Brian L. Weiss - 1 Sept

BRIAN L. WEISS, M.D., a psychiatrist, lives and practices in Miami, Florida. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School and is the Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. Dr. Weiss maintains a private practice in Miami and conducts international seminars and experiential workshops as well as training programs for professionals. He is also the author of Many Lives, Many Masters and Same Soul, Many Bodies. You can visit his website at www.brianweiss.com.

A TOUCHSTONE BOOK
Published by Simon & Schuster New York
Cover design by Tom Lau
Cover photograph by Yukari Ochiai/Photonica
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Also by Brian Weiss

Same Soul, Many Bodies: Discover the Healing Power of Future Lives Through Progression Therapy

Eliminating Stress, Finding Inner Peace

Mirrors of Time: Using Regression for Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Healing

Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love

Many Lives, Many Masters

Only Love Is Real: A Story of Soulmates Reunited

Touchstone
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1992 by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.
Deborah Bergman: Editorial Consultant

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Touchstone Edition 1993

TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Designed by Carla Weise/Levavi & Levavi

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available.

ISBN-13: 978-0-671-74528-8
ISBN-10: 0-671-74528-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-671-86786-7 (Pbk)
ISBN-10: 0-671-86786-5 (Pbk)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-4804-4

The Twelve Steps are reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Permission to reprint this material does not mean that AA has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, nor that AA agrees with the views expressed herein. AA is a program of recovery from alcoholismuse of the Twelve Steps in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after AA, but which address other problems, does not imply otherwise.

MY DEEP APPRECIATION GOES TO FRED HILLS, BARBARA Gess, and Bob Bender, all wonderful editors at Simon & Schuster, whose direction, encouragement, and expertise helped me so much with this book.

I also sincerely thank Deborah Bergman, my outside editor, who skillfully adjusted and improved the structure of my free-flowing first draft.

My heartfelt thanks go to Lois de la Haba, my literary agent, who has also become my friend.

And, finally, my deepest gratitude goes to all my patients, who are constantly teaching me about life and love.

To Carole, Jordan, and Amy,
My family,
I love you dearly and forever

DURING THE PAST TWENTY YEARS OR SO, AND SO GRADUALLY that we have hardly realized it, we in Western society have undergone a kind of revolution in consciousness. There is now a whole generation of young people who have grown up regularly hearing and reading of near death experiences, past life regressions, out of the body journeys, apparitions of the deceased, and a host of other remarkable phenomena of the spiritual life. I often have the pleasure and privilege of lecturing before college-age people, and I am still a bit startled to hear them speak so calmly and so naturally of their own visions and of their otherworldly travels.

When public interest in near death experiences began in 1975, some dismissed it as a fad. I am beginning to realize now, seventeen years later, that the near death experience is an established fact in our culture. I believe that we are on the verge of becoming (if we have not indeed already become) one of the many historical societies in which the visionary capacity of human beings is accepted as a matter of course. More and more, ordinary people are becoming comfortable talking about their visions and in exchanging information about various techniques for inducing or facilitating them.

Some fairly astonishing developments are coming out of research conducted by such investigators as Dr. Brian Weiss, Dr. William Roll, Dr. Ken Ring, Dr. Bruce Greyson, Dr. Melvin Morse, and a host of other physicians and psychologists in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. I am fairly confident that within the next few years this research will proceed to the point at which profound experiences that can at least be called psychic and which may well be called spiritual can be readily facilitated in psychologically normal individuals. Just to give one example: during the past year, working with colleagues, I have developed a technique through which normal, psychologically stable adults, in a waking state of awareness, can experience vivid, full-color, three-dimensional, full-sized, moving apparitions of departed loved ones. Furthermore, much to my own surprise, my subjectswho so far have all been professionals of a decidedly sober temperamenthave insisted on the reality of their encounters; they all believed that, in fact, they had seen and been in the presence of deceased relatives and friends. Indeed, I have now had such an experience myselfI sat with my grandmother who died some years ago and had a conversation that was every bit as real as any encounter I ever had with her while she was alive. As a matter of fact, one of the most amazing things about this event, in which I joined the legions of everyday people all over the world who have experienced such happenings, was how absolutely normal and natural it seemedindeed not in the very least spooky, not even unsettling.

What is happening, I believe, is that collectively we are opening up within ourselves and among ourselves to altered states of consciousness that were well understood among our ancestors in remote times but that were suppressed at a certain point in the development of our civilization, dismissed as superstitious or even as demonic. In my opinion, there is a chance that this development can be of great benefit to humankind. Vclac Havel, the writer who is president of Czechoslovakia, gave a stirring speech to the Congress of the United States in which he stated firmly his belief that it is only through a worldwide revolution in human consciousness that we will be able to turn the world away from its present course toward annihilation. Mr. Gorbachev himself has seconded this opinion when he said that spiritual renewal is necessary to save his distraught country.