Brian L. Weiss - Same Soul, Many Bodies; Discover the Healing Power of Future Lives through Progression Therapy

In this book, names and other identifying informationoccupations or professions, geographical facts (cities, streets), etc.have been changed. Other than the alteration of such identifying information, the events in the sessions are reproduced as they occurred.

You will undoubtedly spot some anachronisms in the dialogue, as certain critics have in my earlier books. In Many Lives, Many Masters, for example, the B.C. date that Catherine mentions invalidated her story for them, but this proof of inauthenticity to the skeptics is fools gold. It is easily explained by the fact that all my patients memories are filtered through contemporary minds. They are aware of today, though their memories are from the pastand, in this book, the future.

Recently, Ive been going to a place Ive rarely been before: the future.

When Catherine came to me as a psychiatric patient twenty-four years ago, she recalled with stunning accuracy her travels into past lives she had led that were as far apart as the second millennium B.C. and the middle of the twentieth century, thereby changing my life forever. Here was a woman who reported experiences and descriptions from centuries past that she could not have known in this life, and Ia Yale- and Columbia-trained psychiatrist, a scientist and others were able to validate them. Nothing in my science could explain it. I only knew that Catherine was reporting what she had actually seen and felt.

As Catherines therapy progressed, she brought back lessons from the Mastersincorporeal guides or spirits possessed of great wisdomwho surrounded her when she was detached from her body. This wisdom has informed my thought and governed my behavior ever since. Catherine could go so deeply into the past and had such transcendent experiences that, listening to her, I felt a sense of magic and mystery. Here were realms I never knew existed. I was exhilarated, astonishedand scared. Who would believe me? Did I believe myself? Was I mad? I felt like a little boy with a secret that, when revealed, would change the way we view life forever. Yet I sensed that no one would listen. It took me four years to gather the courage to write of Catherines and my voyages in Many Lives, Many Masters. I feared I would be cast out of the psychiatric community, yet I became more and more sure that what I was writing was true.

In the intervening years my certainty has solidified, and many others, patients and therapists, have acknowledged the truth of my findings. By now I have helped more than four thousand patients by bringing them back through hypnosis to their past lives, so my sense of shock at the fact of reincarnation, if not the fascination of discovery, has worn off. But now the shock is back, and I am revitalized by the implications. I can now bring my patients into the future and see it with them.

Actually, I once tried to take Catherine into the future, but she talked not of her own future but of mine, seeing my death clearly. It was unsettling to say the least! When your tasks are completed, your life will be ended, she told me, but theres much time before then. Much time. Then she drifted into a different level, and I learned no more.

Months later I asked her if we could go into the future again. I was talking directly to the Masters then as well as to her subconscious mind, and they answered for her: It is not allowed. Perhaps seeing into the future would have frightened her too much. Or maybe the timing wasnt right. I was young and probably couldnt have dealt as competently with the unique dangers that progression into the future posed as I can now.

For one thing, progressing into the future is more difficult for a therapist than going into the past because the future has not yet happened. What if what a patient experiences is fantasy, not fact? How can we validate it? We cant. We know that when we go back to past lives, events have already happened and in many cases can be proven. But lets suppose a woman of childbearing age sees the world as being destroyed in twenty years. Im not going to bring a child into this world, she thinks. It will die too soon. Whos to say her vision is real? That her decision was logical? Shed have to be a very mature person to understand that what she saw might be distortion, fantasy, metaphor, symbolism, the actual future, or perhaps a mixture of all of these. And what if a person foresaw his death in two yearsa death caused by, say, a drunk driver? Would he panic? Never drive again? Would the vision induce anxiety attacks? No, I told myself. Dont go there. I became concerned about self-fulfilling prophecy and the unstable person. The risks of acting on delusion were too great.

Still, over the twenty-four years since Catherine was my patient, a few others have gone into the future spontaneously, often toward the end of their therapy. If I felt confident of their ability to understand that what they were witnessing might be fantasy, I encouraged them to go on. Id say, This is about growth and experiencing, helping you now to make proper and wise decisions. But were going to avoid any memories (yes, memories of the future!), visions, or connections to any death scenes or serious illnesses. This is only for learning. And their minds would do that. The therapeutic value was appreciable. I found that these people were making wiser decisions and better choices. They could look at a near future fork in the road and say, If I take this path, what will happen? Would it be better to take the other? And sometimes their look at the future would come true.

Some people who come to me describe precognitive events: knowing what will happen before it happens. Researchers into near death experiences write about this; its a concept that goes back to prebiblical times. Think of Cassandra who could accurately foretell the future but who was never believed.

The experience of one of my patients demonstrates the power and perils of precognition. She began having dreams of the future, and often what she dreamed came to pass. The dream that precipitated her coming to me was of her son being in a terrible car accident. It was real, she told me. She saw it clearly and was panicked that her son would die in that way. Yet the man in the dream had white hair, and her son was a dark-haired man of twenty-five.

Look, I said, feeling suddenly inspired, thinking of Catherine and sure that my advice was right, I know that many of your dreams have come true, but it doesnt mean that this one will. There are spiritswhether you call them angels, guardians, guides, or God, its all higher energy, higher consciousness around us. And they can intervene. In religious terms this is called grace, the intervention by a divine being. Pray, send light, do whatever you can in your own way.

She took my words literally and prayed, meditated, wished for, and revisualized. Still, the accident happened. Only it wasnt a fatal accident. There had been no need for her to panic. True, her son suffered head injuries, but there was no serious damage. Nevertheless, it was a traumatic event for him: When the doctors removed the bandages from his head, they saw that his hair had turned white.