Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His… (1988)

I read at least part of this book several years ago. Here are the lines that have always affected me the most:

“People of the religious orders have come closer than any of us have [to learning the lessons of life] because they’ve taken these vows of chastity and obedience. They’ve given up so much without asking for anything in return. The rest of us continue to ask for rewards—rewards and justifications for our behavior... when there are no rewards, rewards that /we/ want. The reward is in doing, but doing without expecting anything... doing unselfishly.”

Shorter: “[Monastics have] given up so much without asking for anything in return.... the reward is in doing.... doing unselfishly.”

These words affected me greatly, and after a period of my life when I chased skirt music and such, I started to fantasize about becoming a monk. (I’m drawn to opposites, and to extremes.) Eventually I even settled down mentally enough and overcame my fears of community enough where I started to contemplate actually joining a monastic order, told people seriously that that was my new plan for my life, and reached out to one of the Episcopal religious orders for men. Eventually I realized that it was a little bit over my head and beyond my capability, and I was more or less told as much, so when the pandemic started and everything just shut down, I let it go. It was beyond my ability, not my fate.

“They’ve given up so much without asking for anything in return.” But as I read these words again, a new and more suitable significance emerges for me. It’s true I could never be a monk. The discipline of waking up early enough in the morning, for example, and a few other things like that; I’m just not sure that I could make a life like that. But now I see it’s not all about joining, necessarily, some or another specific organization and getting a specific outfit complete with letters after your name, as important as community is—which is still one of my biggest challenges. (I think in my past life I was this person who turned away from people until I was the old man that the priest took care of, and even in this other lifetime I’m still very close to religion and intellectuals and distant from more daily people, often to excess.) But I see that all now as means, important means, no doubt, but just means, and even Thomas Keating, himself a great monk, said that people should never consider themselves to have missed the party just because they never got to be a monk or nun.

“They’ve given up so much without asking for anything in return.” THAT is the point. Live your life so as to give it away.

.... The only other point that I want to make for the purposes of this review is about Dr. Weiss himself; he’s a great guy. I respect how he dialogues the scientific and the spiritual, and since some psychics are genuine, and that is possible, but many are just trying to make money in an immoral society, speaking to either afraid/greedy people or people who think ‘Since psychics are real let’s not bother with skepticism’ and get hurt—I mean, really we need people like Brian to help us dialogue and integrate rational skepticism with other kinds of intelligence.

Look this is a book that is fun to read. I am not going to say a word about anything about it from a hypnotist's perspective, just that i think it was a fun read. ( )

Svenska: Många liv, många mästare

A must-read for people in the healing world who have worked with individuals with seemingly insurmountable problems. Dr. Weiss, a traditional psychologist, counseled Catherine for 18 months with no improvement in symptoms until he decided to try hypnotherapy. While hypnotized, Catherine regressed into another lifetime. Almost immediately her anxieties and fears started to diminish. Over the next months, Dr. Weiss regressed Catherine many times and in so doing became a better doctor and family man as his own fear of death diminished. ( )

Muchas personas piensan que sólo lo que puede ser comprobado por la ciencia es válido, todo lo demás no existe.
Esta es la historia de cómo un doctor, sin buscarlo, comprobó por si mismo que existe todo un mundo que va más allá de la ciencia. ( )