3: Brian L. Weiss, M.D.'s Logic

Analysis of Brian L. Weiss, M.D.'s logic in his first book on past-life regression, Many Lives, Many Masters

So far, I'm a little over halfway through reading Many Lives, Many Masters, which is Brian L. Weiss' detailed account of his first experience with past-life regression, counceling a woman named Catherine through intensifying phobias and anxiety with hypnotherapy when she suddenly started recalling past-life memories. His logic would be slightly questionable since this is his one personal experience, but there are frequent referrences in the text to other research he's done. He also referrences situations after helping Catherine in which he used past-life therapy for his patients. Despite only talking about his experiences, Dr. Brian Weiss is very convincing in his argument that past-life regressions are real and can help us heal.

In chapter four of Many Lives, Many Masters, on page 54, Dr. Brian Weiss wrote something that Catherine said, convincing him that the past-life regressions weren't part of some elaborate fantasy. During one such regression, at a point where she was regressing memories from the spiritual plane, Catherine told him, "Your father is here, and your son, who is a small child. Your father says you will know him because his name is Avrom, and your daughter is named after him. Also, his death was due to his heart. Your son's heart was also important, for it was backward, like a chicken's." This was shocking to Dr. Weiss because he hadn't told Catherine anything about his personal life or family as part of his job to be professional.

Before Catherine's first hypnotherapy session, she told Dr. Weiss about a trip to Chicago, where she visited an Egyptian exhibit in the art museum. She told him that, during her visit, "When the guide began to describe some of the artifacts in the exhibit, she found herself correcting him...and she was right! The guide was surprised; Catherine was stunned. How did she know these things?" (p. 24). Dr. Weiss convinced her to try hypnotherapy to try and find some long-forgotten childhood memories of this information. When he regressed her back to her childhood, though, she didn't remember anything about Egyptian artifacts from her current life. He tried to find a point at which she might have learned, in this life, about Egyptian artifacts, and suddenly she was talking about a life in 1863 B.C. as a young woman named Aronda.

During Catherine's next hypnotherapy session, she was regressed to a previous death and into the spiritual plane where she would await the time when she would be able to return to a new body. Before she was allowed to return, though, she began relating lessons from what she would later call the Masters, saying, "Our task is to learn, to become God-like through knowlege. We know so little. You are here to be my teacher. I have so much to learn. By knowledge we approach God, and then we can rest. Then we come back to teach and help others" (p. 46). Dr. Weiss knew it was someone other than Catherine coming up with this because her voice became huskier, stronger, and she was speaking faster. Catherine herself had no memories of the spiritual plane, or the Masters, after these sessions.

With each session of hypnotherapy, Catherine started sheding her fears easily, after eighteen months of unsucsessful psychotherapy. It was evident even after just the first session of hypnotherapy. This alone stands to make Dr. Brian L. Weiss's logic very solid. Combined with the experience of her knowing about his family without him ever telling her makes the logic virtually undeniable. It would seem that only the most decided skeptics would question his logic.