INTERVIEW

DR. BRIAN WEISS

According to this Miami psychiatrist, past-lives therapyworks: It's quick,
inexpensive, and people get better--whether they believe in reincarnation or
not.

Treating patients by guiding them through recollections of what appear to be
previous lives is about the last thing Brian Weiss thought he'd be doing. The
South Florida physician, who before the age of 35 was chief of psychiatry at
Mount Sinai Hospital and a professor at the University of Miami's medical
school, had always taken the traditional path.

Growing up in New Jersey, Weiss was an overachiever, self-described as
``studious, but not geeky.'' After graduating magna cum laude from Columbia
University in 1966, he received his M.D. from Yale in 1970. It was Ivy League
all the way. Publishing papers, becoming a recognized psychopharmacology expert,
he considered himself a ``show me'' kind of guy, believing only in what he could
see. He rarely gave much thought to anything paranormal, mystical, or spiritual.

One patient changed all that.

Weiss calls her Catherine in Many Lives, Many Masters, published in 1988, eight
years after her therapy began. Barely budging her garden-variety phobias and
anxieties with 18 months of conventional therapy, Weiss instructed Catherine
while hypnotized to ``go back to the time from which your symptoms arise.'' She
did: The year was 1863 B.C., and she was a 25-year-old woman named Aronda.

Weiss was shocked as Catherine unleashed a flood of memories from other
lifetimes as well. He soon discovered, he says, that traumatic events and
relationships encountered in previous lives were the source of her present
problems. But only after ruling out schizophrenia, split personalities,
psychosis, drug use, neurological illness, sociopathic tendencies, and just
plain acting, could the scientifically trained Weiss begin to accept this
notion. ``My gut reaction was that I'd stumbled upon something I knew very
little about--reincarnation and past memories.'' During the next three years, he
dispelled Catherine's phobias and panic attacks by having her vividly recall
events from dozens of her past lives.

But reincarnation was only part of what Weiss encountered during Catherine's
treatment. He also met ``the Masters,'' entities who spoke through Catherine,
while she was under hypnosis, about the nature of the universe, levels of
consciousness, intuitive powers, and the soul, which they said passed from one
body to another. Weiss first branded it mumbo jumbo until ``the Masters'' talked
about Weiss's late father and the medical condition that caused the death of his
three-week-old son years before--information to which Catherine would have no
access. In 1990, Weiss left Mount Sinai to devote himself full time to his
patients, about 60 percent of whose therapies include recalling past lives.

Upon our first meeting, Weiss hypnotized me. I did not experience past-life
recall but had what he calls ``a mystical experience.'' From my description of
the people in two separate scenes, it's clear to Weiss and to me that they are
symbolic of an important relationship I'm having with a man Weiss believes I've
also known in previous lifetimes and even in between, in the ``spirit state.''
Since treating Catherine, Weiss, 49, has researched not only reincarnation, but
Eastern and Western religions, mysticism, quantum physics, and intuitive and
paranormal experiences. He does not come across as some kind of guru, nor does
he want to be. He's simply a doctor, he says, who's become ``enlightened.'' Much
to his surprise, his work has been taken seriously by many in the psychiatric
community. Even some skeptics find value in his books. ``I can't say that these
experiences were actual memories of past lives,'' says Steven Warner, Miami
hypnotherapist and expert in multiple-personality disorders. ``It's possible
they were fantasy material similar to screen memory--an indirect way of
describing a problem. But there's a purposefulness to the unconscious. Whatever
is happening, I don't believe these `past life' memories are a sham.''

In 1992, shortly before publication of his second book, Through Time into
Healing, the University of Miami notified Weiss that it wouldn't be renewing his
teaching contract. Weiss has no doubt that his work with past-life therapy
provoked this action. But a week before, the University of Pittsburgh's Medical
School showed interest in a longitudinal study to see if gains by patients in
this therapy persist over time. Conducting this study from Miami, Weiss has also
spoken at the Yale Medical School psychiatry department and divinity schools.

During our second meeting, he spoke enthusiastically about how even the federal
government is taking alternative therapies seriously, citing the NIH's new
Office of Alternative Medicine, which he calls ``the Office of Far-Out Stuff.''
His work with past-life therapy has helped not only his patients, he
acknowledges, but himself.

--Nina L. Diamond

Omni: Why do scientists find reincarnation a hard concept to buy?

Weiss: Fear of the unfamiliar. Actually, people don't have to be afraid, if
only they'd keep an open mind. Meditation can teach people to do that if they
can let go of their fears.

Omni: But that can mean changing one's whole life.

