Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives

“The concepts of past lives and reincarnation were alien to her cosmology, and yet her memories were so vivid, the sights and sounds and smells so clear, the knowledge that she was there so powerful and immediate, that she felt she must have actually been there. She did not doubt this; the experience was so overwhelming. Yet she was concerned about how this fit in with her upbringing and her beliefs.”

Catherine herself required compelling evidence of her own experiences under trance because she was not predisposed to believing in such things as past lives or wise spiritual beings who existed outside of Christian cosmology. Weiss moves to convince his audience of the validity of these claims by exposing Catherine’s struggle to reconcile these baffling traversals through ancient lifetimes with her existing faith and belief system. If Catherine was putting on a show or otherwise faking her experiences, why would she be troubled by the way her experiences with hypnotic regression affected her pre-existing understanding of the world?

“Everything seemed to be falling into place. Few young men worry about life and death and life after death, especially when things are flowing smoothly, and I was no exception. I was becoming a scientist and learning to think in a logical, dispassionate, ‘prove-it’ kind of way.”

Describing his formative years of education at Columbia University and Yale Medical School, Weiss explains that his disposition upon beginning therapy sessions with Catherine was that of a hard-nosed scientist. It is unthinkable after reading about Weiss’s traditional training that paranormal research and practice would form part of this doctor’s psychiatric treatment. The evidence was so compelling to Weiss that not even high achievement at the most prestigious graduate institutions in the United States could put blinders on the evidence of his own eyes and ears. Weiss does not abandon the scientific method, however; later on, he explains that evaluating psychic claims should be done using the regular methodology of science.

“I began to realize that even though I had considered myself well educated about every dimension of the mind, my education had been very limited. There are libraries filled with this research and literature, and few people know about it. Much of this research was conducted, verified, and replicated by reputable clinicians and scientists. Could they all be mistaken or deceived? The evidence seemed to be overwhelmingly supportive, yet I still doubted. Overwhelming or not, I found it difficult to believe.”

The exclusive club of what counts as “knowledge” begins to expand for Weiss. Other ways of knowing, like First Nations knowledge in North America to traditional Chinese medicine, are often minimized or disregarded by mainstream science as not being accurate or helpful forms of knowledge. Here, Weiss acknowledges that real knowledge about past lives and the practice of hypnotic regression lies in books and journals right out in the open for all to see, including compelling case studies that are hard to ignore. The author’s background in hard science also applies a gloss of skepticism over each of his new findings; while excited, Weiss is always searching for more facts.

“What I did not yet fully appreciate was that the steady day-in and day-out pounding of undermining influences, such as a parent’s scathing criticisms, could cause even more psychological trauma than a single traumatic event. These damaging influences, because they blend into the everyday background of our lives, are even more difficult to remember and exorcise. A constantly criticized child can lose as much confidence and self-esteem as one who remembers being humiliated on one particular, horrifying day.”

This is a straightforward psychological insight about the sometimes cumulative nature of trauma. When we consider the larger context of the book, however, this excerpt yields additional insight. Weiss implies that past-life therapy, which encompasses inter-lifetime traumas over a period of potentially thousands of years, is even better equipped to address the long-term effects of regular psychological injury than even the most attentive conventional psychotherapy because practitioners can address accumulated traumas from multiple lifetimes.

“My questioning of her during these sessions was certainly very different from what I used in conventional psychotherapy. I acted more as a guide with Catherine, trying to review an entire lifetime in an hour or two, searching for traumatic events and harmful patterns that might explain her current-day symptoms. Conventional therapy is conducted at a much more detailed and leisurely pace. Every word chosen by the patient is analyzed for nuances and hidden meanings. Every facial gesture, every bodily movement, every inflection of the voice is considered and evaluated. Every emotional reaction is carefully scrutinized. Behavior patterns are painstakingly pieced together. With Catherine, however, years could whir by in minutes. Catherine’s sessions were like driving the Indy 500 at full throttle […] and trying to pick out faces in the crowd.”

This is one of the first comprehensive comparisons between conventional psychotherapy and past-life regression in the book. Weiss doesn’t exactly discount or disprove the effectiveness of regular psychotherapy, which he remains an expert practitioner in and has helped other clients with. Instead, he explains the benefits of hypnotic regression while highlighting some of the cumbersome aspects of regular therapy. The hyper-focus on “every facial gesture, every bodily movement, every inflection of the voice” suddenly seems like a less important area in which to dig deep when there are thousands of years of life experience to discover and work through with patients. This passage suggests that psychotherapy without a willingness to delve into past lives seems parochial and unrealized.

“Our task is to learn, to become God-like through knowledge. We know so little. You are here to be my teacher. I have so much to learn. By knowledge we approach God, and then we can rest. Then we come back to teach and help others.”

