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March/April 2009 Everyday Intention
Meditation as a Gateway to Past Lives

by Brian L. Weiss

Meditation can open up possibilities for spiritual experiences, almost as if the subconscious mind is itself the gateway to the eternal dimension.

This gateway is never wide open, and there usually aren't any signs above it advising us where the road will lead at any given moment. Opening this gate isn't merely a matter of finding a key or saying some magic word - it's more like the idea that guided the ancient alchemists: the process of transforming and being transformed. Another way of looking at it is to say that the mind becomes a passage, and the person meditating turns into an individual who's able to recognize the passage and move through it into deeper, more transcendent states.

At times, this path we're on might bring us to a heightened awareness of our spiritual essence and to a state of profound ecstasy, lightness, satisfaction and well-being, which represent contact with our deepest dimension. It may spread through us when we're contemplating something that gives us pleasure, or it may be intermittent, brief and somewhat unspectacular. No matter the duration, the effect is the same: Heightened spiritual awareness glows on enlightened faces, reflecting joy and serenity.

One sure characteristic of spiritual illumination is that the person experiencing it radiates compassion and love to others without expecting anything in return. The enlightened person feels a oneness with every other person and being, with all there is. For instance, you can often see this effect in children at play or in people in love, for such individuals are directly experiencing the joy of the altered state. I've also witnessed this in some of my patients who have gained transcendent insights during a particularly powerful therapy session.

The many ways of achieving this feeling, or of letting oneself be touched by it, quite naturally vary from person to person. And although I've gained much knowledge and wisdom through my patients, I feel that it's been necessary for me to develop my own channels to receive this heightened awareness. For example, meditation has helped me receive messages, transcendent thoughts, intuition and it's also helped me to encounter my own past lives.

Somewhere in Time

My first experience with a vivid past-life recollection came to me when I went to an acupressure (shiatsu) therapist because of chronic back and neck pain. The sessions were conducted in silence, and I used this quiet time to meditate. About an hour into my third session, I had reached a very deep state of relaxation when I was startled by a crystal-clear image of myself from another time.

In this scene, I was taller and thinner, with a small dark pointed beard, and I was wearing a multicolored robe. I realized that I was a priest, an extremely powerful member of the religious hierarchy of the time. The building in which I found myself had a strange design that I had never seen before. It was distinctly geometric - flat on top with a larger, wide bottom and sloping sides. There were seven or eight levels, with plants growing on and over the sides, and wide stairs connecting the levels at certain points.

Gradually, I became aware of a word in my mind: ziggurat. I had no idea what this word meant, and decided to put it out of my mind for the time being.

While I flipped back and forth between the outlook and vision of the priest and to an outside, detached, overall perspective, I became intimately aware of this person's life. I knew that the priest's earlier idealism and spirituality had given way to material values as he ascended to a position of great power and authority - he even had the ear of the royal family. But instead of using his position to promote spiritual values, brotherhood and peacefulness in his people, he abused his position to obtain wealth, sex and even more power.

The priest died a very old man, and never recaptured the virtues and idealism of his youth. He had to leave behind his fortune, power, position and body, all of which he had been so obsessed over. I felt a terrible sadness, for it seemed to me that this man had wasted his life.

Later that evening, I remembered the word ziggurat. I researched it in the encyclopedia and found out that a ziggurat is a temple of the same geometric shape that I had visualized. These temples originated from the Babylonian-Assyrian era, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is an example of such a structure. In this way, I was able to help narrow down the time period of my past life.

Ultimately, becoming aware of the priest's experiences induced a transient sadness in me, since he had squandered his opportunities for teaching about love and compassion. Experiences such as these can provide explanations (or at least clues) to why we run into certain situations and opportunities in our current lives - it's as though the spiritual lessons we encountered in the past are still there for us to learn from today.

Most of my patients are able to recall past lives during actual regression therapy. However, the regular practice of meditation may lead to past-life memories as well. This is because the constant practice of meditation takes us to increasingly deeper levels of our inner selves.

If you should find yourself experiencing past-life memories, don't try to determine if they're actual recollections or if they're metaphors, symbols or simply products of your imagination. Just go with it. If you're uncomfortable, simply open your eyes and end the meditation. Exploring past lives through meditation is actually quite safe, because the unconscious mind is very wise and won't let anything harmful move through to your memory.

Brian L. Weiss, M.D., the best-selling author of Many Lives, Many Masters, is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School, and is the former chairman of Psychiatry at the Mt.Sinai Medical Center in Miami. Visit www.brianweiss.com.