DR. BRIAN WEISS: “I’m thrilled to present this new Afterlife TV episode featuring Dr. Brian Weiss. Brian is the author of Many Lives, Many Masters, Through Time Into Healing, Only Love Is Real, Messages From The Masters, Same Soul, Many Bodies, and more. In this interview, Brian Weiss talks about whether we reincarnate as animals (or animals as humans), how many lifetimes most people have experienced, if past life regression can cause issues in addition to healing them, what to do when we experience a traumatic past life memory, how often we regress to a lifetime that is relevant to our current issues, and Dr. Weiss’ viewpoints on ‘old souls’ and ‘soul mates.’ I had a lot of fun interviewing Brian, and I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.” ~ Bob Olson, Afterlife TV
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 deceased son. Using past-life therapy, he was able to cure the patient and embark on a new, more meaningful phase of his own career.
A graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School, Brian L. Weiss M.D. is Chairman Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. Dr. Weiss conducts national and international seminars and experiential workshops, as well as training programs for professionals.
You can visit Dr. Brian Weiss’ website at www.BrianWeiss.com, become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DrBrianWeiss, or follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DrBrianWeiss
If you’d like to watch this video, What Does Past Life Regression Teach Us About The Afterlife?, visit www.afterlifetv.com/?p=2311
Afterlife TV is presented by Afterlife Investigator & Psychic Medium Researcher Bob Olson, who is the author of Answers about the Afterlife: A Private Investigator’s 15-Year Research Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death.
Check out Bob Olson’s other sites: BestPsychicDirectory.com (a directory of hundreds of psychics & mediums by location with reviews & Instant Readings) & BestPsychicMediums.com (his personal recommended list of tested psychics and mediums) or visit Bob’s Facebook Page. Bob also has a popular workshop for psychics and mediums at PsychicMediumWorkshop.com.
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Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Hi everybody. This is Bob Olson with Afterlife TV. This is where we search for evidence of life after death. You can find us at www.afterlifetv.com. You can see all of these videos. There are a whole bunch of them there. Today I’m giddy. I’m giddy. I’m so excited about this interview.
We are going to be chatting with the author of many books. The beginning book that started this whole process, this whole journey was, “Many Lives, Many Masters,” and his name is Dr. Brian Weiss. Brian, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m so excited.
Brian Weiss: Thank you. Me too, Bob, it’s a pleasure to do this program with you.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Well that’s great. And let our audience know. Is this the first time you’ve used Skype ever?
Brian Weiss: It’s the second time I’ve ever used Skype; the first visual.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Hey, alright. There you go.
Brian Weiss: The other was just an audio.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: This is a first for Dr. Brian Weiss right here. Everybody is sharing in that. And listen, you know, I want to say I can’t believe that it’s been a year since I saw you. We were on the Caribbean cruise. It was a Hay House. I think it was an “I Can Do it,” wasn’t it?
Brian Weiss: Yes.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. It was absolutely wonderful and I can’t believe that a year has gone by already since – that was the last vacation I took now that I think of it, so I think might be in a little hot water with Melissa. I have to let her know that it’s time for us to go on another cruise or something. Don’t you think?
Brian Weiss: As soon as we finish the interview you can go off on a cruise.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, alright. Alright, we’ll do that, excellent. Well listen, just in case people don’t know, I’m just going to list off some of the books you’ve written. First of all, “Many Lives Many Masters,” this is the book that so many people have started their journey with.
I’m sure millions of people. I actually put up a post. I was asking people about what book was one of their favorite books, and I just happened to use a picture of “Many Lives Many Masters,” and this was on Facebook. And so many people said that that was the first book that they read in starting their journey to learning about spirituality. Amazing, and I know that was true for me. In fact, I think I still have the original book that I might have had. Does this look like the right cover to you?
Brian Weiss: That’s the original cover. It was changed years ago, but that’s the original one.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: And what’s funny about this, I crack up because – I don’t know if people can see it, but here I have my name. This is one of those books that you lend to people because you’re so excited about it you want people to read it. But I think I had a few copies that didn’t come back to me so I finally put my name in it and I was like, “Hey, I want this one back.”
Brian Weiss: They’re nice and brown so you’ve had that about 15 years or so.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: And I was looking at the copyright date. It says 1988. Is that the date that it came out?
Brian Weiss: Yes. 1998 is when it first appeared.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Well, I was thinking about how fascinating that is. I was three years out of college. I was working as a private investigator. I was investigating murders and all kinds of things like that, and I was thinking about here you were, a psychiatrist, working as a hypnotherapist investigating murders from past lives and other things.
Brian Weiss: Yes, exactly right.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: There are some parallels there. We’re like twins you and I. You’re like the more successful, better looking twin, but hey, we’re kind of like twins. We like the same shirts I noticed. Melissa always gives me a hard time because I have to have the button down collar and she’s like you and Brian Weiss.
