Sacred Quest: the Evolution and Future of the Human Soul

What is the history of the human soul? What is its future? And what is our individual role within the collective whole, particularly in today's world of unprecedented change? 

Scientists have mapped the human genome, but they have not discovered DNA's spiritual equivalent, the embedded coding that shapes what we value and why we think and act as we do. Now, in Sacred Quest, L. Robert Keck frames a compelling science of a collective soul that investigates the deep causal values determining why certain beliefs and behaviors become culturally dominant.

This collective soul, like a butterfly, undergoes transformative stages. Keck explores three distinct phases in the soul's evolution. Epoch I, from 35,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago, corresponds to spiritual "childhood" and is marked by unity with nature, nonviolence, and reverence for the feminine. Epoch II, from 10,000 years ago to the present is the soul's "adolescence," an era of patriarchy, hierarchical control, and violence. We live in the "chrysalis" stage of change to Epoch III, our spiritual adulthood, in which the ego will yield to the heart. Current revolutionary transformations reflect the death of humanity's outworn adolescent values and the birthing of new, adult ones.

Sacred Quest is not just a theoretical construct, but is a call for the engagement of one's whole life. Keck shares his own personal struggles to embody the emergent values of Epoch III -- reconnection to nature, democratization of power, respect for diversity and inclusivity, and the expansion of self, to name a few.

L. Robert Keck was an evolutionary theologian, an independent scholar, and one of the nation's leading religious thinkers, lecturers, and seminar leaders. Keck was a United Methodist minister, served on the medical school faculty of The Ohio State University, and was president of Boulder Graduate School. He was also the author of Sacred Eyes.