Catherine is beginning to come into her power as a psychically awakened being in this moment, which also serves as a summary of the message of this book. Beyond simply re-experiencing and describing her past lives, here Catherine can be reflective of her experiences and derive wisdom from the lessons of the past. Her insight that people must continually increase their knowledge about the world and about themselves and offer help to all who need it becomes Weiss’s own mission, which he recommends to his reader.

“My skepticism fluctuated, yet remained. Maybe she had read about near-death research in a magazine article or had seen an interview on a television show. Although she denied any conscious remembrance of such an article or show, perhaps she retained a subconscious memory. But she went beyond these previous writings and transmitted a message back from this in-between state. If only I had more facts.”

Weiss is anticipating what are likely to be many of his audience’s own suspicions. Throughout the book, Weiss takes a pre-emptive posture regarding the audience’s skepticism by laying out many common reservations people hold about past lives (e.g., maybe she is just describing an old romance novel she once read, she must have found that secret information beforehand and regurgitated it in session) and explaining why these commonsense objections do not apply in Catherine’s case. Weiss positions himself as a perennial skeptic, unable to completely embrace the phenomenon taking place in his office until later in the book.

“Your father is here, and your son, who is a small child. Your father says you will know him because his name is Avrom, and your daughter is named after him. Also, his death was due to his heart. Your son’s heart was also important, for it was backward, like a chicken’s. He made a great sacrifice for you out of his love. His soul is very advanced. […] His death satisfied his parents’ debts. Also he wanted to show you that medicine could only go so far, that its scope is very limited.”

Weiss wants this overwhelming batch of information to convince the reader of the validity and value of hypnotic regression as much as it convinced him. This information is extremely personal to Weiss and reaches the emotional core of his being as it relates to his dead child. It even suggests that Weiss’s son intended for his own death to work for the benefit of his father’s current lifetime by teaching him a valuable lesson. However, the same reasons that make this information critical for Weiss make it most worthy of scrutiny for his audience; Weiss himself would point to fake psychics who use emotional manipulation to make clients invested in the process early on and make them paying customers for life. The fact that Catherine worked at the same hospital as Weiss also creates opportunity for her to come into contact with personal information about him. If the events described by Weiss are true in their exact detail, however, then the charge of emotional manipulation can’t be sustained. The reader must decide for themselves where they stand.

“My life would never be the same again. A hand had reached down and irreversibly altered the course of my life. All of my reading, which had been done with careful scrutiny and skeptical detachment, fell into place. Catherine’s memories and messages were true. My intuitions about the accuracy of her experiences had been correct. I had the facts. I had the proof.”

With this description of his reaction to Catherine’s bombshell revelation about his personal life, Weiss is attempting to meld the objective and skeptical world of the hard sciences with the intuitive and mysterious world of reincarnation and past-life research. For Weiss, the personal information regarding his father and his son provided both the best possible proof of reincarnation and the key to understanding all of his research. It would no longer be possible for Weiss to regard his research and his practice coldheartedly or in a fully detached manner, as the subject matter was now tied up with his deepest emotional core. Readers, however, may approach what Weiss takes as proof with more skepticism.

“I knew I was more calm and patient, and others were telling me how peaceful I looked, how I seemed more rested and happier. I felt more hope, more joy, more purpose, and more satisfaction in my life. It dawned on me that I was losing the fear of death. I wasn’t afraid of my own death or of nonexistence. I was less afraid of losing others, even though I would certainly miss them.”

Early in his experience, Weiss notices that the sessions he’s having with Catherine ostensibly to cure her symptoms are actually having an enriching effect on him as well. At this point, Weiss has not received the message from the Masters that his experience with Catherine is mostly for his benefit so that he will be better equipped to help other people with similar treatments for the rest of his life. This positive effect on Weiss is not mystical; it is only natural that receiving proof of reincarnation and knowing that death in the physical realm is not forever would relieve many people of the greatest mental burden we all face, which is fear of death.

“Catherine is a relatively simple and honest person. She is not a scholar, and she could not have invented the facts, details, historical events, descriptions, and poetry that came through her. As a psychiatrist, a scientist, I was certain that the material originated from some portion of her unconscious mind. It was real, beyond any doubt. Even if Catherine were a skilled actress, she could not have recreated these happenings. The knowledge was too accurate and too specific, lying beyond her capacity.”

As readers, we can choose to take Weiss’s assertions about Catherine at face value or approach them critically. It is possible that Catherine was running some kind of con on Weiss, or alternatively, that he and Catherine have collaborated on an elaborate and unethical hoax. Just as likely, however, is that by this point in the text, some readers will appreciate Weiss’s credentials as a thinker about human psychology and will give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his assessment of Catherine’s character and personality.

