E-Book Content
ONLY LOVE IS REAL The story of soulmates reunited
Dr Brian Weiss 1996
To Elizabeth and Pedro, who have reminded me that there are no coincidences in love
Acknowledgments My thanks for their constant love and support go to Carole, Jordan, and Amy. My deepest appreciation goes to Joann Davis, my editor at Warner Books, for her encouragement, insight, and wisdom. She's the best. I am indebted to Joni Evans, agent extraordinaire, for her boundless energy and enthusiasm. And, finally, my gratitude goes to all of my patients and workshop participants, who have shared their lives with me.
Reader's Note Psychiatrist-patient confidentiality is a strong and time-honored principle of psychiatric ethics. The patients mentioned in this book have authorized me to write their true histories. Only names and other identifying details have been altered in order to protect their privacy. Their stories are true and unchanged.
Preface The soul of man is like to water; From Heaven it cometh To Heaven it riseth And then returneth to earth, Forever alternating. Goethe Just before my first book, Many Lives, Many Masters, was published, I visited the owner of a local bookstore to see if he had ordered it. We checked his computer. “Four copies,” he told me. “Do you want to order one?” I wasn't very sure that sales of the book would ever reach the modest amount that the publisher had printed. After all, this was a very strange book for a respected psychiatrist to have written. The book describes the true story of a young patient of mine whose past-life therapy dramatically changed both our lives. However, I knew that my friends, neighbors, and, certainly, my relatives would buy more than four copies, even if the book didn't sell anywhere else in the country. “Please,” I said to him. “My friends, some of my patients, and other people I know will be coming here looking for my book. Can't you order more?” I had to personally guarantee the one hundred books he reluctantly ordered.
To my utter shock, the book has become an international bestseller with more than two million copies in print, and it has been translated into more than twenty languages. My life had taken another unusual twist. After being graduated with honors from Columbia University and completing my medical training at the Yale University School of Medicine, I also completed an internship at New York University's teaching hospitals and a residency in psychiatry at Yale. Afterward, I was a professor on the medical faculties at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Miami. For the following eleven years, I was chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. I had written many scientific papers and book chapters. I was at the apex of an academic career. Catherine, the young patient described in my first book, then walked into my office in Mount Sinai. Her detailed memories of past lifetimes, which I did not initially believe, and her ability to transmit transcendental messages while in a hypnotized trance state, turned my life upside down. I could no longer see the world as I had before. After Catherine, many more patients came to me for past-life regression therapy. People with symptoms resistant to traditional medical treatments and psychotherapies were being cured. Through Time into Healing, my second book, describes what I have learned about the healing potential of past-life regression therapy. The book is filled with true case stories of actual patients. The most intriguing story of all is in Only Love Is Real, my third book. This book is about soulmates, people who are bonded eternally by their love and who come around together and together again, life after life. How we find and recognize our soulmates and the life-transforming decisions we must then make are among the most moving and important moments in our lives. Desti