Mensa Bulletin
Book Review Submission Form
Book is written by a Mensan.
TITLE OF BOOK: The Soul Genome: Science and Reincarnation
Author's Name: Paul Von Ward
Year Published: March 2008.
Features: Includes Illustrations, photographs, indices, bibliography, and other appendices.
Paperback Edition: Price: $18.95 No. of Pages: 248 Size: 6” x 9”.
ISBN: 978-1-58736-995-7. Library of Congress No.: BL515.V659 2008
Book can be: Purchased for a discount with major on-line booksellers, found in many bookstore and ordered through most, or through the Publisher. Autographed copies can be ordered from Author.
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COMMENTS:
(1)Synopsis: Part I explores various categories of human experience for which science has no verifiable explanation, but which can be seen as the basis for millennia-old beliefs in reincarnation. They include prodigies (as in music, mathematics, etc.) and examples of precocity (knowledge not acquired by normal learning processes); physical features and special markings people have that resemble individuals long dead more than they resemble the person’s parents or siblings; and the purported healing of physical or psychological problems through access to memories of people no longer living.
Part II reports on a meta-analysis of robust reincarnation cases that revealed patterns which suggest an integral and natural process is necessary to account for the areas of empirical evidence. It sets forth a biofield hypothesis—analogous to the black-hole theory that accounts for inputs and outputs—to explain the correspondences found between subjects and their alleged past-life personalities. The psychoplasm, or soul genome, hypothesis is developed in the context of recent research findings in physics, biology, and neuroscience.
Part III evaluates the evidence in sample reincarnation cases and demonstrates that a credible argument can be made for further scientific testing of the reincarnation hypothesis in relation to human reproduction and the evolution of consciousness. It persuasively makes the case that some mechanism like the psychoplasm must be taken into account to explain the data. Interesting cases involving well-known and ordinary individuals make the book compelling reading. The personal stories are appealing and give meaning to the theory
Why would you recommend this book specifically to Mensans? Because of its scientific and rational approach to a subject that usually only attracts already credulous people.
(2) Author: Explain why you wrote the book and, in your opinion, the book's unique contribution (to a particular field of knowledge, general good of society, self-improvement, entertainment/pleasure, etc.):
With training as a psychologist at the graduate level at Florida State University and Harvard, for decades I had sought a personality development theory that could account for both the precociousness of a child’s self-definition and the unfolding of a unique personality that could not be fully explained by the immediate culture and apparent parental gene pool. Many studies documented something like a self-unfolding set of predispositions that trump the specific environment as the proximate cause of career and other developmental choices.
In my work as an interdisciplinary scholar, I had been aware of the historical religious and secular beliefs in past-life influences on the newborn and some of the stories that made the reincarnation concept intriguing. However, as I read contemporary books on reincarnation, most seemed to be very ethereal, focusing on an alleged spiritual realm with very little relevance to the mundane. Meeting Ian Stevenson more than 15 years ago, I learned that much verifiable physical evidence and credible knowledge could only be accounted for by some process that linked individuals to people who had lived and died before their birth.
When I began to research this subject for the publisher of my two most recent books, I discovered that one did not have to depend on dreams, hypnosis, spiritual guidance or other extradimensional sources to identify possible cases of reincarnation. So, I decided to move away from writing what others thought to test for myself whatever concrete data I could find. This led to the meta-analysis mentioned above and described in this book.
I surprised myself with the discovery of a plausible explanation for my professional query about the source of idiosyncratic paths to self-actualization. I entertained the notion that they could reflect the evolution of individual and species consciousness made possible by a pre-birth legacy of experimentation, learning, and adaptation. When one reads the array of evidence that supports this idea, he or she can no longer engage in introspection without considering the possible role of reincarnation as a predisposing inheritance from the past.
This book is the first such comprehensive, scientific look at possible real-world implications of the heretofore highly speculative understanding of what the terms reincarnation and karma really mean. While it is not proposed as a proven theory, or even given as a set of definitive set of conclusions, the book is intended to challenge an intelligent, open-minded person to re-think any ideas, pro or con, she or he has held about the subject.
Current research in the energetic/information aspects of species evolution now points to a physical genome embedded in an information-rich, energetic field that contains memories, DNA patterns, emotional profiles, and knowledge and skills honed in previous incarnations.
I believe the posited “psychoplasm” is to the conservation of consciousness what E=mc2 is to the conservation of energy. The evolution of a self-actualizing universe would require it.
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