Brian Weiss: I usually do, but here, being in Miami where it’s 80 degrees and beautiful, even though we’re doing this interview in the middle of January, I can wear this and walk outside with this. So we’re both wearing green.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: We planned that didn’t we? Just to let everybody know. Some of the other books, “Through Time Into Healing,” “Only Love is Real,” “Messages From the Masters,” “Same Soul, Many Bodies,” “Mirrors of Time,” “Meditation,” “Eliminating Stress, Finding Inner Peace,” and you have a card deck, “Healing the Mind and Spirit.” You’ve been busy apparently.
Brian Weiss: Yes. I think usually those books have come out about every four years or so. But it’s been 8 years since the last one, “Same Soul, Many Bodies,” but right now I’m working on another book; a new book with my daughter Amy. And that book should be out in the fall of 2012. So we’re very excited about that.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Oh beautiful. I don’t blame you. That’s exciting that you get to do that with her; do that with your daughter. How much fun is that and what’s that book going to be about?
Brian Weiss: It’s called, “Sometimes Miracles Happen,” and it’s about stories that people have written and sent in to us about their experiences in workshops or in other places; amazing and life transformative experiences that they’ve had, and then we use these stories as stepping stones into the philosophy; the understanding of our higher spiritual nature; how to heal illnesses of physical and psychological.
So it has about 100 wonderful stories that we’ve corralled from 100’s of 100’s that were sent into us. And I think that’s the strength of the book and then my commentary on each story. That’s sort of to integrate everything and put it into its proper place.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Well I know everybody wants to hear your commentary of it. I have to give a shout out to the Facebook fans and the Twitter followers. I had told people ahead of time that I was going to be interviewing you and said if you’d like to suggest some questions, go ahead. A whole bunch of people did. So there are a lot of people who want to know what you think about all these things, so it’s vital that you put that in there; no question in my mind.
How do you interview Dr. Brian Weiss about past life regression? I mean we would need hours to do that. We don’t have hours. This is Afterlife TV and I thought we’ll try to focus it on what does past life regression teach us about the afterlife? But we’ll sway off a little bit from that and see where it goes. I like to keep these things sort of organic and let them go where they’re supposed to go.
But I have some questions written down. A lot of them that I sort of morphed from questions from Facebook and Twitter; those people who suggested some. And I just decided that I would start with this sort of – I’ll start sort of with some easy stuff and we’ll work more into the complicated as we go. One of the things, I did and interview recently with someone who had a near death experience.
Her name is Anita Moorjani. I don’t know if you had an opportunity to meet Anita yet but you will. She’s going to be a Hay House author starting in March. In her near death experience she talked a lot about how there’s no time. There’s just no time in that other realm and so considering that there’s no time, I wondered how that works as far as your clients putting in order – obviously, when there are dates, we can go by the dates, but have you ever had a client who has said or even heard of anybody who said that they actually had a regression into their very first lifetime? Is that even possible?
Brian Weiss: It is possible. Time is complicated. As I think about Anita, I did meet her very briefly at a reception but I really didn’t get a chance to talk to her at length about her experiences. My experience with time is that when you float out of your body after the death of a physical body in a past lifetime, then time disappears. It’s just a property of the physical dimension; this earth school; this earth plane, so that people go back to other lifetimes in the past; maybe their first lifetime; maybe not.
It doesn’t really matter. It’s where the lessons are. What they need to learn to feel better, to progress spiritually in this lifetime to get rid of symptoms, whatever they need. They’ll go to those lifetimes that are important to this lifetime. Sometimes it’s the first, sometimes it’s the 100th, or the 1000th perhaps. But one of my books talks about going into the future too.
If there is no time, then in one way all of these are parallel dimensions or alternative universes; different words describing similar concepts that modern physics has taken up now and explores in great depth about when they’re studying these sub-atomic particles and things happening beyond our comprehension really.
Because say one particle changes its charge or its vibrational pattern, its rotational pattern, and another particle at the other end of the universe simultaneously reacts to that where there’s no time delay in this happening. So some people think that all lifetimes are really simultaneous.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Right.
Brian Weiss: I find that when we’re living our lives here, learning our lessons in this difficult school, because here we have physical bodies that it is easier to think of life as flowing from past to present to future. That helps us to orient ourselves here. On the other side, there’s no time. I really believe that. But we’ll find that out when we go there.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. It’s hard to fathom not having a first, you know, I kind of picture me as the soul wherever, in the other realm, and going, “Okay, I’m going to have a lifetime somewhere.” And we’re going to get into that a little later as to the different ways that we can do that. But we’ll say I’m going to have a human lifetime.
I always wonder what is the first; how do you start? Where do you start? Where do you start? But with that question also comes, and a lot of people wanted to know this is where does it end? Is there ever a point where we stop having reincarnations of any sort?
Brian Weiss: I should also mention, Bob, that the answers that I’m giving you are my answers. They’re what I think. They may not be the only answer. It may be variant complete. It’s sort of like the old fable about people feeling the elephant and then being asked to describe the form and shape of the elephant.
And those people who were trunk people are going to react differently from the people who felt the tail or the back or the leg. And they’re going to have different descriptions, and yet it’s just one elephant. So I’m giving you my opinions and what I’ve learned from all these years of doing my research. But there may be other ways of looking at these questions and other answers that contain a great deal of truth also.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Sure.