Weiss: Yes, it's scary--but totally safe. It's difficult to let go of the
familiar, even if it's harmful, restricting, and blinding.

Omni: Where did the concept of reincarnation come from?

Weiss: It's so far back that we really don't know. I suspect it's from the
same place as now: People who are psychic, having visions of it, dreams or deja
vu, memories, meditations, came upon this knowledge. Plato wrote about
reincarnation. Ancient civilizations believed in this. We lost this belief only
recently, mostly for political reasons. In Judaism, belief in reincarnation, or
gilgul, existed until the early 1800s. Only with the migration out of Eastern
Europe to the West and the need to be accepted in the age of enlightenment and
science did the belief go underground--but not in Chasidic [ultraorthodox]
populations.

In Christianity, it went underground much earlier--the Second Council of
Constantinople in the sixth century declared reincarnation a heresy.
Christianity was becoming a state religion, and the Romans felt that without the
whip of Judgment Day, people would not behave, would not follow. They'd think,
``Well, I'll do it next time around.''

Omni: How do you think the length of time between lifetimes is determined?

Weiss: People who die violently, or children who die, often return much
faster. For those who live longer and die more peacefully, there can be a longer
time between lives, 100 years or more.

Omni: How many past lives do people generally have?

Weiss: That varies, but the number that comes up most often in my work is 100,
not the thousands and thousands that the Buddhists talk about.

Omni: Do you think that there is an infinite number of souls or finite?

Weiss: It doesn't matter to me because ultimately we're all connected.

Omni: Are new souls being created, in your opinion?

Weiss: My inclination is to say no. We're probably all ageless and have been
around from the beginning.

Omni: Are some people here now experiencing their first life?

Weiss: Theoretically, I'd guess yes. Maybe they ``transferred in'' and are
here for the first time, but I suspect most of us have been here other times. If
Earth is one of millions of worlds, it's like asking where did all those
children go to junior high before the new one was built? Well, they were
elsewhere. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that we're the only
place.

Omni: Have some people been around more--old souls?

Weiss: Sure, but I doubt this is the only place. There are other places we can
go to learn, too. It's not like Jupiter or Pluto or another solar system, but
perhaps another dimension. All mystical traditions talk about other worlds.
There may be other levels, too--different levels of heaven; that's where the
expression, ``I was in seventh heaven,'' comes from, seven as being an ultimate.
Catherine talked about seven dimensions.

Omni: Might two souls meet again in new lives? And if so, how would they
recognize each other?

Weiss: An energy attracts--you're pulled into a situation where you need to
be. Perhaps even from the time of birth, in choosing one's parents. It's not
random; you choose because of the opportunity to learn. You may make mistakes.
Everybody has free will, even your parents. They may not turn out the way you
had envisioned, because they have the free will to not reach their potential. In
one workshop as we were talking about this, a mother in the audience said to her
daughter, ``See, you chose me, so stop blaming me!'' And the daughter turned to
her and said, ``Then I must have been in a hurry.''

I see love or hostility at first sight as a kind of recognition of souls, a
working out of debts and responsibility. Spirit seems thicker than water. That's
what really pulls us together--sometimes genetically, but sometimes not. You may
be best friends. You may be father and son in one lifetime but lovers in this
lifetime. Switching of sex seems frequent. You may have a preference, but you've
tried out the other to see what it's like. That's also true of races and
religions.

Omni: How do you explain souls that in the next lifetime occupy bodies that
are biologically damaged?

Weiss: If it is all to learn--as my patients tell me over and over again--to
grow, to become more and more godlike, then whatever the experience, it is a
learning experience. Sometimes, though, it's a teaching experience as well, so
you may come back into this for others, maybe as an act of charity.

Omni: Why don't we consciously remember our past lives?

Weiss: More and more people are remembering through therapeutic techniques
such as hypnosis, but also through dreams, meditation, deja vu, and when they're
in a place they've never been before and they just know their way around. I
don't know why we don't all remember. The Greeks believed that when you were
born again, you drank from the river of Lethe so you'd forget previous lives.

Omni: If we retained knowledge of past lives, would it be cheating, like
taking a test with the book open? Are we supposed to learn in each life without
benefit from our previous lessons?

Weiss: Yes. Suppose that between lifetimes you say, ``Yeah, I've spent ten
lifetimes learning about charity. I know all about it. I'm a charitable
person.'' Okay, now comes the field test. You're born, put into a situation. Is
charity ingrained so deeply that you don't have to act charitably because of a
specific memory or because it's part of your nature?

Omni: So you think we're born with certain values and ideals?

