Past-life regression expert Brian Weiss says we are a stubborn species, and it often takes more than one try to learn our spiritual lessons. Here, the best-selling author and psychiatrist shares five teachings on past lives, reincarnation, mystical experiences, soulmates, and the journey of the soul—and how their wisdom can help us open our hearts, heal our relationships, and strengthen our connection to one another.

1. How Past-Life Regression Can Reveal the Soul

Our bodies and our minds are the masks our real self—the soul—wears in the physical world, Brian says. When we die, we remove our masks and we rest in our natural state. There is no disappearance, no oblivion. We simply take off our masks and return home to the spiritual realms.

Here, we are renewed and restored. We reflect on the lessons of the life that we have just left and are reunited with our soul companions. When the time and circumstances are right, we don new masks—a baby’s body and brain—and return to the physical state. We continue learning our spiritual lessons until the need to reincarnate is no longer necessary.

It is important to remember that we are the souls, not the masks.

As we gain a higher perspective and understand that our present lifetime is one of a myriad of lives that our soul has experienced over eons of time, the sense of expansion, timelessness, and joy that we feel can be palpable. We can let go of guilt, despair, and feeling trapped and rushed. We have an eternity of time to learn our lessons. There is always hope once we realize that we are more than just a particular body and brain.

Our greatest lesson is love. Remembering the causes of our afflictions allows us to kill them. The recognition that we are loving, spiritual beings strips away our anxieties and fears and removes the barriers to comprehending our real nature.

Personal experience can be more powerful than belief. Once you experience, then you know. Now questions can be asked, beliefs examined and re-examined, and real learning can occur.

Once we recognize that we are the souls, not the masks, how can we experience for ourselves the spiritual reality that lies beyond the body and brain?

2. How to Open Yourself to a Mystical Experience

Mystical or spiritual phenomena present people with a glimpse of the other side—of the “real” world, Brian says. They can occur through meditation, prayer, nature, near-death experiences, or in many other ways.

Those habits and patterns that bring us to such transcendent moments may work well for one person but not as well for another. It is important to find the path that works for you.

The glimpses that such otherworldly experiences provide us are extremely valuable, for they offer insight into the true nature of mind and of being. Some features are a feeling of oneness with all that is, of an energy that connects everything. There is a sense of timelessness, of infinite patience.

With the understanding of such an occurrence comes an increase in one’s ability to reach out and help others without expecting anything back in return, and to approach each person in each situation with grace, kindness, and tolerance.

The most significant characteristic, however, is love. It is an unconditional love. It is everlasting, eternal. It can never be lost; it is a universal constant. It knows no limits.
And neither do we.

If the most significant characteristic of the mystical experience is unconditional love, reincarnation gives us many lifetimes to learn these lessons of love, compassion, and kindness.

3. How Reincarnation Gives Us Many Chances to Learn Love

"The concept of reincarnation, at least in part, is that you have more than one chance to get it correct," Brian says. "We’re evolving along this spiritual pathway. It’s really learning about love, and compassion, and kindness—how to feel less fear, less hate, less prejudice.

"But we are kind of a stubborn species," he says. "It takes us more than one chance, more than one time, to get it right. How can you learn everything in one time? And I believe we have many lifetimes to learn these lessons.

"I find that this is the journey of the soul. This evolution toward a kind of unconditional love and connection to the oneness, the universe, a higher power, however you want to say it because it’s beyond names.

"That’s our journey."

If we have many lifetimes to learn the lessons of love, compassion, and kindness, we may also have many chances to learn them with the same souls.

4. How Past Lives Can Help Heal Relationships

Past-life regression can help heal and strengthen present-day relationships, Brian says.

We come in again and again with the same souls. So, your grandmother may come back as your grandson, and you might recognize her. When we experience love at first sight, we've been connected with that person in past lives. The memories from these other lives can still be fresh in many ways. When we remember and release, it helps to heal that current relationship.

Let’s say you have a mother who is overprotective. She might have lost a child in a past life, so that memory is still fresh. She might have taken a vow to be doubly careful in this lifetime. When she realizes that vow is from a past life, she can become less overprotective. She no longer has to fear the future, which helps to heal that relationship in the current life.

Our relationships may offer not only opportunities for healing, but also the recognition that we belong to families of souls who learn and grow together.

5. Why We May Have Many Soulmates

"In my research over the years, I’ve found that we come back again and again with many of the same souls," Brian says. "These are soulmates or soul families. The souls are the same but the physical bodies change and the relationships change.

"For example, your grandmother may come back as your grandson; different physical form but the same soul," he says. "We have many soulmates, I believe: parents, siblings, friends, children, and others. And we kind of collect as families of souls because that’s how we learn in this earth school—they know how to push our buttons, we know how to push theirs. We graduate kind of together, we’re in the families of souls. So we’re always being reunited.

"People grieve so much," Brian says "And, understandably, you lose loved ones. But we’re going to be reunited with those loved ones, either on the other side or back here in the physical form again. In working with my patients, this can help to transform grief. We still miss them but it’s a different level and you know you’re coming back together again."