Brian Weiss: My way of what I felt and learned is that eventually we do mend when don’t have to come back here anymore would be kind of like going through school. Let’s say some of us are in the second grade, and the eighth, and the fifth, and high school, but eventually we all graduate and don’t have to come back to this school anymore if you consider the earth a school.
So when you graduate, that means you’ve learned enough of the lessons not to come back here. Maybe there are higher dimensions or levels where we keep learning, evolving along our spiritual progress back home or back to the source, or one, or God, or other concepts that people have talked about ever since the beginnings of humanity.
And I think we do end when we graduate. Then we don’t have to come here. But we don’t truly end until everybody else has graduated because we’re all connected. We’re not really as separate as we think we are. And so even if we’re helping out from the other side and don’t have to come back incarnated physical bodies, we’re still working away on the other side helping all of our colleagues, the other souls with whom we’ve been connected for ions of time.
And until we all graduate, we don’t truly graduate.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Well, then that kind of brings up the question in my mind. With your own experience with you clients or all the people you’ve worked with in groups, is there an average number of lifetimes that we tend to experience? We’ll just say the people who are here now in this day and age, do you tend to find that people have had 100’s or more like 1,000’s of lifetimes?
Brian Weiss: Some people 100’s and some 1,000’s. There’s no time limit so you don’t have to graduate within X number of centuries or millennia. It doesn’t matter. If you’re more stubborn, slower learner, it can be 1,000’s and 1,000’s. If you’re really progressing rapidly, it could be 100’s. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s the end that matters.
And I find even if you’re going in the right direction, if you’re progressing to be a kinder person, more compassionate person, more loving person, less violent person, less greedy person, less selfish person, then you’re moving in the right direction and the time doesn’t matter anyway. So I wouldn’t even be concerned about that. I would be more involved with the direction of progress rather than the time it’s taking.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s great advice. Now, a lot of people have wondered if we don’t just reincarnate as humans. Do we also reincarnate as other species like animals or even other forms and maybe even in other places like another universe somewhere? How can you answer that one?
Brian Weiss: I think all of those things happen. Certainly this is not the only place. Earth is not the only place so there are other universes and other dimensions. I think physical and non-physical. It gets very complex because cosmologists, physicists, and astronomers, and astrophysicist who study universes, they now are writing about universes bubbling up all of the time.
There are being an infinity of universes and that’s why a possible infinity of parallel lifetimes too. So it may be much more complex technically, but I wouldn’t worry about those things or get caught up too much in those intellectual and technical complications even though may be absolutely correct and true.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Right.
Brian Weiss: We’re still progressing along this path so we need to progress in alternative universes other physical dimensions or non-physical dimensions. I think we’ve been animals, we’ve been everything. I think animals reincarnate also. There’s a chapter in our new book just on animal reincarnation because so many people have been kind of documenting that lately too.
I think that when you become a human, you tend to stay a human. I haven’t found people being punished by being sent back into the animal kingdom because they were too violent in this life. So I think there’s more of a progression to this level and this is where your lessons will take place after that point of time.
Now, this may not be what’s written about in Hindu philosophy, or Buddhism, or some of these Eastern religions. But I do feel that we all reincarnate. We can change in state [0:16:37.7] and kingdom. If you want to feel what it feels like to be a [0:16:42.4] you can go into that consciousness, too, because we actually put limits on our consciousness or our soul. We can do those things. But I think that once a human we seem to stay a human because that’s where the lessons are now.
And the lessons apply to relationships. We have soul mates. We have people with whom we travel through time together. Even though we’re connected to everyone, there may be core groups that you are more closely connected to. For example, you may have reincarnated with Melissa 500 times in different ways.
She may have been your mother, your son, your grandfather and you to her also. And that’s how we develop in groups even though we’re connected to all other beings as well. So I think all of those possibilities that you listed happen.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Okay, so understanding that, we all know that our population seems to be growing. We hit some new record recently; fairly recently. And so it makes me wonder if having a human life on earth is like the new big fad for souls up there. Is that kind of what’s going on?
Brian Weiss: In a way, yes, it’s become a very hot school; very popular. I shouldn’t say hot anymore with global warming. I mean popular school. So souls are attracted here because you can accelerate your spiritual progress on the earth. Again, I’m just talking about my own work because here we have physical bodies, so we have relationships.
We have death, loss, illnesses, diseases; a difficult, difficult school. There’s a great deal of possibility for suffering, and pain, and grief. And this makes the school, even though difficult, a place where we can accelerate our spiritual progress because the lessons are right there to be kind, to be compassionate, to be loving, to learn about unconditional love, to be non-violent, to be non-selfish; all of these things.
And so, yes, and I think it’s very important what you just said and asking that question because some people have told me, “Well, I’ve stopped meeting for work when I realized that the numbers don’t fit, that there are more bodies than ever before on the earth,” as you mentioned. Well where did the souls come from?
Well, now since you and I have been talking about it, it’s clear that souls can come from other universes or other dimensions. Earth is just one small place in the myriad of places and dimensions. And so this is not the only school; the only place where souls exist, and also souls can split and have simultaneous experiences. There are many answers to that question.
