The Soul Genome

	Book review on The Soul Genome by von Ward, Paul (2008) Reviewed by David Lorimer, 2009 published in Network Review No 99
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The empirical evidence for reincarnation comes from two main sources: children who remember previous lives and hypnotic regression. The former source has been more thoroughly tested, and is reinforced by a corresponding evidence from birthmarks, although there is also some persuasive evidence from hypnosis. In either event, profound questions arise about the nature of human personality which challenge orthodox assumptions about the nature of life and death. These two books are complementary, the first providing an introductory overview of the evidence collected over the last 40 years, especially by Ian Stevenson, while the second introduces a novel concept that we may have what Paul von Ward calls a 'soul genome' corresponding to our physical inheritance.

            Guy begins with four cases suggestive of reincarnation before providing some literary background drawing on pioneering works written in the late 19th century at around the same time when Theosophy was becoming familiar in the West and translations were appearing of classical Indian texts. As those familiar with the literature will already know, distinguished people from different fields have been convinced that they had lived before, including Flaubert, Wagner, Goethe, Benjamin Franklin and even Henry Ford. It is interesting to note that belief in reincarnation has increased by about 10% to nearly 30% of the population during the period of this modern research. Even in 1974, Ian Stevenson was able to write that, although the evidence was far from conclusive, it was now sufficiently strong so that a rational man can believe in it; this is all the more true now, although the evidence still remains suggestive rather than conclusive. Guy evaluates a good many cases from around the world, showing that their main features are common. A particularly interesting case was investigated by the Brazilian writer Andrade, where a very young child remembers the accidental death of a previous personality and describes it in a narrative strongly resembling near-death experiences: 'then the person floats to a corner of the ceiling and watches as the doctor is struggling to save him. And then a big hole like a tunnel appears in the corner of a wall near me, trying to suck me in... when you are sucked through the hole and along the tunnel, you see a very strong flash of light at the end of it. It was so bright that I had to turn away.' It is striking that the child uses the first person to describe the experience.

            In his concluding chapter, Guy poses eight questions about the evidence he has presented, which he then proceeds to address. He reminds us of incidents involving Sir William Crookes in connection with his investigations of Daniel Dunglas Home in the 1870s. Some of his colleagues told him that it was impossible, to which he famously retorted: 'I never said it was possible I only said it was true.' He added: 'If a new fact seems to oppose what is called a law of nature, it does not prove the asserted fact to be false, but only that we have not yet ascertained all the laws of nature.' This was also the conclusion of Alfred Russel Wallace, quoted later in the chapter. Wallace hypothesises that human beings consist of an organised spiritual form evolving coincidently with and permeating the physical body. Death separates this duality, but has no effect on the spirit, either morally or intellectually -- this is exactly the conclusion reached by Swedenborg on the basis of his own observations. The larger picture is one of progressive evolution of the intellectual and moral nature. What Wallace calls the 'organised spiritual form' corresponds to Andrade's 'biological organising model', which in turn Stevenson called the 'psychophore' and for which Paul von Ward coins the term psychoplasm.

All these terms build on the Aristotelian understanding of the soul as the form of the body, which Rupert Sheldrake would call the morphogenetic field. Paul defines the soul or psychoplasm as 'a genome-like, energetic and information bio-field that embodies a single being's knowledge, feelings and behaviour patterns that transcend space-time.' He argues that this concept has the potential to reconcile the physical and psychical dimensions of life. He begins by looking at a range of phenomena that do not seem to be fully explicable in terms of current theories such as prodigies, anomalous knowledge, precognitive dreams, past -life healings and lives that seem to mimic each other. He then draws on his graduate psychology courses on personality theory to construct rating scales for five aspects of personality which he thinks may form holographic psychophysical patterns transferable from one lifetime to another. These he calls the physical phenotype, the cognitive cerebrotype, the emotional egotype, the social personatype and the creative performatype. He uses a number of documented cases to frame his hypothesis. Among these are Paul Gauguin and Peter Teekamp, General John Gordon and Jeffrey Keene, Marilyn Monroe and Sherrie Laird, and Pitirim Sorokin and Lorin Kee.

            His underlying hypothesis is that we live in a multidimensional and self-learning universe in which consciousness is fundamental and in some sense conserved, so that our collective experience can be built on rather than dissipated. The rest of the book considers in detail the results of comparative analysis of personalities against his rating scales, which are reproduced in the appendix. Some of the results are quite striking, for instance the comparison between drawings by Gauguin and Teekamp, as well as the structural mapping of faces of people who are not genetically related to each other. This is done in a systematic way by using standard techniques from facial geometry which can be statistically measured and analysed. So readers can assess some of this evidence for themselves. The resemblance between Gordon and Keene is particularly arresting.

The most intriguing question relates to the ostensible transfer of these personality structures. Diana Fynn describes the case where her deceased fiancé states that a part of him has gone forward into her grandson; in Jamaica, Elleke van Kraalingen made a similar statement about the relationship between Hermod Sverre (see report on Jamaica meeting) and her daughter. Perhaps a holographic model can help reconcile these perspectives involving both continuity and discontinuity: the psychoplasm hypothesis certainly helps to explain the data contained in both of these books, but a great deal more research will be required. In a wider sense, as Ramana Maharshi remarked, it is only Brahman that incarnates or reincarnates, and we are all aspects of the one life and mind as we forget and remember our deeper identity. These books both help us expand our understanding of the human personality.

 

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