Book Reviews  --  Spiritual Exploration  --  Spirit/Energy Healing

Author: Brian Weiss, M.D.

Title: Messages from the Masters - Tapping into the Power of Love

Book Review 16.01.2009

(c) 2009 by Heidrun Beer

This book review was originally published on a mailing list for oldtime Scientologists. It therefore contains special words from the Scientology universe, marked in italic print. Please look them up in a Scientology dictionary.

 

Brian Weiss, M.D.: Messages from the Masters - Tapping into the Power of Love


ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from his website www.brianweiss.com )

"As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Brian Weiss was astonished and skeptical when one of his patients began recalling past-life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages from "the space between lives," which contained remarkable revelations about Dr. Weiss's family and his dead son. Using past-life therapy, he was able to cure the patient and embark on a new, more meaningful phase of his own career."


Before his first contact with past lives, Brian Weiss "had published more than forty scientific papers and book chapters and had achieved international recognition in the fields of psychopharmacology and brain chemistry. I was completely skeptical of 'unscientific' fields such as parapsychology [...]"

"And then came my sudden and shocking introduction to the spiritual, the 'right-brain', the non-linear. [...] I was beginning to find the harmony between science and intuition."


ABOUT THE BOOK:

Brian Weiss has written three fascinating books about his successes with reincarnation (past life) therapy before this one. They have been translated into nearly 30 languages and sold millions of copies.

In all these books it is a recurring surprise, to him as well as the reader, how suddenly and unexpectedly in sessions there are messages "dictated" by other spirits than the patients. Briefly or not so briefly, the hypnotized patients are used as channeling mediums.

These are no planned channeling sessions, but some of the messages that come through are most profound.

Some of them have already been published in the earlier books. Dr. Weiss says: "In knitting together the old and the new, I have become aware that an entire spiritual philosophy has been gently unfolded and handed to me. At its center is love. I believe that we, as humans, are ready to embrace it. [...] We are swimming in a sea of New Age, holistic, and spiritual awareness that seems to have flooded over the dams of old beliefs and of constricted consciousness. The evidence is everywhere. New Thought is becoming mainstream."

"We now know that technology and science alone are not capable of solving our problems. Technology can be used for good or for bad purposes. Only when used with enlightenment, wisdom, and balance can technology truly help us. We must find the right balance."

"Love is the fulcrum of this balance. When people have intense spiritual experiences, the energy of love is nearly always evoked. [...] Love is the most basic and pervasive energy that exists. It is the essence of our being and of our universe. Love is the fundamental 'building block' of nature connecting and unifying all things, all people."



DAILY COOPERATION WITH THE "OTHER SIDE"


During the years, Dr. Weiss himself has evolved into a spiritual master. Much of this book is his own text, distilling the basic teachings that become visible when the many puzzle pieces of his patients' insights, his own realizations and the "dictated" bits are combined.

They alternate with many case histories of Weiss' reincarnation patients, vivid descriptions of his procedures, and the performance of some famous psychics like James van Praagh. These stories are fascinating all by themselves.

Evidence of daily cooperation with people from the "other side" is everywhere in these tales. It also goes through Dr. Weiss' own experiences. I find it very remarkable that such networking is practically unknown in Scientology.

More: The former LRH associate, inventor of prepared lists, and most successful mission holder of all times, Alan C. Walter, identified the technologies of OT3 and NOTs as most destructive, because they are ARC-breaking and driving away our "spiritual teammates". In his own version of spiritual technology, "Knowledgism", a major action run on former Scientologists consists of repairing all the ARC-breaks with spiritual beings invalidated or chased away on OT3 and above.

(I personally have run a session on the personal spirit guide of an oldtime Scientologist. She was line-charging for hours about how he never, never, never listened to her, totally starved for recognition and appreciation, and clinging to me for days before she calmed down and went "home" to her people to get re-oriented. - Another case of a person who never listened to her guide was my own daughter. After I had connected the two and they started to communicate, she turned from a punk in military boots into a spiritual seeker, and "poltergeist" phenomena started to occur around her.)




SOME BOOK QUOTES (ACTUALLY I SHOULD QUOTE THE WHOLE BOOK):


- I am still amazed by the similarity of the knowledge my patients transmit to me while they are in deep meditative or hypnotic states. High school dropouts, nuclear physicists, attorneys, and professional athletes alike tell me virtually the same things about the spiritual state and our purpose on this earth. This lends considerable credence to their experiences. Once more I want to emphasize that these findings are clinical, accumulated from many hundreds of patients. Finding so much similarity and so many correlations is highly significant statistically.


- Spirits, as well as people, are of many levels. Those of the lower levels can transmit misleading or even harmful messages, usually to people with limited mediumistic ability or lack of proper spiritual development. Spirits of higher levels seem to be accessible only to those people with higher spiritual development and/or those with proper intent, those without ulterior motives for self-gain at the expense of others.


