Gateway to the Eternal Dimension
by Brian Weiss, M.D.,

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Meditation as an initiation to spiritual development. The gateway to the eternal dimension is subtle, never wide open. There are generally no signs above it advising us where the road will lead at any given time. At times it brings us to a state of profound ecstasy, lightness, satisfaction and well-being, representing contact with our deepest dimension, and a heightened awareness of our spiritual essence.

This mystical state may occur in an unspectacular way. It may spread through us when contemplating something which gives us pleasure. It may be intermittent and brief. It glows on enlightened faces, reflecting joy and serenity. I have seen this reflected on the faces of patients who have gained transcendent insights during a particularly powerful session. Because they are directly experiencing the joy of the altered state, you can often see it in children at play or people in love.

One characteristic of the spiritual experience is to radiate compassion and love to others without expecting anything in return. The person feels a oneness with every other person and being, with all there is.

The many ways of achieving this feeling, or of letting oneself be touched by it, quite naturally vary from person to person.

My first experience with a vivid past life recollection came through meditation. 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. An hour into my third session, I had reached a very deep state of relaxation. I was startled by an awareness of a scene 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 was a priest , a powerful member of the religious hierarchy.

I flipped back and forth from the perspective and vision of the priest to an outside, detached, overall perspective. I became aware of his life and that his 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. Instead of using his position to promote spiritual values, brotherhood, and peacefulness in his people, he used his power for greed, sex, and to obtain even more power.

The priest died as an old man, never recapturing the virtues and idealism of his youth. He had to leave behind his wealth, power, position, and body. I felt a great sadness. A great opportunity had been wasted.

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. Wide stairs connected the levels at certain points. Gradually, I became aware of a word in my mind: ziggurat. I did not know what this word meant.

Later that evening, I remembered the word again: ziggurat. I researched it in the encyclopedia. Ziggurat is the name for temples of the same geometric shape that I had visualized, temples from the Babylonian-Assyrian era. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon is an example of a ziggurat.

Becoming aware of the experiences of this man induced a certain sadness in me. The opportunities for teaching about love and compassion were lost. But in some ways, experiences such as this can guide us to the meaning of our existence today. They provide explanations (or at least clues) as to why we encounter certain situations and opportunities in our current lives. It is as though the spiritual lessons are still there to be learned.

Most of my patients are able to recall past lives during regression therapy. Some of them can also do so through meditation. This is because the constant practice of meditation takes us to increasingly deeper levels of our inner selves. It opens up possibilities for spiritual experiences as well, as though the subconscious mind is a gateway to the eternal dimension. Opening this gate is not merely a matter of finding a key, or saying some magic word. It is more like the idea that guided the ancient alchemists: the process of transforming and being transformed.

The mind becomes a passage, and the person meditating an individual able to recognize the passage and move through it into deeper, more transcendent states. All this takes time and practice.

The regular practice of meditation may lead to past life memories. Don’t try to determine if these are memories or if they are metaphors, symbols or products of your imagination. If this makes you uncomfortable, just open your eyes and end the meditation.

Exploring past lives through meditation is quite safe. The unconscious mind is very wise and will not let anything harmful move through to the memory.

But the possibility of spiritual development offered by meditation is not limited to revisiting past lives. Some of my patients have undergone an experience of seeming to detach from their physical bodies during meditation, seeming to float above the place where they sat or lay, watching themselves. This is the so-called out-of-body experience (OBE). By itself, this is an important experience. It is a demonstration that there is more to life than the physical body and the brain. There is no danger whatsoever if this happens. You always find your way safely back.

This is quite similar to the experiences related by people who have undergone near-death experiences (NDE). In these situations, due to illness or trauma, consciousness detaches from the physical body. Some people become aware of a brilliant light which seems to have tremendous spiritual significance. However, in the NDE it is not yet time for them to die, and they soon return to their bodies.

Although I have gained much knowledge and wisdom through my patients, I feel that it is necessary to develop my own channels. In my meditations I have often received messages, transcendent thoughts and intuitions.

Intuition is another type of spiritual experience, and regular meditation enhances intuitional phenomena. As a Master once said to me, “The intellect is important in the three-dimensional world, but intuition is even more crucial.”

At times, knowledge, wisdom or some significant revelation is whispered to our consciousness by an inner voice. The more we open ourselves to this intuitional wisdom, the clearer the message becomes. It is important to learn to listen and trust its guidance. Thoughts, images and ideas often come to me when I am deeply relaxed or meditating.

Several years ago I conducted a two-day seminar in Puerto Rico. Nearly five hundred people attended. Many people experienced early-childhood, in-utero, and past-life memories. One participant, a forensic psychiatrist well respected in Puerto Rico, experienced even more.

During a guided meditation on the second day of the conference, his inner eye perceived the shadowy figure of a young women. She approached him.

“Tell them I am well,” she directed him. “Tell them Natasha is well.”

The psychiatrist felt “very silly” as he related his experience to the entire group. After all, he knew nobody named Natasha. The name itself is a rarity in Puerto Rico. And the message related by the ghostlike girl had no connection to anything happening in the conference or in his personal life.

“Does the message have any meaning to anybody here?” the psychiatrist asked the audience.

Suddenly a woman screamed in the back of the auditorium. “My daughter, my daughter!”

Her daughter, who had died suddenly in her twenties, only six months before, was named Ana Natalia.Her mother, and only her mother, called her Natasha.

The psychiatrist had never met nor heard of Natasha or her mother. He was as unnerved by this extraordinary experience as was the mother. When both had regained their composure, Natasha’s mother showed him a photo of her daughter. The psychiatrist again grew pale. This was the same young woman whose shadowy figure had approached him with her amazing message.

In summary, I would like to encourage people to meditate in order to discover and develop spiritual experiences, to keep their minds open to whatever may occur. The experiences may take the form of feelings, images, memories of this life or of past lives, intuitional advice and wisdom, or even more transcendent states. There is a reason for everything, a meaning for everything, for living, for re-living, for each existence that we have had, for the gift of recalling that existence. There*s always a higher plan or project underway. Or - at the very least - an opportunity for us to learn.

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This book is published by Hay House, Inc.,and is available at all bookstores, by phone 800-654-5126, or via the Internet at www.hayhouse.com.

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