Tuesday, 17 September 2019

Book Review of 'Many Life, Many Masters'


Book- Many Lives, Many Masters
Author- Dr. Brian Weiss
Pages- 218



Blurb-

Psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss had been working with Catherine, a young patient, for eighteen months. Catherine was suffering from recurring nightmares and chronic anxiety attacks. When his traditional methods of therapy failed, Dr. Weiss turned to hypnosis and was astonished and skeptical when Catherine began recalling past-life traumas which seemed to hold the key to her problems.
Dr. Weiss’s skepticism was eroded when Catherine began to channel messages from ‘the space between lives’, which contained remarkable revelations about his own life. Acting as a channel for information from highly evolved spirit entities called the Masters, Catherine revealed many secrets of life and death.
This fascinating case dramatically altered the lives of Catherine and Dr. Weiss, and provides important information on the mysteries of the mind, the continuation of life after death and the influence of our past life experiences on our present behavior.

My take-

We all know that there is a reason for everything. Perhaps moment that an event occurs we have neither the insight nor the foresight to comprehend the reason, but with time and patience it will come to light.

The author states the story as a true life event between a patient (named Catherine) and himself and the regression therapy (that can be also used as an anonymous to hypnosis in the book). Regression therapy basically is a technique that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories or past lives or incarnations. It holds that as a person moves through life, they collect memories that are then stored in the mind. Even though the subconscious memories are not able to be accessed, regression therapy believes they can still have a significant impact on a person’s development and ability to function in daily life.

Catherine was having anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias for which she came seeking help to Dr.Weiss. Although these symptoms had been with her since childhood, in the recent past they had become much worse. Every day she found herself more emotionally paralyzed and less able to function and she was terrified and understandably depressed.

The author (Dr. Weiss) had grown up in a loving home and had a good stable marriage. Two young children, and a flourishing career.

Dr. Weiss, after hearing from Catherine about her problems, used conventional methods of therapy for the first eighteen months, and then when nothing seemed to work, he tried hypnosis.  In a series of trance states, Catherine recalled ‘past-life’ memories that proved to be the causative factor of her symptoms. She also was able to act as a conduit for information from highly evolved ‘spirit- entities’, and through them she revealed many of the secrets of life and of death. In just a few short months, her symptom disappeared, and she returned to her life, happier and more at peace than ever before.
The story is the conversation between Catherine and Dr. Weiss from the stack of audio tapes that he had made during the sessions with Catherine.  

When the author asked Catherine about the things in her life, isolated memory fragments emerged. When she was about five years old, she had panicked when someone had pushed her off a diving board into a swimming pool. She said that even before that she however never felt comfortable in water. When Catherine was eleven, her mother had become severely depressed and her strange withdrawal from the family necessitated visits to a psychiatrist with ensuring electroshock treatments. These treatments had made it difficult for her mother to remember things. This experience with her mother frightened Catherine, but, as her mother improved she became herself again. Catherine said that her fear dissipated. Her father had a long standing history of alcohol abuse and sometimes her brother had to retrieve their father from the local bar. Her father’s increasing alcohol consumption  led to having frequent fights at home and she viewed this as an accepted family pattern.

Through the regression therapy (hypnosis) Dr. Weiss was able to know about the past life of Catherine (and what shocked me was to realize the fact that she lived 86 times in physical form. Can you believe that?) There were memories of some sort, but from where? The authors reaction was of amazement. He knew very little about reincarnation and past lives. He thought it couldn’t be but the fact was that he couldn’t deny the reality of it either.

Catherine was born with different names in different places at different period of time (one was 1568 BC as far as I can recall) and what was more strange is that she remembers everything from her past lives.

Through the hypnotic session Dr. Weiss got to know many facts and information which he had never had otherwise known. Catherine was able to tell Dr. Weiss about the death of his grandfather and his boy child (although Dr. Weiss have never revealed any information about himself to her. Just imagine someone who knows about your past, whom you have never met before and to whom nobody has shared your detail with. How would you feel? For me I will get Goosebumps for sure and maybe i'll just run as fast as i can from that person?)

Moreover, the book also contains certain sections where the Master spirit speaks in Catherine’s regression therapy (the voice of which can be clearly differentiated from hers). There are many Master spirits who teaches us at different period of our life. There are many lessons taught by the Master spirit in the book and the one I liked the most is-  

 ‘Patience and timing, everything comes when it must come. A life cannot be rushed, cannot be worked on a schedule as so many people want it to be. We must accept what comes to us at a given time, and not ask for more. But life is endless, so we never die; we were never really born. We just pass through different phases. There is no end. Humans have many dimensions. But time is not as we see time, but rather in lessons that are learning.’

There are many state we go through according to what Catherine describes- State of renewal, and three others (Catherine describes only two states and says that she didn’t experiences the other two states and she can’t tell what the other two states were) Catherine also describe the in between state between life and death and beyond. The experience with Catherine brought Dr. Weiss a force to write this book.

After the termination phase of the psychotherapy, Catherine made an appointment for Dr. Weiss again. This time only to share with him about a well known psychic- astrologer who was specialized in reading past life. Catherine was surprised that Iris Saltzman (the psychic astrologer) was able to tell about her past life to a great extent. What Catherine had arrived at through hypnotic regression, Iris had reached through psychic channels. Very few would be able to do what Iris did. Although hypnotic therapy helped Catherine in a great deal that she could live her life carefree and being herself once more, she was amazed by knowing the relation of psychic channel with her past lives.
The book truly described the effectiveness of hypnotic therapy. Although anti-anxiety, tranquilizers or even anti depressants could be used to treat the symptoms of Catherine, but, when nothing worked, regression therapy did which revealed the things that could be read in detail in the book. (Somehow at some point of time I felt it is exaggerated. But again the feeling that what if it really happened stuck me.)

To those who what to know about the past life therapy, this book can be your guide, with all the details between the therapist and the patient.

P.s.- It is a great book if you like real life stories.

Overall rating- 4/5



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