When people give me the chance to answer the question I would say, “Don’t stop reading. Don’t stop learning. Don’t stop growing just because you have an intellectual objection because perhaps there’s an answer to that.” And in this question of where do the souls come from? Everywhere, the answer’s right there, so I’m not the kind of person that would talk over other people. I wouldn’t be good in like the presidential debates because I’d just be standing there listening. I’m not very aggressive that way.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Right.
Brian Weiss: And so when they give me a chance to answer I give this soft, long answer of the possibilities. Oftentimes they walked away by that.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s what I think so many people like about the way you give your answers because you’re not forcing it on anybody. You’re not trying to shove it down anybody’s throat. You’re just talking about your own experiences.
From book one just talking about your own experiences, sharing it with other people, not even to necessarily tell them that this is the way it is, but maybe more to inspire them to go out and have their own experiences so that they can find out for themselves. That’s the way I always saw your work actually.
Brian Weiss: That’s the best way to teach I think, too, is you inspire or you lead people to have their own experiences. And since experience is stronger than belief, once they have experiences it starts to open their minds. When their minds open, then they can learn new things because a closed mind will prevent you from learning anything new or different.
And so with an open mind, an open heart, then people can experience for themselves and that helps them much more than my trying to force some piece of knowledge or my own experience into them. And I prefer to lead people to have their own experiences. That’s why I do the workshops.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah.
Brian Weiss: You were mentioning on the cruise ships or in other places, or I’ll be in Boston where you are. I work with John Holland in April. I’m looking forward to that because in the workshops there is the opportunity for people to have their own experiences. When they have their own experiences, then they know and it starts that whole cycle. So you’re absolutely right. To be a gentle teacher, I find, is the best way.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right. That’s right. And that’s why you’re still doing this so many years later because people enjoy learning in that way. I just did an interview and we were talking about our souls planning almost like this pre-birth planning before we enter this lifetime; making these plans about what we maybe want to learn; what we want to experience. Do you believe in that sort of thing?
Brian Weiss: Yes, yes, I think it’s a more continuous element that is when you die, at the end of a lifetime, you leave the physical body. You don’t become extinguished. It seems in just talking about what I find and what Raymond Moody and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and the other researchers in the near-death experience write about. The body often – well the consciousness, I should say, then floats above the physical body.
Oftentimes it can look down and observe the scene that it has just left. Floating above, often finding a beautiful light that seems to be restorative and reassuring and that the light sometimes is a family member who had died earlier or a spiritual figure and then begins the journey after life. But that journey after life is the beginning of the pre-birth planning because it’s a continuous process. So I call it the in-between lifetime state.
It’s not after-death, and pre-birth is not really two totally separate entities. So after you leave the body, you’re restored by the light. You still learn on the other side. You’re still integrating what you learned. You’re feeling how your actions affected the people that you hurt or that you helped magnified many times. Their reactions – that’s a great learning experience.
And then you start planning your next level. Oh, do I have to learn to be less violent, or more loving, or more compassionate. Or will I be a teacher, or a whatever it is, it has to do with karma that are opportunities for learning based on what you did in your past lives: your behaviors, your thoughts, and undoing that or learning from it. Not punishment but opportunities for learning.
And then you start planning your life; your next life. And that is the pre-birth planning so who you’ll be born with, in what order, in what family, choosing your parents. I think it also brings up an intersection between destiny and free will in the lifetimes because when you do the pre-birth planning, you’re deciding who will be the other significant people in your life, when will you meet, and this kind of thing.
But then when you meet them, for example, how you act, what you decide. That’s the free will part of it. So the meeting, that’s stemming from the pre-birth planning; these meetings that are kind of destined; that’s going to happen. But then once you do, do you stay with the person or say, “No. They’re too short; they’re too tall; wrong social class; wrong part of the world; wrong religion,” whatever it is or not.
And that’s the free will. And that’s how we learn here. Then when we make those decisions, it sets off alternative futures. The future with the person; the future without the person; the future in case you decided to stay together or not stay together. And that’s the interesting part of it. But it’s all sort of planned out and it’s part of our master plan for growth. So there is free will, and there’s destiny, and they interact all the time.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. I remember when I first started investigating this field back in ’99. I used to do a lot of interviews with people who were going to mediums or going to workshops, and I recognize that a lot of people were worried that they’re messing it up. They’re worried that they’re not fulfilling their destiny; they’re going in the wrong direction; that sort of thing. How would you respond to those people?
Brian Weiss: It’s never too late. It’s a point in time where you find yourself now. You’re never too old. It’s never too late to come back to your spiritual path, or to come back to your destiny path, or whatever you want to call it. You can always learn. So the future is multi-faceted. Let’s just say there are many possible futures. There may be a probable future; the most likely one.
And then you’re dealing with the individual interactions with future in group, interactions – all of these things have to be considered together. But wherever you are, it’s never too late to become a kinder person, a more compassionate person, to become enlightened, if you want to call it that, or to increase your understanding, to open your heart, to choose love over violence; all of these things that we know so well. But we don’t always do so one should never give up.