- Every time you find the word love, I am talking about God. We all have God within us.
    It may seem strange to hear a psychiatrist talking about God and love. Yet I must, because the foundations of spiritual psychotherapy require the recognition of our divinity, the real nature of our souls, and the true purpose of existence here in physical form. Only in this way can we see the bigger picture.
    Without love and without God, there is nothing.
    God does not require our respect. We persist in personifying God despite our knowledge that God is far beyond what we can even begin to conceptualize.
    God has no sex. Another personification.
    God has no religion. We all know this in our hearts.
    God has no race.
    God is everything, a loving energy possessing incomprehensible wisdom, power, and unknowable qualities. We are all composed of God, for God is in each of us, the
substance of our being.
    God is even beyond the steam that contains the potential of the water, that contains the potential of the ice.
    God is unseen, unknowable yet containing the potential of everything.


- God is peace; God is love. We have forgotten that, since we are created in the divine image, God is within our hearts, and that we are also creatures of peace, beings of love and divinity. There can be only one religion, because there is only one God, the God of us all. We must love one another, because love is the way home. Otherwise, like stubborn schoolchildren, we will be doomed to repeat grade after grade, until we learn the lesson of love.


- Our hearts know the path to happiness and inner peace. Spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer remind us of what we already know. When we forget our heart's message and fall into life's ruts and crevices, we feel unfulfilled and unhappy. We get depressed and anxious. We have blurred our perspective, forgotten the bigger picture, and lost the way.
    The remedy is simple. Take the time to remember your divinity, your spiritual nature. Remember why you are here. Meditation is one way of triggering your memory.


- Jim later told me that he was seeing a panorama of past-life scenes in which the horrors of war and unbridled violence were displayed to him. He was a participant in all of these episodes, sometimes as a victim, sometimes as a slayer, sometimes as bereaved survivor.
    He sat motionless. I repeated my question. 'Reviewing that lifetime from the higher perspective, what did you learn? What were the lessons?"
    With teary eyes and in the softest voice, Jim answered, and I felt chills as I listened to his words.
    "That life is holy and there is no reason EVER to kill."
    As Jim echoed the message Catherine [Dr. Weiss' first reincarnation patient] had delivered from the masters fifteen years earlier, my mind drifted back to him as a nineteen-year-old recruit objecting to the burgeoning war in Vietnam and to his discomfort in being a part of this war.
    His was not a political or ideological objection. He must have remembered, at some deep emotional level, what he so tragically experienced in the Indian wars of the late nineteenth century.
    Life is holy, and there is no reason ever to kill.


- "Our task is not to follow Sai Baba", the message began, "but to BE Sai Baba." I patiently waited for more.
    "He is love in action, and you must be love in action." [The master talks about a female patient who is has a blockage to metaphysical experiences.] "Her task in this life is to manifest loving service."
    [Here the images that are blocked from coming to the patient, are flooding to Dr. Weiss instead.] She had lived many lives in solitude, in monasteries and in convents. She had mastered the art of going within, of meditating to deep inner levels. But, in the current life, she needed to live in the real world, among real people with real problems - to help these people. She needed to express her love and compassion in a public way.
    And so a block had been placed on her meditation. Otherwise she would have reverted back to her old pattern of going only to inner states and she would have neglected her soul's purpose in this life. She would not be acting in the world, among the people .
    [Dr. Weiss discusses these insights with the patient to whom it is the correct indication.] She began to volunteer in programs to help the poor and homeless, and she raised money for many charities. She felt happier than she had ever been.
    Ironically, as she continued and expanded her charitable work, her ability to meditate began to return.


- [Dr. Weiss explains earlier that Earth could be compared with a schoolhouse where the various classes are not separated but all students, regardless of their level, are learning in the same classroom.]
    In this one-room schoolhouse we call the earth, we do not learn all of our lessons simultaneously. For example, we may have already mastered the course in compassion and charity, but we may only be beginners when it comes to patience or forgiveness. We may be graduate students in faith and hope, but kindergartners in anger or non-violence.
    Similarly, we may carry over skills and talents learned in earlier incarnations, skills we have mastered, yet we may be novices in other areas. We have among us many who have matered certain courses and skills, and they are here to share their knowledge with us, the students. In other areas, our roles may reverse.
    Thus we are all teachers and we are all students, and we must share our knowledge with each other.
    Many physicians have chosen to be doctors in order to manifest their healing abilities, to help and to teach others. Conversely, a wise physician will always be open to learning from his or her patients. The patient might be able to teach the physician about love, about courage, about inner peace, or any of the other lessons we are here to learn. Both physician and patient benefit.


- While I was meditating one day, a message came in answer to an unasked question that had been forming in my mind. I was working hard, at the office treating patients, with lectures and conferences, with a mountain of correspondence. What about vacations, reading for pleasure, playing golf without keeping score (my variation of the game)? Should I take more time for myself and my family and my friends? Enjoy the simple pleasures of life more? Or is the work too important?
    The message was empathic in tone:
    "This world is given to you as a beautiful garden. You diminish the garden if you do not enjoy its fruits."