book review: 'many lives, many masters'

a couple months ago, a professor of mine told me about this book she read when she was about my age. the book was many lives, many masters by dr. brian l. weiss.

let me tell you - this book changed my life. for many reasons. the cover says: “the true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives.” intriguing right? before reading this book, i hadn’t read or researched much on the topic but it always sort of interested me.

this book is all about this doctor who meets with a girl in her twenties, catherine, to talk about her extreme fears and anxiety. during his sessions with catherine, they would talk about what triggers those anxious feelings and how she can cope with them. however, time was passing and things didn’t seem to be getting better. that’s when dr. brian weiss tried hypnosis.

basically, while catherine is in hypnosis, trying to find the root of her phobias, she suddenly enters another lifetime. dr. brian weiss claims that he has never had any experience with this and was trying to understand how this could be possible. throughout the next couple of months, him and catherine meet to further the past-life regression. every session, catherine enters a deep state in which she can enter a new life. she is able to move forward or backward in that lifetime. there are people there that are in her current lifetime and sometimes there are people she doesn’t know. in each lifetime, she has a new identity. she can be a different gender, race, age, etc. it turns out, she has had 86 past lives.

a lot of the book talks about the different lifetimes that they explore together. it also talks about “the masters,” people who ‘talk’ to dr. weiss though catherine. after they are done exploring a lifetime, catherine will often enter this ‘floating’ state until she is ready or told to enter a new one. the masters teach dr. weiss a lot of things about past life regression. i won’t spoil anything for you guys but it’s some crazy stuff.

these sessions essentially help catherine so much that she finally feels happy; her anxiety and depression are no longer crippling and her phobias are no longer. catherine decides that she no longer needs to see dr. weiss for past-life therapy. although she has had 86 past lives, they only explored about 10-15 of them in the sessions. she claims she doesn’t remember all of them right now but she will when it’s important for her to remember them. chills.

all i could talk about for weeks was this book. it opened my mind to so many things i have never really thought about before. even for people who don’t believe in this sort of stuff or have different religious views, i still highly recommend reading. this book is a true story that includes many transcriptions from actual sessions with catherine and they are astonishing. surprisingly, it’s not a complex read. dr. weiss does a great job of sharing only the important details of this phase in his career. additionally, it is a quick read. there are about 220 pages and i managed to finish the book quite quickly. mainly because i just couldn’t put it down.

interested in buying the book? order it here on amazon and make sure to let me know what you think!