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Gateway To The Eternal Dimension
 By Dr. Brian Weiss
 excerpt from Meditations Achieving Inner Peace & Tranquility
 In Your Life

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 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 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 reliving, 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.