Many Lives Many Masters Essay, Research Paper
Many Lives, Many Masters is a book about a psychologist Brian L. Weiss, who by helping his patient he helps himself as well. Through Catherine he learned that his conventional approach through the scientific method and medication was not the proper way to heal his patients. Catherine comes in with anxiety, panic attacks and phobias and wants a way out of it all. Dr. Weiss approaches the situation in a scientific manner as he does with all of his patients, he doesn?t get very far until he decided to use hypnosis. He would have liked to use medication but her fear of swallowing pills prevented that. During hypnosis she begins to remember her childhood but not this childhood her past life. At first Dr. Weiss is very skeptical I mean there is no scientific explanation for this but he decides to continue. In her past lives he begins to discover why she has so many of the fears and phobias that she has. As well, during hypnosis she begins to identify others in her life now as some from her past lives. During one of these hypnosis after her death a different voice begins to speak. This voice knows things about Dr. Weiss? past that no one else would and could know because he never shared the details with Catherine about his personal life. This Masters begins to tell him about his meaning in life, a message. One that through his religious beliefs as well as through his scientific methods he could not understand. The Masters spoke of many plains that were reached throughout your past lives. You could only reach these plains if you solved the problem you had in your life. For example, if you leave a life and never learn to trust in your next life, you must learn to trust. If this is achieved you would be able to reach to the next plain and receive more knowledge. He began to believe and listen. Through this listening, he began to have new meaning in his life and learned how to help Catherine through hers. He than began to try to reach the end of Catherine?s lives to get to the end in the hope that the Masters would relay another message through Catherine. The masters did not appear every time that Catherine remembered a death in her past life only when they decided to relay this message. These messages then stopped and Catherine was cured. Then years later Dr. Weiss believed it was time for him to pass this message to others through his book Many Lives, Many Masters.
In the beginning of the book I was very captivated by Catherine?s past life regressions. The belief that there was past lives and knowledge obtained from each life was a great revelation. Then, the masters began to speak; this became a little far fetch for me. I?m not saying that Dr. Weiss didn?t hear these masters speak but that he might have misinterpreted the message the masters are really trying to bring across. He was very na?ve at the time, and began to learn about things beyond the scientific method and was not ready to learn so much information. I can not say with certainty that maybe later in his next books he learned the deeper meaning of the masters messages. I also think that when the masters spoke of the religious individuals ?People of the religious orders have come closer than any of us because they?ve taken these vows of chastity and obedience.? reaching a higher plain much faster because of it. This was his way of somehow holding on to faith something he was taught growing up. Not all the book is full of weaknesses though, the stories that Catherine remembered from her past life regressions were I believe the strongest points in this book. She spoke of people in her past lives as though she knows them now or strangers. The idea that we decide to come back with certain people and that somehow we decide to meet again was the most fascinating. The same as in Mutant Message were Marlo learns that in a past life she made a promise with now one of the ?Real People? that she would meet in fifty years. In addition, the masters speak of how we also choose when we will be re-born and when we choose to leave. It explains at least to me how when we first meet some people we feel very close to them as if we had known them our whole life. Moreover, that we are not just wandering aimlessly through this world we have a meaning and we are trying to succeed.
The masters were trying to pass many messages through Catherine to Dr. Weiss who in turn is trying to pass on to us the readers. The message that we do chose our destiny and meaning in life. That death happens for a reason, that we must learn from it and not take it as a great tragedy or that we are being punished. We should not fear that we will not find our meaning in life because in time we will be guided, we are not forgotten. Fear is what she eradicate form our minds if we loose our fear it?ll be the strongest tool that we have. Our physical state is not what is important it is our spiritual state, that which is inside of us, that will continue after our physical body is dead. We constantly change bodies in our life we grow from a baby to a child to an adult, ?Why shouldn?t we go one step beyond and shed the adult body and go on to a spiritual plane??
The message that has brought about the most significance to me the one that has made me think of my future is when the poet Master speaks of patience and forever. ??everything comes when it must come.? I am always in such a rush to finish things sometimes to work on a schedule afraid of running out of time. I want to finish school at a certain age start working at another and so on. I feel I don?t have enough time to enjoy everything that I am running out of time. In part it because I have lost many friends in their ?prime.? They were just beginning to enjoy life when suddenly they were taken away from me at least that is what I believed. For many years I blamed myself for each one of their deaths if only I had? This was a phase in my life, which I had to learn from as difficult as it was for me it made me a much stronger person.
They chose before they were born what they were to accomplish and when they should leave. The full meaning to why they passed away so young I don?t think I?ll fully be able to understand now but in time I will. Time should not be of so much importance to me. The idea of forever I think is the hardest for me to understand. I think even Marlo in Mutant Message didn?t fully understand the definition brought about by the ?Real People.? It is also something, which in time we will be able to understand. I have to forget the past and worry about now and not that I won?t have time to do everything I want to do. I have a meaning and that is what I should focus on what I came to this life to do and learn. Only then will I be able to focus more clearly on what is important and not clutter my mind with everything that is going around me.
I do think though that my meaning or at least on is to help people to be the alternative to medication as Dr. Brian Weiss believes now. I believe that through music therapy I will be able to help others and teach them to help themselves as well.