WTF is the soul, anyway?

While many believers take it for granted, few attempt to tackle the tough questions: What is it made of? Why does it exist? What does it mean for our understanding of the universe?

I grew up Catholic, where the soul is considered a God-given or created entity that is immortal. In my 20s, like many others, I turned to Buddhist teachings. Contemporary Buddhist teachers claim that there is no permanent, unchanging soul or self, and that what we identify with is an illusion. Through practices like vipassana meditation, one can experience nirvana by realizing the impermanence and non-self-nature of existence.

About five years ago, driven by a mission to improve my well-being and explore these questions more deeply, I began using neurofeedback to enhance my meditation practice. I reached many familiar meditative landmarks, but I encountered something entirely unexpected: I observed everything arising from… an angle? While searching for “nothing,” I found something very subtle. I discovered that at any given point on a wave, all that exists is an angle. This insight enabled me to witness the birth of a thought through trigonometry and the Pythagorean theorem.

Buddha and Pythagoras, contemporaries living 2,500 years ago, may have shared a fundamental insight but interpreted it through different lenses. While Pythagoras viewed reality as mathematical forms, Buddha described existence as a series of vibrations: “shaking, shaking.” Could these perspectives be complementary rather than contradictory? One exploring the rational nature of thought, another the empirical.

This led me to discover Ontological Mathematics, a philosophical framework presented by the pseudonymous author Mike Hockney that has the potential to extend our scientific worldview to encompass unobservables like the soul. By interpreting reality through mathematical structures, ontological mathematics provides a rational approach to understanding phenomena beyond physical observation. Hockney explains that our thoughts can be quantified and analyzed through their mathematical properties, and that our brains must inherently reflect the thinking of our souls. This new way of thinking offers a bridge between mind and matter that traditional science has struggled to define. However, Hockney does not pursue this line of thought all the way to its logical conclusion. Inspired by his work, I’ve taken the next step: attempting to decode the brain’s electrical activity within this context. Can we crack the language of thought, and finally demystify the nature of the soul?

The mathematical nature of thought opens up a new avenue for exploring the soul. If we can deduce the properties of thoughts, could we not also deduce their source? A new science—one that synthesizes empirical observation with rational analysis—may finally allow us to grasp the soul’s essence, purpose, and cosmic significance.