Let’s just use one person as an example, John, John Holland. John does this work. And you’ve studied this, Bob, I know, mediums and psychic phenomena, and John struck me as someone who always has a good heart. So he can never wonder too far off his destiny. His heart will always pull him back.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah.
Brian Weiss: But if you get a person who’s coming only from the head, or only selfish reasons, or that kind of thing, they can wonder very far astray and then it’s going to take a lot to pull them back if anything. So I think the summary is that if you listen to your heart and listen to your intuitions – because that’s really the open-hearted word, sometimes overruling the brain and the intellect. Trust your intuitions. Trust your heart. Choose the loving path. You can never wonder too far astray.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: You know it’s interesting because some of the things that you listed, reasons that you came here, things we wanted to accomplish, you talked about being a loving person and a patient and compassionate person, and all these things. You didn’t say be the best-selling author, be the successful musician. You didn’t talk about those things. It seemed to be more about these virtues; these incredible ways of being rather than what we are as a profession, in our profession, or how much we own, or what we accomplish in terms of success. Is that what I’m getting from you?
Brian Weiss: Exactly. I find that all roads lead to the other virtues, those virtues, because I’ve treated as a psychiatrist and practiced for many years. I treated lots of very successful people. I had some businesses, organizations, stars, actors and actresses, and sports stars; lots of very, very successful people many of whom were extremely unhappy. They felt unfulfilled or people didn’t understand them, or they had depressions, or something else.
And I find that when we kind of restructure the values a little bit, to be a good person, a kind person, that’s why they’re here. And then they start feeling better.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah.
Brian Weiss: This is what I’ve been doing over the years in my traditional psychiatric practice and spiritual psychotherapy and all of these things because I think that’s why we’re here. Now you can use the other successes to further the spiritual path. You can reach more people that way. But the goal is not to be, say, a best-selling author. The goal is to help people.
If that’s your goal, then eventually you’ll be a best-selling author, or not, but it won’t matter because the goal is to help people; to open your heart, to be more compassionate. The other things will take care of themselves. And success to me are those virtues; not the other achievements because – so let’s say you have four cars and they’re really expensive cars, a multi-million dollar house, huge bank accounts.
You take none of these things with you when we cross to the other side. You take your deeds; your actions; what you learned; your open heart. This is what you take with you. So those are the valuable things, not the things you’re leaving behind. But money is not evil. It’s not bad. It’s just a thing like other things. You can use it to do really good things in the world or you cannot.
I’m probably talking more about these things now because I’m in the middle of this book with Amy and I’m writing about all these things. Now the book’s filled with past lives, healing and all of that, but the bottom line is always, “Oh,” and then, “That changed my life and transformed me so now I’m a more open-minded, understanding, patient person. I’m a happier person. I’m looking now to the end result.
The end result is to have more happiness in the present moment. You’re more satisfied. Your relationships are better and of a deeper quality. You have more joy in your life. You have fewer needs and wants because you’re satisfied and you’re happy. So I’m already looking at the bottom line and I hope I’m not just jumping to that and saying the other things aren’t important because sometimes they are. Past lives are absolutely important because that was the means. Those were the doorways that my patients at least used to find these higher stakes. So I want to say that it’s all part of the process, but I may be going to the bottom line; the end result.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Past life regression and learning about our past lives can be so therapeutic. A couple of people have asked the question as to how come we don’t just remember these past lives and I wondered if it would be just too overwhelming all those things in your head. Is that probably why?
Brian Weiss: Yes, absolutely. That would be one thing. If you’ve had 1,000’s or 100’s even, and you’ve been with many of the same people before, you can’t go around saying, “I remember you from the 12th Century and you hit me over the head with that rock.” I’m not going to trust you now and so in some ways, yes, it would be too much; too many details; too much to carry around.
But I think there’s another reason, too, and that’s to see if we’ve really been learning our lessons; these same lessons we’ve been talking about here: compassion, kindness, love; these kinds of things. And if you’re not violent because you remember that you were punished for being violent in the 15th Century, that’s not good enough.
But if you were non-violent now because you know that deep in your heart violence is wrong. Or you know at a deeper level that spiritual beings and we’re all spiritual beings; not physical beings but spiritual beings. Spiritual beings are not violent. Then you’ve really been learning the lesson so part of it is a test. Have we really learned the lessons? Another part is it would be too much to carry around all of the details.
But on the other hand, more and more people are remembering their past lives. I’ve done regressions with thousands and thousands of people and I’ve been training therapists. Twice a year I train therapists of Omega Institute to go back to their countries, states, cities, wherever, and practice techniques of past life regression therapy. And they’ve been working with thousands of people too.
So many, many more people are remembering their past lives. Many children – children often remember spontaneously when they’re three and four years old, they’re often telling their parents, “When I was big,” and, “this and that. Do you remember that? Do you remember when I was your grandfather?” And then they’ll give specific details that only the grandfather knew and grooming it, validating it, and so more people are actually remembering past lives.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. There was a great book, “Soul Survivor.” Did you see that where a boy remembered his past, a very recent past obviously, as a World War II fighter pilot.
