.

After she sought his help, for 18 months, Dr. Weiss used conventional methods of treatment to help Catherine overcome her traumas. When nothing worked, he tried hypnosis, which, he explains, “is an excellent tool to help a patient remember long-forgotten incidents. There is nothing mysterious about it. It is just a state of focused concentration. Under the instruction of a trained hypnotist, the patient’s body relaxes, bringing out memories of long-forgotten traumas that were disrupting their lives.”

During the initial sessions, she regressed back to her early childhood and her mind brought out isolated, deeply-repressed memory fragments. She remembered the time she swallowed water and felt gagged when pushed from a diving board into a pool; also how her father molested her one night when she was three. But what came next, was something that surprised the doctor beyond his imaginations.In a series of hypnotic states, Catherine recalled “past life” memories that still caused her nightmares and attacks of anxiety. The doctor described how she vividly recalled the details of each of her 86 past lives – her name, her family, physical appearance, the landscape, and how she was killed by stabbing, by drowning, or illness. In each lifetime she is making progress in her understanding and at the end of each life she tries to fulfill the ultimate goal of learning from the life and becoming God Like through knowledge. The doctor also hears her remarkable revelations about his family and his dead son.

The Masters also spoke various things which are worth a read. Some excerpts:
1. “Our task is to learn, to become God-like through knowledge… By knowledge we approach God, and then we can rest. Then we come back to teach and help others.”

2. “We must share our knowledge with other people. We all have abilities far beyond what we use. …you should check your vices… if you do not, you carry them over with you to another life… when you decide you are strong enough to master the external problems, then you will no longer have them in your next life.”

3. “Everybody’s path is basically the same. We all must learn certain attitudes while we’re in physical state. …charity, hope, faith, love…we must all know these things and know them well.”

4. “Everything is energy… Humans can only see the outside, but you can go much deeper… To be in physical state is abnormal. When you are in spiritual state that is natural to you. When we are sent back, it’s like being sent back to something we do not know. In the spirit world you have to wait, and then you are renewed. It’s a dimension like the other dimensions…”

5. “The fear of death…that no amount of money or power can neutralize”…remains within us. “But if people knew that life is endless; so we never die; we were never really born, this fear would dissolve.” We have “lived countless times before and would live countless times again…and spirits are around us to help while in physical state and after death, in spiritual state.” We and our deceased loved ones would join these guardian angels.

6. “Everything comes when it must come. A life cannot be rushed… we must accept what comes to us at a given time… life is endless… we just pass through different phases. There is no end. Time is not as we see time, but rather in lessons that are learned.”And as finally Dr. Weiss says " I also feel responsible for my actions, the negative as well as lofty. I know there will be a price to pay. What goes around truly does come around." Surely this book is going to change many lives.

Read on....