by Brian Weiss

Prior to my experiences with Catherine, I had never even heard of past-life regression therapy. This was not taught when I was at Yale Medical School, nor anywhere else, I was to learn.

I can still vividly remember the first time. I had instructed Catherine to travel backward in time, hoping to discover childhood traumas that had been repressed, or forgotten, and that I felt were causing her current symptoms of anxiety and depression.

She had already reached a deeply hypnotized state, which I had induced by gently relaxing her with my voice. Her concentration was focused on my instructions.

During her therapy session the week previously, we had used hypnosis for the first time. Catherine had remembered several childhood traumas with considerable detail and emotion. Usually in therapy, when forgotten traumas are remembered with their accompanying emotions, a process called catharsis, patients begin to improve.

Catherine’s symptoms remained severe, however, and I assumed that we had to uncover even more repressed childhood memories. Then she should improve.

Carefully I took Catherine back to the age of two, but she recalled no significant memories.

I instructed her firmly and clearly: “Go back to the time from which your symptoms arise.” I was totally shocked by her response.

“I see white steps leading up to a building, a big white building with pillars, open in front. There are no door-ways. I’m wearing a long dress … a sack made of rough material. My hair is braided, long blonde hair.”

Her name was Aronda, a young woman who lived nearly four thousand years ago. She died suddenly in a flood or tidal wave, which devastated her village.

“There are big waves knocking down trees. There’s no place to run. It’s cold, the water is cold. I have to save my baby, but I cannot. . . . Just have to hold her tight. I drown; the water chokes me. I can’t breathe, can’t swallow . . . salty water. My baby is torn out of my arms.”

Catherine had been gasping and having difficulty breathing during this tragic memory. Suddenly her body relaxed completely, and her breathing became deep and even.

“I see clouds. . . . My baby is with me. And others from my village. I see my brother.”

She was resting. That lifetime had ended. Although neither she nor I believed in past lives, we had both been dramatically introduced to an ancient experience.

Incredibly, her lifelong fear of gagging, or choking, virtually disappeared after this one session. I knew that imagination or fantasy could not cure such deeply embedded, chronic symptoms. Cathartic memory could.

Week after week, Catherine remembered more past lives. Her symptoms disappeared. She was cured, without the use of any medicines. Together, we had discovered the healing power of regression therapy.

Because of my skepticism and rigorous scientific training, I had a difficult time accepting the concept of past lives. Two factors eroded my skepticism, one rapid and highly emotional, the other gradual and intellectual.

In one session, Catherine had just remembered her death in an ancient lifetime, a death from an epidemic that had swept through the land. She was still in a deep hypnotic trance, aware of floating above her body, being drawn to a beautiful light. She began to speak.

“They tell me there are many gods, for God is in each of us.”

She then began to tell me very private details about the lives and deaths of my father and my infant son. They had both died years previously, far away from Miami. Catherine, a laboratory technician at Mount Sinai Medical Center, knew nothing at all about them. There was no person who could have given her these details. There was no place to look up this information. She was stunningly accurate. I felt shocked and chilled as she related these hidden, secret truths.

“Who,” I asked her, “who is there? Who tells you these things?”

“The Masters,” she whispered, “the Master Spirits tell me. They tell me I have lived eighty-six times in physical state.”

Catherine later described the Masters as highly evolved souls not presently in body who could speak to me through her. From them I received spectacular and profound information and insights.

Catherine had no background in physics or metaphysics. The knowledge the Masters transmitted seemed far beyond Catherine’s capabilities. She knew nothing about dimensional planes and vibrational levels. Yet, deep in the trance state, she described these complex phenomena. Beyond that, the beauty of her words and thoughts and the philosophical implications of her utterings far transcended her conscious abilities. Catherine had never before talked in such a concise, poetic manner.

When I listened to her as she relayed concepts from the Masters, I could sense another, higher force struggling with her mind and vocal cords to translate these thoughts into words so that I could understand them.

During the course of her remaining therapy sessions, Catherine relayed many more messages from the Masters. Beautiful messages about life and death, about spiritual dimensions and the purpose of our lives on the earth. My awakening had begun. My skepticism was eroding.

I remember thinking, “Since she’s correct about my father and my son, could she also be correct about past lives and reincarnation, about the immortality of the soul?”

I believe so.

The Masters also spoke about past lives.

“We choose when we will come into our physical state and when we will leave. We know when we have accomplished what we were sent down here to accomplish. We know when the time is up, and you will accept your death. For you know that you can get nothing more out of this lifetime. When you have time, when you have had the time to rest and re-energize your soul, you are allowed to choose your re-entry back into the physical state. Those people who hesitate, who are not sure of their return here, they might lose the chance that was given them, a chance to fulfill what they must when they’re in physical state.”

Since my experience with Catherine, I have regressed more than one thousand individual patients to their past lives. Very, very few of them could reach the level of the Masters. However, I have observed amazing clinical improvement in most of these people. I have seen patients remember a name during the recall of a recent lifetime and subsequently find old records that validate the existence of that past-life person, confirming the details of the memory. Some patients have even found the graves of their own previous physical bodies.

I have observed a few patients who while in regression are able to speak portions of languages they have never learned, or have never even heard, in their current lifetime. I have also studied some children who have spontaneously exhibited this ability, which is known as xenoglossy.

I have read the findings of other scientists who are independently practicing past-life regression therapy and who are reporting results extremely similar to mine.

As described in detail in my second book, Through Time into Healing, this therapy can benefit many types of patients, especially those with emotional and psychosomatic disorders.

Regression therapy is also extremely useful in recognizing and stopping recurrent destructive patterns, such as drug or alcohol abuse and problems in relationships.

Many of my patients recall habits, traumas, and abusive relationships that not only occurred in their past lifetimes but are again occurring in the current life. For example, one patient remembered a violently abusive husband in a past lite who has resurfaced in the present as her violent father. One warring couple discovered they had been killing each other in four previous lifetimes together. The stories and the patterns go on and on.

When the recurring pattern has been recognized, when its causes have been understood, it can be broken. There is no sense in continuing the pain.

Neither the therapist nor the patient has to believe in past lives for the technique and process of regression therapy to work. But if they try it, clinical improvement often results.

Spiritual growth almost always results.

I once regressed a man from South America who remembered a guilt-ridden lifetime as part of the team that helped to develop and ultimately drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in order to end World War II. Now a radiologist in a major hospital, this man uses radiation and modern technology to save lives rather than to erase them. He is a gentle, beautiful, caring man in this life.

This is an example of how a soul can evolve and be transformed even through the most ignoble of lifetimes. It is the learning that is important, not the judgment. He learned from his World War II lifetime, and he has applied the skills and knowledge to help other souls in the current lifetime. The guilt from the first lifetime is not important. It is only important to learn from the past, not to ruminate and to feel guilty about it.

Excerpt from Only Love Is Real