Brian L. Weiss - Miracles Happen

In his revolutionary book Miracles Happen, Brian Weiss M.D., the New York Times bestselling author of Many Lives, Many Masters, examines the physical, emotional, and spiritual healing that is possible when you freely accept and embrace the reality of reincarnation. 

Trained as a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Weiss began to explore how reincarnation and past life regression can lead us to our higher selves after a startling encounter with a patient. Now a leading proponent of past-life therapy, Dr. Weiss shows us that, indeed, Miracles Happen, with seemingly incredible but true stories that demonstrate how, by getting in touch with and understanding our past lives, we can dramatically improve the present.

Comment: This is the most recent full length non fiction book by Brian Weiss, a psychologist and psychiatrist who had a patient once, and while helping that patient by trying hypnosis and meditation, he was amazed to realize she was having a regression to a past live. From that on, he has written many books and tried to treat many people with this method.

In this book the author collects several real life cases, of his own knowledge or shared by other experts, where the message is always the same: it can be possible to help healing or to alleviate physical issues through the regression to a past life or going through the experience of accepting spiritual meanings to what happened in the past. Most of the information used was obtained from several sources, mostly related to the courses people could register at, while others came from the private consultations at the doctors's office. All have in common that this technique can help unravel memories which can, therefore, help in understanding why a physical or mental issue is causing problems.

Although I have not posted about any of them here in the blog, since my teenage years that I have read the books by author Brian L. Weiss. I remember the first one I got was given to me by my father, we got the book at a one of those stores we can find in highway stop stations, during a trip we made to the north of the country. I was so happy he had said yes to buy me a book! Anyway...

This book, and all the others before, are set on the premise that we should accept that all of us are in a cycle of life, living and dying and being reborn again. Just the concept itself is hard to grasp and even admit, much less defend as a valid way of trying a healing process. I have never tried meditation nor regression, but it's a fascinating subject and while part of me wonders about its likeliness, the other part imagines it cannot be. Some of the books have addressed this, that many patients of dr Weiss or of other therapists using hypnosis and regression started off as skeptic and had successful experiences.

I mean, how to say a definite no without trying and I think I'd have too much a practical mind to really accept, but... isn't it the fascination with the idea precisely that, that perhaps there's something out there that could help, could point out to a different perspective of life? I think most people live in a way, or have beliefs that would not open them to this subject, and that is where my doubts rely on: how can this technique be that real, that successful, when it depends so much on the person having the experience?

Portuguese cover

In this book - I'll admit, not the one I liked best - part of the message is that people can use these techniques in several ways or for different goals, but there's also a more obvious content (to my POV) on spiritual notions, mainly the idea that we are all good, we are all going though life to learn lessons, to understand something that will help us move on from life to life... humm, I confess this is also hard to accept, especially if one thinks about those going through more than hardships in life. I won't talk about that, but let it be said some ideas might not be easily accepted.

I saw that dr Weiss was even on Oprah years ago and that many people follow his ideas, want to be seen by him, obviously buy his books, but again, the more cynical part of me, is he truly that well liked, are people really trusting what he says? It's difficult to have an idea about the dimension this subject and about dr Weiss' success, even more so when this is not "conventional", Could it be that, due to that alone, this technique is still seen as something that works only for believers? One could wonder why there isn't more publicity about it, if it could be that positive and wonderful...

Well, as for the reading experience, I didn't think this book was as appealing as one or two others were, because the cases presented were "edited" let's say, and in other books dr Weiss was able to develop each case with more context. I also wasn't too fond of the commentary after each case, it sounded very much like a summary of something we should grasp on our own. I think I could also say that despite the information here and there, this is not the best book to start reading about the author's work for most of it does infer readers already have previous knowledge of the subject.

Grade: 7/10