Gateway To The Eternal Dimension

 By Dr. Brian Weiss

 excerpt from Meditations Achieving Inner Peace & Tranquility
 In Your Life

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 then being transformed.

The mind becomes a passage, and the person meditating is 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.