Brian Weiss: Yes. And he knew all about the airplanes and other very technical details that a child would not know.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right, fascinating. How often do you run into that where the past life is so recent? I know there was a book by an author, a woman named Jenny Cockle. Is she the one who actually ended up meeting her children from the past life because they were still alive?
Brian Weiss: Yes. I remember Jenny. I went up to the Phil Donohue Show. This was in the ‘90’s and I went into the green room. I was coming up as a consultant, but I didn’t really know exactly what they would have on the show specifically. And there was Jenny sitting in the green room. She was 41 years old at that time. She was sitting with her 85-year-old son and her 81-year-old daughter and they were treating her like their mom and she was.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Really?
Brian Weiss: Yeah. She had remembered a past life in Ireland, and then she told me how that all came about and the children are confirming this. It was an amazing story.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: It really is an amazing story, yeah. If people haven’t read that one, they really ought to jump on that and look it up – Jenny Cockle. You know, I want to know if it is possible – we know how therapeutic past life regression can be. Does past life regression ever cause issues? Say someone remembers themselves as a murder or a rapist and now they just can’t handle that sort of thing? Or are there any other reasons why a memory like this from a past life would cause an issue rather than help?
Brian Weiss: I haven’t found that, Bob. I find that pretty much the symptoms coming from past lives, they’re already here. That is if you were thrown off a castle wall in the 13th Century and now you have a fear of heights. You already have the fear; the phobia. So when you go back and discover it, it takes away the mystery. And the symptoms often disappear and often rather quickly, specifically with phobias. They can go very quickly.
But that’s why having some therapy background is useful in doing this sort of regression therapy because if that came up, oh, you found out you were a murderer. You would be able to handle it. It’s not you now. It’s different. We were all murderers and we’ve all been murdered. We’ve been violent people and we’ve all been victims of violence in our past lives. And I find that that information is already there in a deeper level. The symptoms are already present. That behavior or those traumas caused any symptoms then we can get rid of it now. So people have a much broader perspective when they remember past lives. And it’s very therapeutic actually. It doesn’t cause symptoms. It takes the symptoms away.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Now if someone was to go to an event and have a regression as part of a group or if they were listening to someone’s CDs, I know you have CDs of your own, and they brought up or they remembered a somewhat traumatic past life, obviously they’re not working with someone who is a therapist at that moment. What would you recommend? How would they go about processing that memory?
Brian Weiss: Right. Well that doesn’t happen very often because usually their subconscious mind is preventing that. They’ll open their eyes or come out of the state. It’s an understanding that hypnosis is not a coma or something like that. It’s just a state of deep relaxation and deep concentration so you can come out of it at any time. You never give up control to the therapist. You’re never so deep that you can’t come out of it.
It’s a state of deep concentration. It’s the same state as when you go to the movies and you’re so absorbed in the movie that you don’t hear people taking your popcorn. That’s hypnosis: focused, relaxed concentration. And, you know, you’re not in any danger if you wanted to save your popcorn you could come out of that state and slap the hand of the person taking your popcorn.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right.
Brian Weiss: Yeah. You’re not stuck in it so that’s rare. The person that, if there was any anxiety that came up or they wanted to explore it more, they could go to a therapist. There are so many around that know this work now and practice it and do it. And they could go to a therapist and explore it in more detail.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right, yeah.
Brian Weiss: They’re memories just like childhood memories. So you may have had childhood memories and they’re there. They’ve happened. If you need to explore them to help yourself in the present time to feel better, to get rid of symptoms that those childhood memories may be causing, you can either do that on your own or you can go to a therapist.
And past life therapy is just saying, “Well, the arena is larger. It’s not just restricted to the current life. It doesn’t stop at birth. You can go back further in time even into in utero states in this life and into past lives too and explore that whole vista. The techniques of therapy are the same. So it’s very safe.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Any time I’ve had a past life regression myself, I always seem to go back to a lifetime that was perfectly relevant for the issues that I was going through at that time in my life. I’m sure you have a lot of people, or had a lot of people, come to you about a particular issue. What are the odds that they’re going to visit a past life that’s actually relevant to that issue?
Brian Weiss: Very high.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah.
Brian Weiss: The deeper mind wants healing; wants understanding so it often goes to those lifetimes where there are traumas or issues that it needs to understand in order to heal. And so the odds are very high you’ll go there and not to some necessarily placid, uneventful time that doesn’t have any connection to your current life.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, yeah.
Brian Weiss: Having said that, that traumas or past life conflicts will pull you to it so that you can heal them; you can understand; heal any symptoms that might be residual of those traumas. When you have a past life, though, you understand well here I am. I’m Bob Olson, Afterlife TV. Or you are. I’m Bob Olson, Afterlife TV. But who was that in that lifetime that I keep going to? That was not Bob Olson, Afterlife TV. That person had a different body; a different name. But it was still me.
