Return to peace. An interview with Brian Weiss.
Athanor Magazine Number 35. September-October 2002. Pages 15-18.
Return to peace. An interview with Brian Weiss.
Interviewer: Josep Agustín. Interpreter: Loto Perrella. Photographs: Natalia Campoy.
Translation: Loto Perrella.
Doctor Brian Weiss. Photo: Natalia Campoy.
How to be at peace with oneself and therefore with all is perhaps the magical formula most sought after since always by human beings. We met Doctor Brian Weiss in his hotel and along the whole interview we could feel the peace and quiet, the good temper and the kind nature of the man.
The conversation was about his work in the field of regressions and other current events, some of them uncommon.
From his voice we heard a straightforward statement: «Love and Compassion are two essential ingredients to be able to melt away fear…». Really a good formula to be at Peace.
–Doctor Weiss, your work in the field of regressions is greatly acknowledged internationally. You are a well known doctor in the field of biological psychiatry. You have studied conventional medicine. Life after death, the words soul, spirit, energy, masters, did not belong to your professional language at the time. Which was the spark which motivated you to start regressions?–
–What you say is very true. In the school of psychiatry I didn’t learn any of this, but my experience with Katherin, which is mentioned in my book Many lives, many masters, was the beginning of my changeover. That was in 1988, and since then I have conducted regressions with more than 3,000 patients: about 3,500 in single therapies in my consulting room, but if we take into account those attended in groups, they are many more. One of the basic facts in science enjoins to observe without judgement, without expecting any result. When we make observations, hypotheses are set up and in this way scientific theories are developed. While I made these observations with Katherin, I witnessed in other patients the phenomena which had to be studied, which could not be overlooked. During the regression some people spoke in foreign languages that they had never learnt, and people who knew data and information about themselves from other periods and places, and also historical details they had never studied. They even found information concerning their own graves in the old town registers. And at the same time their health improved, their symptoms disappeared, their fears disappeared. And so I could observe amazing changes all over in my patients. As a scientist I had to study these things, and develop hypotheses. In this way I gradually changed my attitude. Now I train hundreds of therapists every year to carry on this work and they reach the same results I had.–
–What did meeting Katherin mean for your work, family and social life?–
–It produced very great changes in both aspects of my life, both professional and personal life. As far as work was concerned, everybody started talking about me, and paying attention to me all over the world, and from everywhere patients started to arrive to my consulting room to have this sort of therapy. As a result of this work, values changed also in my personal life. I discovered that death does not exist, and therefore we should not be so much afraid of it. I also learnt that we do not take our things with us when we die. My moral standards changed, personal human relationships became more important, I developed a sense of peace and quiet, and I learnt to meditate. These things changed my life.–
Left to right: translator Loto Perrella, Doctor Brian Weiss, and interviewer Josep Agustín. Photo: Natalia Campoy.
–You have written several books on this subject, among them Many lives, many masters and Only love is real. Hundreds of people have taken advantage of your work and have been trained by you. What is a regression?–
–It is a trip back in time in a state of deep concentration and relaxation, and to recall facts and experiences from the past. They can be from the day before yesterday –that too is a regression–, from childhood, from the prenatal period, or from past lives or spiritual experiences. Yesterday there was an important talk here in the Majestic Hotel, there were about four hundred people. We made a group practice and over half of those present remembered past lives. Regressions are not difficult to do, and they are safe. It was a five hour workshop, and people had extraordinary experiences. Later they discussed them together.–
–In your book Many lives, many masters, your patient Katherin gets in touch with her master in a state of induced hypnosis. Is it possible to go through this experience of your own free will?–
–Yes, many people do so. In yesterday’s workshop several people under hypnosis in deep regression had experiences. We all have medium’s abilities. All of us can receive messages, sometimes from your departed loved ones, from higher levels, from masters, because we are all interconnected. It is just one energy, just one consciousness. With some training we may tune in to this higher energy and this higher consciousness. What Katherin did then seemed extraordinary to me, but many people can do it.–
–Since the years 40 or 50 of the past century, mankind has experienced scientific and cultural changes of all sorts, very fast. At the present time, with the internet all the information, good and bad, is within our reach. Alternative medicine, ecology, spirituality: these words are in almost everybody’s vocabulary. What can it mean for human beings to be conscious of the realities you are talking about?–
–The positive feature of all this is that we can share information and knowledge very rapidly, but there are also negative aspects: there is no time left for going deep, meditating, because we are being assailed continuously by outer considerations. I don’t consider this neither bad nor good, it is a different technology, such as mobile phones which are interfering all the time in our lives, but which sometimes may be useful. Everything must be used with moderation and calmness. Things done in excess cannot be good. Thirty minutes in the internet may be useful and beneficial, but eight hours in a row I doubt it could be beneficial.–
–What is spirituality for you?–
–To me it means a higher consciousness, a higher consciousness and knowledge which is our true nature. Teilhard de Chardin said that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience here, but on the contrary we are spiritual beings having a human experience. It is important for us to concentrate more on these superior values, because it is for this reason that we are here on Earth. Some say that we are becoming more violent and that we are not moving forward from a spiritual viewpoint, and the media often show things to be worse than they are, because we have immediate information of what is happening on the whole planet. Probably in the past we would have never known the things that were happening in faraway places, or it would have taken months or years to reach us. That’s why I think we are improving, even if sometimes technology makes us think that it is not so. I think there are lots of spiritual beings in the world, good people. But a small number of evil people with technological means can make much havoc.–
