Dr. Brian Weiss, one of the first doctors to use past-life therapy to treat patients, shared several of his cases, and revealed how understanding our past and future lives can transform us in the present.

Weiss said he first discovered the phenomenon of past lives when, during a hypnotherapy session with a patient, he suggested she "go back to the time when [her] symptoms first began." According to Weiss, his patient, Katherine, recalled having drowned some 4,000 years earlier. In another compelling case, a surgeon from China, who spoke only Chinese and was accompanied to her session by a translator, described in fluent English the life she lived in 1850s San Francisco, Weiss reported.

Using a similar therapy, Wiess claims to have taken groups of his patients to their future lives, where he discovered a consensus among them about what our future holds. He said within 100 to 200 years, the problems we have now (global warming, pollution, war) still plague us. Fortunately, in 1,000 years Weiss said his patients described seeing an idyllic future for man, but with a vastly reduced population.