So you’re then continuing consciousness that is expressing itself; manifesting as Bob Olson, Afterlife TV now, but you were that other being then. And you’re the same soul; same consciousness. And so you didn’t die when that person died. You went to the other side. You learned. You did your afterlife review. You did your pre-birth planning, and here you are back again as Bob. And that by itself, forgetting about any particular traumas or symptoms, that’s tremendously liberating because it means you don’t die.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Exactly.
Brian Weiss: And that is worthwhile no matter how bland or uneventful the lifetime is just to understand, “Oh, I’m immortal. I don’t die with the death of the [0:42:17.8] body. My consciousness goes on and then all the things that flow from that so all of my loved ones are immortal too. Yes, they don’t die either. I’m going to be reunited with them again, and again, and again on the other side, back here, wherever, all of the time, forever.
And that’s tremendously comforting, liberating, it increases your understanding, changes and shifts perspective. So right away that’s healing. “Oh, I was a murderer?” As you mentioned earlier, “Oh, and another time I was an incredible monk who had incredible advances and didn’t harm even a fly for an entire lifetime. And now I’m sort of in between those two things, but that’s how I evolve.” I learn not to be violent or I learn not to be prejudice or hateful because I’ve also been all races and all religions, both sexes. I’ve learned from all sides so how can I hate this particular group of people or be prejudice against this particular group of people because I’ve lived as that group of people.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah.
Brian Weiss: You’ve lived in all circumstances in all bodies: male, female, strong, weak, ill, healthy, all races, all religions. And that gives a kind of broadening and an acceptance, and then it makes prejudice seem silly. How could you be prejudice? You’ve lived lifetimes as them and you will again as them if you’re prejudice, so be careful.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right. That’s interesting. I’ve always kind of thought that we come into these lifetimes with certain things that we wanted to experience and that over time, over hundreds of thousands of lives, we will experience maybe opposite sides of every virtue, you know, that sort of a thing.
So do you believe in that sort of thing or have you recognized that sort of thing with a lot of your clients that one time they might experience joy, a lot of joy. And then another lifetime they might experience a lot of depression or another time they were a caregiver and then another time they needed care; that sort of thing?
Brian Weiss: Exactly. And that’s a very important way of learning. Some people come back and they were for one reason or another, are impaired in some way. It could by physically like cerebral palsy or something like that. It could be psychologically. It doesn’t matter because sometimes you say, “Okay, I’m going to feel what that’s like. I need to experience that.”
Or I need to experience what it’s like to receive love. I’ve spent so many lifetimes giving it and being a caregiver, a nun, or this or that, and now I need to be impaired so that I can learn how to receive love, and at the same time, to give other people the opportunity to express caring, and love, and compassion. And so we do oscillate that way. That’s part of our learning.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah.
Brian Weiss: Absolutely. And I think that the end is still the same. The end is still to graduate at some level and the oscillations lessen as you become more and more advanced. But that’s not karma. That’s just need to experience certain situations.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Right, right. Now something that you were just saying just sort of the old phrase – people will often say, “Oh, he’s an old soul,” or “She’s an old soul.” I always kind of laugh at that because I mean what do you have to say about the old soul, you know, people calling someone an old soul? Is there even such a thing?
Brian Weiss: Well probably, not but it’s sort of a shorthand for saying lived a long time on the earth; old soul in earth years because probably all souls are ageless; immortal. That’s the nature of spiritual consciousness; the source; the origin. So if souls are ageless, how can a soul be young or old? But on the earth it can be because this is not the only place so some souls may have come here 5,000 years ago.
And other souls may have been here for 200,000 years or longer so I guess those would be the old souls. It may not even be a positive. Does old soul mean you’re flunking the lessons here so you have graduated yet? You’ve been in school for 200,000 and you have not graduated yet.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
Brian Weiss: Another way of looking at it so you don’t consider it a badge of honor or something like that, it’s not important. It just means more familiar with the earth or less familiar with the earth, but not in the age of the soul.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: You know I always pictured if there actually were old souls and that was meant to be wiser, they might actually be coming here and having the more difficult lives. And they wouldn’t appear wise to us and we might think that they are a young soul but when in fact they’re an old soul going through a very difficult, challenging life.
Brian Weiss: I guess I have a saying it really doesn’t matter because an old soul can be very wise or not so wise. It’s just how many years on the earth or how many times on the earth. And souls come from many different dimensions, but eventually they graduate. Now some souls may have graduated and then come back here voluntarily to help other beings to graduate too because that’s the nature of the soul as we talked about really early in the program that we don’t truly graduate until everybody graduates.
And so some who have graduated may come back and assume a physical incarnation voluntarily. A corollary of your question is I hear this from people sometimes, too, is that this is my last lifetime on the earth. This is my last life; my last incarnation. And that amuses me at a level, too, because I always say, “And how do you know this?” “Oh, a psychic told me,” or something like that.