Weiss: Yes, it gets ingrained, not at the level of the brain, but of the
heart, the soul. That's where real learning takes place so that you're not
dependent just on what your parents teach you. If one's parents were bigots, for
the child to overcome that and become compassionate, understanding, charitable,
unbigoted, requires a degree of independence that transcends what we're taught.
This is the soul memory in addition to specific talents, abilities, or whatever
else the soul might bring back with it. Our real lesson here is to learn of love
in all its ramifications--truth, compassion, generosity, mercy.

Omni: Religions and philosophies say the goal is perfection, to become ``one
with God,'' the creator or higher being.

Weiss: That's part of it. But it's like asking a third grader, ``What are you
learning in arithmetic?'' And he says, ``I'm learning about addition, long
division, and multiplication tables.'' He can't even comprehend geometry,
advanced algebra, and calculus. We're limited by what we know. I suspect the
reward has to do with love, with merging with higher consciousness, but it may
be so far beyond what we can comprehend now; it's hard to put into words. You
can sense it when you're on target. You do something compassionate and a tear of
joy comes to your eyes.

Omni: The Hindus include animals in reincarnation. Have you seen that
phenomenon in patients?

Weiss: I haven't found that myself in doing this work.

Omni: How can reincarnation be validated with data to support the claims of
past lives?

Weiss: Dr. Ian Stevenson [chairman emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry at
the University of Virginia; see Omni Interview, January 1988] has more than
2,000 cases of children from all over the world, many of whom exhibit
xenoglossy, the ability to speak a foreign language to which one has had no
exposure. Others know details about places they've never seen. No single
individual by his or her story is going to prove reincarnation, but it's the
weight of evidence: hundreds of therapists with thousands of patients where this
happens--children, nonbelievers, skeptics, all who come out with these details
of past lives.

It's very difficult to prove reincarnation scientifically because of what we
consider scientific. As a psychiatrist, I'm vitally interested in my patients'
clinical improvement. There's no question in my mind or those of the physicians
and psychotherapists who are writing and calling me that this has a tremendous
therapeutic effect. Past-lives therapy is quick, vivid, relatively inexpensive,
and people get better! Right now I'm accumulating evidence that this therapy
works and that people, whether they believe in reincarnation or not, can recall
details they didn't know from the distant or recent past.

Omni: Tell us about your recent project with the physics department at New
York University.

Weiss: They're bringing from China experts at what we'd call healing, what
they call energy. The physicists are trying to measure it--eventually to build a
machine that could mimic the effect and induce more rapid healing or cellular
changes. They're studying the effects these experts have on viruses or bacteria,
on people with certain ailments, and measuring the energy. The healers talk
about reincarnation. On my last trip to New York, I regressed one Chinese
physician who was more interested in that than the physicists' research. He
already knows how that works. He was insistent, so I regressed him through an
interpreter, and two lifetimes came up.

Omni: We can't see or feel this energy, and we can't explain it.

Weiss: That's why you need a physicist. Take a dog whistle: Because we can't
hear it doesn't mean a sound isn't being generated. If 100 years ago I told you
we'd be able to turn on a box with a glass front that captured waves plucked out
of the air by a metal rod on the side of your house and turned them into an
instantaneous picture right in the box, with sound, so that you could see in
Miami what was going on simultaneously in Moscow, you'd say, ``This guy is out
of it! What would you call that wave?'' And I'd say, ``I don't know yet, but
that doesn't mean it isn't real.'' We just don't have the names for these
wave/particle phenomena; our range is too limited. We'll eventually use our
minds to become aware of and generate these same energies or wave/particle
phenomena.

If I said that you are really a mass of electrons, protons, neutrons, and
wave/particle reactions, you'd say, ``But I'm solid.'' And I'd say, ``That's not
true, because at some deeper level, you're energy. And some day if they could
harness that energy, some enterprising physicist could probably build a bomb out
of you. The body is not what it seems, but that is true of all of reality.

Omni: Will physicists show that science, mysticism, spirituality, religion,
and parapsychology are linked through quantum mechanics?

Weiss: Physicists are the mystics of the Nineties and the next century.
They've begun to study consciousness, time reversal, all the phenomena
previously called occult or esoteric. These things will be scientifically proven
to have their roots in nature. Some concepts that seem strange to us now won't
be as we understand more of their underlying physics.

Omni: How do past-life relationships affect one's present life?

