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.

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