Hello. This is Dr. Brian Weiss, and we’re
continuing the series on questions and answers on YouTube, and I have more answers today.
I want to talk a little bit about our workshops, my workshops, because this is actually a question.
A question from John Yang, who wrote: Dear Dr. Weiss, if I go to your workshops, do I
have any chance to experience a past life? The answer to this is: yes. In all of my workshops,
they become highly experiential, because my goal, or one of the goals, in addition to
teaching, is to allow people to have their own experiences. These are often experiences
of past lives. I try to remove anxieties and fear, and try to increase understanding, because
through understanding you can remove symptoms, you can feel happier. By removing fear, we
can really reach our potential. So all of my workshops now are very experiential. The
full-day workshops have two past-life experiences, and there are other exercises as well. Now
with Australia coming up very quickly, and Chicago, and Toronto, and New York State at
Omega, and other workshops, it’s important to know this, that it’s highly experiential
and open to everybody. You do not need to be a therapist to come. So the answer to the
question is yes, of course, that’s one of the goals of the workshops, that you have
your own experiences. I encourage everybody to come if you can. Now, the other questions, one is from Arushi,
and several people have asked the same questions. So some of the questions I’m answering…and
reminding you once again that these are my own answers. They aren’t necessarily from
what I’ve read, or other people’s opinions, but mostly from my own experiences with patients
and through my own meditations. There are many possibilities other than my answers,
of course. This is about soul mates. The question is: Do soul mates have to be romantic? We
hear about this all the time. Will I meet my soul mate? When? How does it work? Well,
I think that there is destiny involved. You will meet your soul mate, and it may be romantic.
Then there is also free will involved, because your reaction to the events, for example to
meeting a soul mate, this is free will. So destiny is the meeting, and your free will
is: do you stay together? Do you not? And all the choices you make afterwards. But soul
relationships, soul mate relationships, do not have to be romantic. They can be parent-child,
grandparent-grandchild, best friends, and in many other ways. We actually have more,
I would say, families of souls, rather than just one soul mate. We have many soul mates,
and we’re being connected all the time. Sometimes it’s for very brief periods of
time. It can be for minutes or days or weeks, and this short amount of time can change one’s
life incredibly. Or you may be with a soul mate for fifty years, or sixty years, or longer.
It’s not the time that’s important. It’s the lessons that are learned, and the directions,
and the reminders that happen when soul mate encounters happen. So the answer is that there
are many soul mates, not just romantic. The question from Sonia has been asked by
many people, and it’s about suicides. Again, I’m speaking from my own experiences and
not from religious tradition, where there are many interpretations. But to me, there
is no place such as hell that is permanent. Sometimes, you go to a place where you may
think it is this or that, but it’s not permanent. Because once you understand what is happening
and the lessons, everything is light. Everything is love and compassion and forgiveness and
understanding. So, if a person successfully commits suicide, they go to the other side.
There may be turbulence there. They may try to get back into their bodies. I’ve come
across this many times. But it’s too late, if it’s a successful suicide. Then the lesson
on the other side is that if you have a functioning physical body, and you’re here in this earth
school to learn lessons, take advantage of that opportunity. Don’t leave a healthy
body early, because this is not really why we’re here. We’re here to learn lessons
of love, compassion, kindness, understanding, non-hatred, non-prejudice, non-violence, and
so on. There are many different types of suicide. I think a suicide of a ninety-five-year-old
person with intractable, permanent, severe pain that’s not going to have any improvement
is very different from a suicide of a person who is, perhaps, thirty years old and very
healthy, but caught up in an embarrassing scandal, or humiliated, or something like
this. That’s not the same thing. The second case, of the healthy body, has much more in
terms of consequences or karma. I also believe that if it’s a suicide because of mental
illness, and as a psychiatrist I’ve come across this concept many times, this is also
not as serious. Because sometimes it is the mental illness that is responsible for the
decision. Nevertheless, you can never harm a soul. And that soul will come back to the
earth plane to learn its lessons. I have found that there is a kind of commonality among
suicides, and that is the soul is returned to earth more quickly. This is very similar
to children who die. Their souls tend to come back more quickly. There are more lessons
to learn. And so, if a person commits suicide, on the other side they may realize: Oh, this
was not the solution. I should have stayed, worked it out, made other choices. They will
come back. They will oftentimes be faced with similar circumstances as those that may have
precipitated the suicidal decision in the first place, and they need to find another
way of coping without harming a physical body. Because this physical body is a gift for us.
This is the place, earth, where in physical bodies we can experience relationships, soul
mates, pain, loss, separation, death, and illness. Great opportunities for soul evolution
and growth. It is not correct to leave these bodies early, if we have that choice. So you
just come back again. But the overriding principle is that you can never harm or kill a soul.
The soul just returns. There will be a new body, and similar lessons to be learned. Once
you master those lessons, you go on and master other lessons. Then, eventually, you come
back to this earth plane voluntarily to help other souls. There are many more questions that have come
in, and I thank you for sending these in. There are questions about parallel dimensions
and parallel universes and other areas that we will look to in the future. But for now,
this is the end of this question-and-answer video. Thank you very much.
