Saturday, March 24, 2007

Book Review: Many Lives, Many Masters

Last week I finished reading a book named "Many Lives, Many Masters". The story goes like this: 

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.

Dr. Weiss says whatever is written in this book is not fiction. After going through the past life experiences of Catherine and her explanations of the secrets of life in hypnotized state, we learn the following:

We are souls and change our bodies. Our souls don't die and nothing harmful happens to it. Each one of us has to learn some lessons. Depending on many things, the speed with which we learn may vary from soul to soul. We need to come to earth, because we experience "pain" which is very necessary for us to learn all lessons fully. In each birth, we learn some lessons, and then come again to learn the remaining. When we learn all the lessons, we don't need to be born again. After death, our souls float out of our bodies, and can see the things happening around. Then our soul gets attracted to a warm and luminous divine light, and advances towards it. We get to know before the beginning of a particular birth, what out lives are going to be like, and what we have to achieve. But when we reach the earth, we forget all. All our past life experiences are with us, but we don't have the capability to recall all this. No one has the right to kill any other human being, as this interrupts the natural process and the departed soul has to face some difficulties getting back on path of learning. Based on the stage of learning that the souls are, some souls reach the stage of 'masters', where they guide other souls towards their learning path. The ultimate goal of human life is to 'become God like' or 'to merge with God himself', as then no difference remains between our soul and the God.

As you have gone through these learning, you must have noticed that this is very similar to what is written in Gita or what is generally perceived by the Hindus. 

What looks amazing is that neither the doctor nor the patient was exposed to Hinduism from before. Then how could there was such a similarity in thinking and concept? And we all know that during hypnotism, patients do tell some things which they never imagine while in their senses.

So, are these dozen points really true? Then what for there is war, anxiety and corporate rat races in this world? Why people still kill each other and hurt others' feelings? If our goal in this life is to learn some lessons, why do we continue reading theoretical subjects and keep blessing Bill Gates for MS Office? How much time in our lives do we actually spend thinking about our ultimate goals?

Dr. Weiss claims to have the video and audio tape records of Catherine’s conversations. So there is no doubt on his integrity in details. Then all of us have to awake as Swami Vivekananda said – Arise, Awake! And stop not until the goal is reached.

About the book: Title:                                Many Lives, Many Masters
Author:                                                       Dr. Brian Weiss
Publisher:                                                   Piatkus Books Ltd
Pages:                                                         244
Published:                                                   1994
ISBN:                                                          0 7499 1378 9
Popularity:                                                  > 15 Lakh copies sold

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