“There is some powerful curative force in this realm, a force apparently much more effective than conventional therapy or modern medicines. The force includes remembering and reliving not just momentous traumatic events, but also the daily insults to our bodies, minds, and egos.”

Weiss is beginning to come to terms with the therapeutic power of hypnotic regression, which remains largely mysterious to him. He sketches out a tentative route by which the therapy works including re-experiencing difficult moments not just from a person’s current lifetime but from potentially dozens or hundreds of others. At this early stage, he is still confident enough to assert that this therapy alleviates symptoms more effectively than both his regular talk-therapy strategies and the kinds of medications he normally prescribes as a psychiatrist, which is a bold claim at which some members of Weiss’s readers may balk.

“And what about the Masters and their messages? This came through Catherine but was not of Catherine. And their wisdom was also reflected in Catherine’s memories of lifetimes. I knew that this information and these messages were true. I knew this not only from many years of careful study of people, their minds and brains and personalities, but I also knew this intuitively, even before the visit from my father and my son. My brain with its years of careful scientific training knew this, and my bones also knew.”

This is Weiss’s most full-throated support of intuitive knowledge yet. While Catherine’s earlier revelation about Weiss’s father and son while she was under trance was the crucial piece of information that made the doctor throw his full support behind Catherine’s experiences, now he is willing to admit that intuitively he understood the truth about past lives even before this event. His trust in intuitive knowledge was not nearly strong enough before to assert this, but after extended time with Catherine and the Masters, Weiss’s own intuitive abilities have been sharpened. Some patients may feel uncomfortable with a practitioner indicating that they know something to be true because they feel it in their bones, but Weiss wants readers to maintain open minds about their own intuitive powers.

“But how to reach people with this knowledge? Most people recite prayers in their churches, synagogues, mosques, or temples, prayers that proclaim the immortality of the soul. Yet after worship is over, they go back into their competitive ruts, practicing greed and manipulation and self-centeredness. These traits retard the progress of the soul. So, if faith is not enough, perhaps science will help. Perhaps experiences such as Catherine’s and mine need to be studied, analyzed, and reported in a detached, scientific manner by people trained in the behavioral and physical sciences. Yet, at this time, writing a scientific paper or a book was the furthest thing from my mind, a remote and most unlikely possibility.”

This passage highlights two undercurrents running the text. First is a critique of organized religion in comparison to an open and intuitive approach to spiritual matters, and second is Weiss’s wish to incorporate psychic phenomena into already established and respected fields of science. He turns from the limited possibilities of organized religion for expanding one’s spiritual journey to the possibility that one day, people might be able to open a regular scientific journal and read interesting studies about people’s experiences with other dimensions, previous lifetimes, and wise teachers of the spiritual realm.

“I understood why these highly trained professionals remained in the closet. I was one of them. We could not deny our own experiences and senses. Yet our training was in many ways diametrically opposite to the information, experiences, and beliefs we had accumulated. So we remained quiet.”

Weiss employs the metaphor of the closet to describe the fear of acknowledging supernatural phenomena in professional scientific spaces, even with close friends and colleagues. Traditionally associated with the LGBTQ+ community, the metaphor of the closet visualizes the feeling of hiding one’s true identity from society revelation could result in the loss of one’s career, friends, and family—and worse. For Weiss to employ this metaphor underlines how damaging he fears the revelation of his views and experiences might be to his career and public standing.

“She would be cured of the terror of choking, yet this revelation was nevertheless more important for me than for her. I was the one doing the healing. Her simple answer contained many levels of meaning. I felt that if I truly understood these levels, these resonating octaves of meanings, I would advance a quantum leap into the understanding of human relationships. Perhaps the helping was more important than the cure.”

This reflection from Weiss follows a moment in which Catherine learns that her fear of choking came from listening to doctors discussing the tube in her throat while she was under anesthesia for surgery. Catherine explains that this revelation, while helpful for Catherine, is meant for Weiss to help others with this treatment. The idea of “the helping” being more important than “the cure” is a move away from modern medicine’s focus on isolating symptoms and fixing them with drugs or surgery and moving toward a holistic view of health that, perhaps controversially, centers therapies that address past life trauma.

“Everything must be balanced. Nature is balanced. The beasts live in harmony. Humans have not learned to do that. They continue to destroy themselves. There is no harmony, no plan to what they do. It’s so different in nature. Nature is balanced. Nature is energy and life…and restoration. And humans just destroy. They destroy nature. They destroy other humans. They will eventually destroy themselves.”

This quote comes from the poet Master. It suggests that Masters are not simply knowledgeable about different dimensions and about the past, but can also peer into the future (this is more or less confirmed when Catherine in another passage explains that she is not permitted to see the future, implying that only some beings are permitted this knowledge).

