SACRED QUEST The Evolution and Future of the Human Soul by L. ROBERT KECK Chrysalis Books $24.95 (hardcover) reviewed by Steve McCardell author, The Merlin Interview One of the most fascinating things I have seen in my lifetime is the humanity's struggle to find balance in all things: equality between men and women in society; theory complementing experience in the classroom; and wonderfully, a joining of science and spirit in our worldview. We have a long way to go in these endeavors, but the struggle has always suggested something to me of human evolution, and that something is the topic of Sacred Quest. With this one title, L. Robert Keck becomes an important member of the short but growing list of writers joining science and spirit. He names his approach, and calls for others to join him in, Deep-value Research, which he describes in this way: " ‘Deep values’ are the values that determine why certain ways of thinking, acting, and institutional creating become dominant through the human family. The scope of this research is multinational, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, interracial, and transreligious, because the goal is to attempt to discover if there are common causal influences throughout human cultures and across all the artificial boundaries we have drawn to categorize our thinking and our research." He even refers to these values as the DNA of the human soul. In accord with a long-held spiritual metaphor, Keck compares the collective human evolution with the maturation process. Rather than asking the reader to perceive the truth of this analogy, however, he uses our understanding of history to offer a deep comparison. He takes us back 35,000 years to human childhood and offers us three human values of the era: 1) a sense of unity with Mother Earth; 2) nonviolence; and 3) a celebration of the feminine side of soul. Again, he supports these assertions through our study of the past. Keck then suggests that a major shift occurred some 10,000 years past, bringing humanity into its adolescent stage. "Just as an individual develops his or her ego by distinguishing ‘self’ from ‘other,’ " says Keck, "humanity distinguished itself from the rest of nature." He suggests that this brought about our long-term manipulation and use of nature, "with the expectation that ‘Mom’ (Mother Nature) will keep it well stocked." Not only did this lead us to reductionism, separating every subject of our world, but it also brought about our "estrangement from the feminine side of Soul. It made the subsequent deep values of patriarchy and hierarchy inevitable." Violence was the only way to support hierarchy, so this value changed as well. Keck rounds out this epoch by comparing our last 600 years to the biblical story of the prodigal son — "an immature male concluding his ego development by demanding his inheritance and declaring his independence." Agreeing not only with spiritual writers of a coming new age, but also with historians and cultural analysts proclaiming a current and dramatic change in our world, Keck explains that we are in a chrysalis stage of transformation just before our collective adulthood. He explains this transformation, and then discusses the future values humanity will hold. This includes the joining of the masculine and feminine sides of soul; the scientifically acknowledged connection between all things; the democratization of power; and finally, the spirituality of time. If you’re one for joining science and spirit, if you’re intrigued by our evolution, if you’re excited by the future we are becoming, I strongly recommend Sacred Quest. This is a potent and important look at where we’ve been and where we’re going, and one of the very few books I now include among my must-reads.