Weiss: In every way. Many of your most meaningful relationships are not new.
Past lives also affect us in symptoms, emotional and physical. Certain fears and
anxieties carry over from other lifetimes. Physical symptoms, where one may have
been wounded or hurt in a previous life, frequently come up. In about a dozen
obese patients, I've found two patterns that frequently emerge: A person once
died emaciated or there was sexual abuse from a past life. A woman decides, ``I
will never be attractive to men again,'' and keeps the weight on in this life as
a form of protection.

Omni: Sometimes people who've never given reincarnation a thought will, under
hypnosis during therapy, tap into a past life.

Weiss: Yes, and frequently that's how therapists, physicians, psychologists,
and others have themselves accidentally discovered the field. These memories
don't seem to come from an altered state. Many children, when they get a little
drowsy at bedtime, when the normal filters are relaxed, come out with details of
another time and place. Adults, too, in the hypnagogic state uncover memories.
Sometimes a dream may yield a memory fragment--and not a Freudian distortion or
wish, symbol, or metaphor.

Often while reliving a past life under hypnosis, patients have technical or
detailed knowledge about something they know nothing about in this life. One of
the best cases is New Jersey physician Dr. Bob Jarmon's first. It was when he
didn't believe in past lives. A Jewish woman in her thirties was seeing him for
hypnotherapy for weight loss, and she started developing another symptom: Her
periods stopped, and she developed lower abdominal tenderness. She was becoming
more anxious, and Jarmon thought she might be pregnant in the Fallopian tube,
which can be dangerous because it can burst. When he referred her to a
gynecologist, there was no evidence of pregnancy.

She continued to see Jarmon, and they were working on her anxiety when he said,
``Go back to the time from which your symptoms first arose.'' She went back to
the Middle Ages and was five months pregnant with an ectopic pregnancy. In that
past life, she was Catholic and was with a priest who wouldn't allow abortion or
surgery, so she died. And just before she died, she repeated the Catholic act of
contrition to the priest, word for word. Jarmon is Catholic and recognized it.
The woman had never heard of it.

This happens all the time. I hear details of dress, culture, how to make butter,
cheeses, put on roofs, herd goats. But again, it's hard to prove. I've found
talents, too, carried over from a past life. I found a young boy who knew the
specifications of World War II bombers--he just knew it, because, he said, he
flew them when he was big. Children often say that--``Don't you remember when I
was big?''

Omni: Give us an example of a dramatic turnaround.

Weiss: A woman couldn't button the top button of her blouse. By recalling a
past life under hypnosis, she learned she'd been guillotined. This had affected
her present life's relationships, the ability to trust. Once she remembered the
guillotine incident, she was able to close the top button right away, and that
set off a chain reaction. It all began to clear up.

But a past life is not necessary for everyone to remember. The subconscious
directs the traffic. If it's important and will help you to get rid of a
symptom, of course, remembering is necessary, but if it's not, you may not
remember the past life. You may remember 5 of your 80 or 90 past lives because
only those relate to what you're working on in this life.

Omni: How does experiencing a past life affect a person's brain waves?

Weiss: In hypnosis, you find relaxed alpha and theta brain rhythms. But in
past lives, you find all different brain patterns--alpha, beta, theta, visual
waves--because the occipital cortex, controlling vision, is stimulated. Using
enhanced EEG, I've seen a whole smorgasbord of brain-wave patterns.

Omni: What are some misconceptions about reincarnation?

Weiss: Probably the most famous is that everyone was Napoleon or Julius
Caesar. Most of us have been living pretty ordinary lives. There have been even
more misconceptions about hypnosis--that it's the only way to have reincarnation
memories. Hypnosis is only a state of focused concentration. You're not
sleeping; it's not a dream. Your mind is still there; you know where you are.
You don't get stuck in a past life or under hypnosis. You don't have heart
attacks; you don't actually reexperience the physical pain or disabilities.
You're aware of it but can float above it or stop it at any time.

Omni: Have any patients taken a turn for the worse as a result of this
therapy?

Weiss: I still haven't found one. This has to do with the wisdom of the
subconscious mind. It will not let something out that harms a person.

Omni: Can we go on to future lives?

Weiss: People are doing this work, such as psychologist Chet Snow, president
of the APRT [Association of Past Life Research and Therapy] society. I haven't
found it, probably because I'm not looking for it. Mostly I'm doing therapy, and
it seems to have some residue from the past. In this lifetime, we look back. At
another level, as physicists tell us, there is no time. I tried going into the
future with Catherine right off the bat, and she said it wasn't allowed. You can
learn from the past, but the future, that's a series of probabilities. Parallel
lives or universes, too, represent alternatives. But to me it's like climbing a
tree: The higher up you get, the more committed you are to a particular branch.
You're not on the other branches, but they're still there.