–Since ancient times man has left marks of spirituality in all cultures. Why do you think that, for example in the Catholic religion, in the year 500 after Christ was born, it was approved in a Council to suppress the word «reincarnation»?–
–I think there was a specific reason for that. It was a political reason. Governments, and especially the Church government, wanted to have a greater control over people. In Christianity the word «reincarnation» was abolished because they thought that, without the threat of the Final Judgement people could not be controlled. The ironic fact is that Jesus believed in reincarnation, a great paradox, because there are several references to it in the Bible, and it is ludicrous that because of political reasons, Jesus’ ideas in this field were disregarded and changed, modified. There have always been problems with politicians, even nowadays. It is not new.–
–You had the privilege to meet and work with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a person involved in accompanying the dying. Could you tell me something about this?–
–She was a friend, we became friends and she spoke about many of these things. She worked not only in these phases of illness and death, she did much more. She was a pioneer of the near death experiences; she became an expert in the analysis of the drawings made by dying children and adults. She also believed in reincarnation and in past lives, we agreed on all these things.–
–We know that at present you are working in the USA with the famous parapsychologist James van Praagh. What sort of work are you doing? –
–He is a medium which channels messages, and I as a psychiatrist am studying human consciousness, trying to find out in which way it is possible to channel messages and receive information from people which has not been seen nor can be seen. (Yesterday, in the workshop we had, several people acted as channels, they received messages from their loved one. There was even one person who received messages from another one who had worked with her but she had never met. Very detailed messages, with names and places, of people who had died). Then, if he can channel in this way, we all can do so. He, because of his training, can do so whenever he likes, while for most of us, it is fortuitous, it may happen or not.–
Sea, birds, a face with closed eyes.
–When somebody can channel, or is conscious of a past life, what happens? What can they do with this information? On this planet, where do they find themselves with their work, as a group?–
–This helps people. For example, those talking to their loved ones are aware that death does not exist because the soul carries on and can communicate with people who are still in their physical bodies. This helps those who suffer through the absence of their loved ones. Globally speaking, this can help us to become aware that this is our home, the planet is our home, and we must take care of it, because when we reincarnate we shall come back here, and we must keep our home inhabitable. We cannot destroy the air, the water and the living conditions because it is not only our children and grandchildren who will have to live in it: we ourselves will be coming back here.–
–Sometimes there are physical phenomena, such as the crop circles. What do you think about them?–
–I have seen them in England and I have spoken to one of the farmers, one of the land owners. This farmer is a simple and honest man. He is convinced that no human being could have created those circles –and he is a professional, a farmer– because of the way the barley is bent, but the spikes are not broken, and because of the time spent. In England, in Summer, nights are very short and those crop circles are very complicated, but they appeared in very few hours. When somebody has tried to imitate them, reproduce them, the copies obtained were very bad, very coarse. And then, you don’t find any marks of the tractors’ wheels nor of machines. Nothing. We do not know what is going on with these circles, what we know is that they are not made by human beings, at least not physically.–
Doctor Brian Weiss leafing through the Athanor magazine. Photo: Natalia Campoy.
–It is a perfect sacred geometry.–
–Yes, exactly. And it is made in a very few hours. There are no marks or traces of tractors. There is not yet a scientific explanation. The only thing I know is that human beings cannot make them, for the time being. It is the produce of some other power or energy. It has not to be necessarily extraterrestrial, it can be a mental energy or some electromagnetic energy that we do not understand, or communications from other sources. The only thing I know is that the phenomenon is not produced by human beings.–
–At present human beings are in the best conditions to have a higher understanding of their mission on the planet. At the same time we have the greatest disasters, the bloodiest wars, the gravest attacks. Which is your perception of this?–
–Technology advances very rapidly. Human beings have always been violent, there have always been wars, but nowadays arms are much more powerful. Biological arms are much more dangerous than spears. There is a sort of rush between technological and spiritual development. I hope that spiritual people win the race.–
–In your book Many lives, many masters, in a passage Katherin channels a master and mentions fear as a great waste of energy. What are human beings really afraid of?–
–We have many fears, fear of death, of life, of failure, of disease, of loss, of not being loved, of not being accepted by the community. We have a self-service of fears, it is not only one fear, it is fear in general. We must meet much more in love and compassion, because love and compassion can dissolve fear.–
–We have spoken about the past and the present. What plans have you got for the future?–
–Now there are five books in Spanish. The fourth book, Messages from the masters, is very important for me. The fifth book is on the same subject, but it is more artistic: it speaks about what must be done for the planet –the things we have been speaking about, and the things which must be done for the planet–. There is much pressure from the editors to make me write, but I shall not do so until I have something to say. I am now visiting many countries to speak about these subjects of love, immortality, compassion. My intuition tells me that this is important, but the results are beyond my reach. What I can do is to offer and to give. The results depend on a higher level. This higher level will let me know which the plans are for the future when the time is ripe. For the time being, I have to share this research with the largest possible number of people. I am sure there will be many more plans for the future, but I prefer to live the present moment. If I live now in the right way taking care of the present, future will organize itself. This is another fear: we fear the future.
In the end the messages are the same: we know the answers, we know what must be done, but we are a very obstinate species. To do is much more difficult than to know.–
–Dr. Weiss, many thanks.–
–Many thanks to you for this opportunity.–