42 pages • 1 hour read
Brian WeissMany Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Catherine continues regressing through lifetimes during sessions, at one point indicating that somebody named “Robert Jarrod” needed Weiss’s help. Catherine continues to remember her past lives vividly but never remembers the messages from the Masters in the in-between. Weiss invites his wife Carole to attend the next session with Catherine’s permission and decides to tape record it. Weiss muses that perhaps “the entire process, not just the memories themselves” (65) could explain Catherine’s recovery. He also wonders if re-experiencing traumatic injury in a past life could be harmful in the present, but “this was a new frontier; nobody knew the answers” (67).
Finally, Catherine channels another Master. This Master explains that there are many souls, including other Masters, who occupy various dimensions. They say that there are different planes of existence, and “each one is a level of higher consciousness. What plane we go to depends upon how far we’ve progressed” (68). They explain that bad behavior or “vices” (68) follow you to the next life until they are resolved and recommends that people should spend time with different kinds of people “whose vibrations are wrong […] with yours” (69). People all have inherent powers they should be using and which they carry throughout their lives. Crucially, the Master informs Weiss that the ultimate purpose of these sessions is so that Weiss can be exposed to this spiritual wisdom and not necessarily so Catherine can be healed.
As she passes into the next lifetime, Weiss notes that Catherine appears to have achieved a “higher” conscious like a “superconscious” (74) while in trance. Later in the session, a Master explains through Catherine that “we are not to kill, no matter what the circumstances. Only God can punish” (76). The session ends with an exhausted Catherine who feels like “a huge weight had been lifted from her” (76).
Chapter 6 Summary
Catherine’s progress continues, and she even forgives her formerly abusive father. She once again works through several lifetimes under trance with Weiss, including one in the 18th century in which she is a servant and not permitted to attend the wedding of one of the daughters of the house due to her social standing.
Catherine then floats away into the “wonderful light” surrounded by “wonderful people,” and she channels another Master who explains that “the soul finds peace” (83) in this in-between light which draws us like a magnet.
Weiss asks the Masters if people select the circumstances of their own births and deaths, and a new Master with “the voice of a poet” (83) replies that yes, “we choose when we will come into our physical state and when we will leave” (83) based on whether or not a person accomplishes their mission in the physical realm, at which point one accepts death. After one’s soul returns to the cozy light, it is possible to select another entry point back into the realm of the physical “to fulfill what they must” (84).
Still under trance, Catherine realizes that her life has been in shambles because she lacked faith in this previous lifetime and must learn “faith in the Masters” (85). Weiss inquires of the Masters how to best assist Catherine, and the poet Master responds that he is doing everything right but reiterates that everything happening is primarily for Weiss’s benefit, leaving the doctor to wonder about his own purpose in life.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
Catherine is, to say the least, an exceedingly good sport. Weiss muses that this cutting-edge therapy could be harmful to the patient, but he can’t be sure because he’s exploring new frontiers. Catherine allows Weiss’s spouse to sit in on a hypnotic regression session, which exposes the patient at her most vulnerable moments, and a spiritual being appears to explain that none of this is for Catherine’s benefit anyway. Everything that is happening is for the enrichment of Weiss and his practice. Skeptical readers might wonder whether Catherine is being exploited by Weiss in some way for his own benefit. They might also wonder whether she is running a long con on Weiss, keeping his interest by spinning a continuous story that eventually centers him and not her.
Taking events at face value, however, this chapter brings up spiritual questions and just a few answers through the words of a Master. If these sessions are taking place because Weiss is “the one to be taught” (72), does that mean that a spiritual force caused these sessions to happen as a form of destiny? Or does the universe simply take advantage of situations as they are? Other events in the text, such as the insistence of two men in Catherine’s life to visit Weiss, suggest that some force in the universe is conspiring to bring Catherine and Weiss together to make these sessions happen. Later in the narrative, Catherine explains that it is possible for some beings to see the future and says that the Masters “monitor everything” (144), further suggesting that some of the invisible spiritual forces beyond comprehension in physical form could be god-like in their omniscience. Yet for every question that a Master answers, dozens more arise.
Catherine’s journeys through lifetimes become routine, and she is now becoming adept at working through several lifetimes in a single session and mining them for lessons and useful information. She quickly recognizes an important insight when she sees it; for instance, she understands that her lack of faith caused problems in a previous lifetime and immediately understood that restoring her faith in the Masters would rectify the issue.
Apart from his development as a spiritual practitioner, Weiss experiences benefits to his personal life from performing hypnotic regression with Catherine. He has more patience, understands the importance of love, and relishes time with his son more. The book doesn’t spell out precisely why these positive changes happen, but the reader can infer that they are related to Weiss slowly realizing the consequences of living a life without permanent death. It makes sense that the absence of a fear of death would reduce anxiety and increase patience for somebody who truly believed in it, as Weiss now does. Weiss’s blossoming personal life could also be thanks to his coming to terms with his life’s purpose as a spiritual practitioner and evangelist for this method of therapy. There could also be a mystical reason related to his access to the Masters and information from the in-between, but this is another category of information that is never fully explained in the book.