Omni: When you stumbled upon past-life therapy, were you seeking something
different from life?

Weiss: I was not. I was chairman of psychiatry at Mount Sinai, the youngest
professor of psychiatry ever at the University of Miami Medical School. I was
publishing, getting national recognition in my field, earning a lot of money; my
family life was going very well. In the Seventies, my wife and another couple
wanted to see a psychic as a lark. I wouldn't go, saying, ``Why waste your
money? We can go to a movie, do something real.'' So they didn't go.

That's how closed I was, just floating along, and along comes something to turn
you upside down. It didn't come out of a spiritual crisis but a time of comfort
and affluence. The change really hinged on my conversation with Catherine, then
subsequent patients during the next ten years, my reading, and meditation, too.

Omni: Why did you decide to go public with Many Lives, Many Masters?

Weiss: It was a difficult decision, and it took four years. Even after I
finished treating Catherine, the tapes of those sessions collected dust in my
closet because I feared for my reputation. But I kept finding people with these
experiences, and fear of death seemed so pervasive, and here I was finding out
that death is not what it appears. By going public, I'd reach more people, so I
started feeling guilty that I had all this information and wasn't sharing it.

Most other doctors are quite reluctant to go public. Still, I've gotten more
than 100 letters from physicians around the world who've done this work for up
to 20 years, but in the privacy of their offices. They always preface it with,
``Don't tell anyone, but . . .'' Then out come these beautiful case histories.
My youngest brother, an oncologist in St. Louis, is finding mystical
experiences, out-of-body experiences, with his dying cancer patients. A lot of
doctors are having them but are afraid to talk about it. Some are in my new
book.

Omni: Tell us about your past lives.

Weiss: The first time was when I got acupressure massage for an old neck
injury that was flaring up. I wasn't telling a soul about my research. I'd go
into this very relaxed, almost meditative state, and about the fourth session, I
saw an image of myself. I was taller, thin, wearing a multicolored robe,
standing in a large geometric-shaped building. I knew I was a priest--very
powerful, with the ear of the royal family. I had some psychic abilities and
spiritual knowledge in that life, too, and was misusing it for personal gain and
power. It was a very good life [laughter]. Easy, but wasted. The word ziggurat
kept ringing in my head. I had no conscious memory of that word, although that
doesn't prove I didn't come across it in college or something. I looked it up
and found it's a word for architectural structures, temples of the Babylonian
era.

Years later, I had a dream of being imprisoned in a European dungeon, my arm
chained to the wall. I was being tortured for teaching my religious beliefs,
which included reincarnation. As I died in that dungeon, I became aware of a
message: ``When you had the chance to teach, you did not.'' I knew that meant I
should have taught about love rather than reincarnation and get killed for it. I
went too far. The implication was, ``Now you can have both.''

Omni: Who are the Masters?

Weiss: Catherine described them as the source of information coming to her,
and they would come through her to me. She had no memory of them when awakened
from hypnosis, but when in between remembering past lives, she'd go into a state
where the Masters' spirits would come. The knowledge was unlike her; even the
phonetics, grammar, style were different. Other patients tell me things that are
coming from a purer source, not contaminated by our brains. The personal
information was the Masters' way of getting my attention. That was the turning
point, when I started to believe it rather than think it was imagination or
fantasy.

Omni: Is past-life therapy the next great leap for psychiatry?

Weiss: Some marvelous breakthroughs will come with the biological
understanding of the brain, with understanding Alzheimer's, other memory
disorders, schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness. Past-life therapy is also
extremely important, and while it may not be the next great leap, it may be the
most important.

*
MOST DESIRABLE PAST-LIFE ENVIRONMENT:

*
Palestine, 2000 years ago

*
MOST DESIRABLE NEXT-LIFE ENVIRONMENT:

*
Tahiti

*
LIFE PURPOSE:

*
To be a teacher and travel agent

*
MOTTO:

*
Choose love, not fear.

*
LESSON LEARNED:

*
There is no death. We go from life to life, body to body.

*
PERSONAL PAST LIVES EXPERIENCED:

*
Two

*
ON RELIGION:

*
I'd be much happier if there were just one religion, one of love and spirit,
hope, and wisdom. My work made me more aware of the environment. We have to come
back and live on this planet again. So what we do is not just affecting our
children.

*
BOOKS SOLD:

*
Many Lives, Many Masters, 1988 (400,000 copies U.S., 17 foreign languages)
Through Time into Healing, 1992 (50,000 hardcover)