“I also wondered about the hierarchy of spirits, about who became a guardian and who a Master, and about those who were neither, just learning. There must be gradations based upon wisdom and knowledge, with the ultimate goal that of becoming God-like and approaching, perhaps merging somehow, with God. This was the goal that mystic theologians had described in ecstatic terms over the centuries. They had had glimpses of such a divine union. Short of such personal experience, vehicles such as Catherine, with her extraordinary talent, provided the best view.”

At this point in the narrative, Weiss has experienced enough of the wisdom of the spiritual realm to speculate about a greater hidden cosmology. He connects his understanding of this cosmology with the ancient experiences of spiritual mystics who appear to be in touch with the same kind of supernatural material as Catherine and Weiss. Until this point it might not have been clear that Weiss’s ambition exceeds helping more people with hypnotic regression; it involves proving the experiences of ancient mystics and discovering the goal of all human life.

“I found that my ability to heal my patients had significantly expanded, not just with phobias and anxieties, but especially in death-and-dying, or grief, counseling. I intuitively knew what was wrong and what directions to take in therapy. I was able to convey feelings of peacefulness, calm, and hope.”

Weiss claims that part of his improved ability to heal his patients has to do with the direct wisdom he receives from the Masters and from his understanding that physical death is not the end, but the greater portion of his improvement has to do with the actual process of helping Catherine and the effect this practice has on sharpening his intuition. This result is partially mysterious and never completely explained, but as Weiss opens himself up to the experiences in session with Catherine, he becomes a better intuitive healer.

“We have so many stages we go through when we’re in physical state…just like the other stages of evolution. We have to go through the infancy stage, the baby stage, the child stage. […] We have so far to go before we reach […] before we reach our goal. The stages in physical form are hard. Those in the astral plane are easy. There we just rest and wait. These are the hard stages now.”

This excerpt from Catherine’s session gives new meaning to the concept of lifelong learning. Not only should learning take place throughout one’s current lifetime, but across all their lifetimes and through multiple dimensions of reality. Unfortunately, for flesh-bound creatures, the physical learning process is the most tortuous. Catherine claims that growth across the various planes occurs through mastering the lessons of each lifetime. Taking an active interest in one’s own lives and understanding how they are meant to help others is more than an ethically satisfying way to spend one single life; it is a method for ascending the stages of spiritual evolution.

“The important strides that are going to be made in this field will be made using scientific methodology. In science, a hypothesis, which is a preliminary assumption made about a series of observations, is initially created to explain a phenomenon. From there, the hypothesis must be tested under controlled conditions. The results of these tests must be proved and replicated before a theory can be formed. Once the scientists have what they think is a sound theory, it must be tested again and again by other researchers, and the results should be the same.”

Weiss insists that the future of psychic and other paranormal research will require the scientific method of inquiry. This is position is at odds with certain forms of religious faith which declare that science has its own realm of inquiry which is separate from the religious or supernatural realm of inquiry. Weiss is not afraid of being debunked by science; rather, he seems interested in debunking fraudulent psychic healers who take people’s money and offer no worthwhile service in return. Weiss is confident that with careful application of the scientific method, psychic phenomena like Catherine’s past-life experience and the wisdom she relates from the Masters could be discovered and duplicated by independent researchers who together could piece together a picture of the various spiritual dimensions.

“Our work is done. Catherine is now free to fully enjoy her life, no longer crippled by her disabling symptoms. She has found a sense of happiness and contentment that she never thought was possible. She no longer fears illness or death. Life has a meaning and purpose for her now that she is balanced and in harmony with herself. She radiates an inner peace that many wish for but few attain. She feels more spiritual.”

Weiss describes the best-case scenario for any therapist, the cure of his patient. He claims that Catherine was cured not by the careful application of tried-and-true psychiatric interventions but from a process of hypnotic regression that he arrived at almost accidentally and which the two of them perfected with trial and error over many months. Whether Catherine’s healing was truly the result of past-life regression or else the result of sustained conversation and collaboration with a psychiatrist is up to the reader to decide.

“In the rush toward the medicalization of psychiatry, it is important that we do not abandon the traditional, albeit sometimes vague, teachings of our profession. We are the ones who still talk to our patients, patiently and with compassion. We still take the time to do this. We promote the conceptual understanding of illness, healing with understanding and the induced discovery of self-knowledge, rather than just with laser beams. We still use hope to heal.”

Weiss did not abandon the principles of his original profession in the course of his new discoveries with Catherine. He is extremely critical of what he perceives as negative modern trends in psychiatry, including the over-reliance on technologies like advanced pharmaceuticals to treat superficial symptoms with deeper unaddressed roots. However, in this passage, he reclaims what has always been good and unique about his profession, namely, the authenticity and compassion it is possible to communicate with patients on a one-on-one basis. Weiss wants to combine the best of traditional psychiatric practice with his new understanding of past lives and how to access those realities.