42 pages • 1 hour read
Brian WeissMany Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Past-Life Regression
Past-life regression, or hypnotic regression, is a kind of therapy in which a person is placed in a hypnotic trance during which they remember key moments from past lives. This type of therapy can be undergone for a variety of reasons, including resolving trauma or simple spiritual curiosity. In Many Lives, Many Masters, Weiss begins to treat Catherine using regular hypnosis, which is “just a state of focused attention” and has “nothing mysterious about it” (24), but when Catherine begins to re-live memories from past lives under hypnosis, Weiss hones the practice and conducts long term past-life regression sessions with Catherine. After Catherine, Weiss conducted past-life regression on thousands of patients who similarly experienced memories from ancient lifetimes.
Reincarnation
Reincarnation is a concept present in numerous religious traditions which state that life, in the form of a spirit, soul, or some other non-physical essence transcends biological death and is reborn in another form in another life. This is a process that has been going on since time began and will continue perhaps forever. Brian Weiss was originally skeptical of the concept of reincarnation, but his experiences conducting past-life regression with Catherine forced him to rethink his skepticism. The practice of past-life regression implies the reality of some version of reincarnation.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy refers to a series of therapeutical practices that usually involve one-on-one talking sessions between practitioner and patient and which are designed to increase well-being in the patient and reduce negative symptoms such as anxiety from trauma. Weiss explains that in psychotherapy, “every word chosen by the patient is analyzed for nuances and hidden meanings. Every facial gesture, every bodily movement, every inflection of the voice is considered and evaluated” (45). In Many Lives, Many Masters, conventional psychotherapy is generally compared negatively to past-life regression; while conventional psychotherapy can take a long time to achieve results for patients and is limited to exploring experiences from the current lifetime, past-life regression permits the practitioner to explore possible sources of trauma across many lifetimes and can deliver results at an astonishing pace, as occurred with Catherine.
