Many Lives, Many Masters - A book Review and Analysis

One of my friends who shares some of my paranormal and metaphysical interests handed me this book which I finished reading in a record span of three days (rather nights) over the last weekend, my fastest so far.


Many Lives, Many Masters, a book by Dr. Brian Weiss, is a verbatim narrative of the hypnotic sessions that he had with one of his patients, Catherine. Catherine suffererd from abnormal psychotic disorders, anxiety and several phobias which made her life miserable. She visits Dr.Weiss who is a practicing psychologist for treatment. Dr. Weiss subjects her to hypnotic therapy which results in her going back to her past lives and recollecting some important events that happened then. These incidents had a bearing on her present life and hence she starts losing her fears and anxiety. The book describes her various sessions with the doctor , her journeys into the past lives and the journey of her soul between two lives. The author has given her description about her past lives, experience after death and the messages from master souls, verbatim. He also mentions how this knowledge obtained from the hypnotic sessions transformed Catherine's and his life and how they used it to help others.

The whole concept of re-birth or reincarnation is a philosophy deep rooted into Hindu culture. Srimad Bhagavatgeeta, the holy book of the Hindus, describes this in great detail. Many lives, many masters was just a testimony to the philosophy mentioned in the Geeta. I recollect a person from Bangalore, in a television interview, mentioning about having met five of his wives of his previous lives in this life. We get to hear a lot about people rather children being born with extra-ordinary talent. These are probably their learnings from the past lives carried forward into this life. There are many books written by different people, saints and philosophers and the likes trying to describe the concept of re-birth and life after death. However what has been written is only the tip of the ice berg.

The book left me pondering over certain facts:

• Catherine mentioning the year of her past lives sometimes in the BC (when even calenders were not present) with precision.
• Concept of group of souls whereby people who are related in previous lives are also related in this life in some way.
• Memories associated with the soul.
• Failure of law of conservation of souls. With the population increasing at a rapid pace, the number of souls too is increasing which means so many new souls are getting created many of them without a past.
• Soul is independent of the sex, also independent of the form of body it takes. However Catherine only remembers her form as human being.

The answers to these questions are neither simple nor straight forward But we can safely assume that if we find someone interesting and are attracted to someone then probably that person must have been closely associated with us in one of our past lives. After all " तेरा मुझसे है पहले का नाता कोई, यूँ ही नहीं दिल लुभाता कोई..."