You can mess it up at any time. You can create enough karma or whatever you want to call it and that pulls you back here because then you have more lessons to learn. So you can’t even begin to say this is your last time until you’ve graduated and you find out, you know, until you’ve left the body. And it’s not important anyway because as I just said, some come back voluntarily to help other sentient beings; other people and animals to progress as well. And so it’s not important if you’re an old soul or a young soul. It’s not important if this is your last life or it’s not your last life.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: And having said that and this will be my last question on this subject before we begin to talk a little bit more about you and finish up, but if someone comes here for a shorter time, they come back to help other people, and let’s just say someone comes back for a few days or maybe a year or five years, whatever it may be, there are a lot of people who watch Afterlife TV videos here and they’ve lost children one way or another.
Is it very possible this is the idea they came back for maybe their parents benefit and I’m sure their parents would be like, “Please don’t do that for me. I wish you didn’t do that for me,” but the reality is that we gain something in terms of spiritual growth out of every experience, so is it possible that that might be what happened in those situations?
Brian Weiss: Sometimes it is. Sometimes the advanced soul may come back for a brief period of time just to help out the parents because that soul loves those parents so much that it come back to help those parents learn lessons or progress on their path. Sometimes there can be other reasons too; other causes. And you can have soul mates. That is souls with whom you’ve lived many lifetimes because you’re learning together; come back and spend a lifetime together.
It’s not always romantic. It can be a parent, child, best friends, can be romantic, or not, or they can just come back for six months to be with you and change your life completely in those six months. And it’s not always death. It could be like a college teacher that’s a soul mate. You have a course with them and it changes your life. And then they move on or you graduated and moved on and that’s a soul mate too.
I had a child who died, too, as an infant; only three-weeks old and that completely changed my life that experience. It was very difficult, devastating at the time. That was ten years before “Many Lives, Many Masters” came out. Or not came out. Until Catherine came into my office and then I understood everything and out of my son made an appearance through her and since that time, in other ways too.
But I think if I didn’t have that experience, I might not have been as sensitized and empathetic with the grief reactions and suffering of people who have lost loved ones. And so when my experiences with Catherine happened, I wrote the book. Instead of just having it as a hobby or doing it on the side and exploring it or researching it on my own, I went public because the need to help other people with grief was very strong. If I could help, I was going to help. And so I think that had a lot to do with my becoming public in the first place and to having a more open mind about these things. So that’s identifying very strongly with that group of people who ask that question.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: First of all, what a powerful example and thank you for sharing with us with that and – because that’s a very vulnerable thing to have to talk about and you’ve done that throughout your whole career, but what a perfect example of the question that I just asked where you were able to bring it to yourself. And I’m sure people recognize you’re a graduate of Columbia and Yale Medical School.
I mean you had a lot to risk when you came out with that first book. So you can see what you were feeling for people who had lost loved ones was very, very strong in order to risk everything.
Brian Weiss: Right, exactly. I was risking a lot because I was chairman of the Psychology Department at Mt. Sinai Medical Center here and had been a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami. And I was happy with that work and my research in psychopharmacology and running the department.
I wasn’t looking to change that but it risked that whole thing. And yet it was important for me to do this. Part of me recognized I can help people not to have such profound grief. I’m learning this incredible information and knowledge through her and then through subsequent patients that I had. I want to share this. And so that’s why I took the risk. But if Adam, my son, had not died, maybe I would not have taken that risk.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Well that’s really powerful. I guess we’ll end it on that note. I’ve gone over time a little bit because it’s just hard to end this. Let me just say the website is www.brianweiss.com, correct?
Brian Weiss: Yes.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: People can find out about these trainings that you do. They’re usually five days long, correct, at Omega?
Brian Weiss: Yes, yes. And you don’t have to be a therapist to come. About half of the people will be, but the other half are just ordinary people coming to have deeper or more intensive experiences because we do regressions the whole week and teach techniques. And not just regressions; we do other sorts of visualizations and experiential exercises. But the schedule for that and all of my other appearances and workshops with Hay House, or with Omega, or with others, it’s on that website www.brianweiss.com.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s great. Well we can’t thank you enough for all of the work that you do, sharing with us the way that you did today. It’s amazing. I hope in the future I’ll get to talk to you again. Maybe we can chat about your new book. That would be fun.
And this has been a great time for me. I can’t even express what it means to me to be able to do this with you. I know we’ve sat with groups of people at the table and that’s not a place where I get to just fire off questions at you like this. And so this is a great honor and a great opportunity, so thank you very much Brian.
Brian Weiss: Thank you, too, Bob and let me applaud your work. This is the same work. It’s reaching out to lots of people and using these modern technologies. Reaching out to lot of people with basically very similar messages that not to lose hope. There’s so much more to life than meets the eye and you do good work. It’s a pleasure to do this with you. Thank you.
Afterlife TV is presented by Afterlife Investigator & Psychic Medium Researcher Bob Olson, who is the author of Answers about the Afterlife: A Private Investigator’s 15-Year Research Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death.
Check out Bob Olson’s other sites: BestPsychicDirectory.com (a directory of hundreds of psychics & mediums by location with reviews & Instant Readings) & BestPsychicMediums.com (his personal recommended list of tested psychics and mediums) or visit Bob’s Facebook Page. Bob also has a popular workshop for psychics and mediums at PsychicMediumWorkshop.com.
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