IS THE SOUL AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT OR A QUANTUM REALITY?

A journey through philosophy, science, and language to understand the invisible side of life.

We often wonder what the soul really is. It’s one of those questions that has spanned centuries, but we can address it with a simple image, close to home. The human body is like computer hardware: a visible, concrete structure made of matter. The soul, on the other hand, is like software, invisible to the eye, yet essential for giving meaning, direction, and movement to everything else. We don’t see it, but we perceive its effects: in our thoughts, feelings, and the simplest gestures. The invisible, after all, continually affects the visible.

Without wishing to delve into theological or philosophical discourses—which belong to another sphere—we can look at the issue from a more neutral perspective. Speaking of the soul means questioning what animates life itself. Since the beginning of human history, humans have perceived within themselves something that goes beyond biology: a subtle force, a principle of consciousness that does not die with matter but continues to shape meaning.

No one has ever been able to isolate or measure it, yet every civilization has recognized, described, and celebrated it. Plato defined it as immortal, Aristotle saw it as a vital form, Descartes placed it at the boundary between mind and body. Modern science, more cautious, observes it through consciousness, seeking traces in cerebral phenomena, in information fields, in the invisible connections between energy and matter. Whatever language is chosen, the essence remains the same: the soul is what unites and orders, not matter but principle.

Today, we speak more often of consciousness than of soul, but the two words convey the same thing from different perspectives. The soul is the essence, consciousness is its operational function. Through consciousness, the soul recognizes itself, reacts, and creates. Being conscious doesn’t just mean being there, but participating in life as a co-author. Quantum physics expresses it with disarming simplicity: the observer influences the event. The way we look at reality changes its outcome. Every thought, every attention, every conscious emotion leaves its mark on the world. Being conscious, ultimately, is the most direct way to interact with the universe.

To describe it in terms more contemporary to our times, we might say that the soul is a sophisticated operating system, capable of updating itself through experience. The body is the hardware, the structure; consciousness is the software that interprets and translates reality into lived experience. But, unlike machines, we cannot “install” a soul: it is the soul that builds us from within, guiding our development, emotions, and choices. When the body stops—due to trauma, illness, or old age—the soul does not vanish. It disconnects, like a program returning to its source. And it is curious that language, over time, has preserved this ancient truth: “reanimate” literally means “to give back the soul.” It is a medical term, but also a symbolic gesture: restoring presence where before there was only absence.

Language, in fact, preserves memories that science cannot always interpret. Saying that a person has been resuscitated doesn’t just mean that they’ve started breathing again: it means that life, or rather, the soul, has begun to flow again. The same is true when we say that “a city has come back to life” or that “a place has come back to life.” Without realizing it, we give voice to the same intuition: that matter, to live, needs to be traversed by something that ignites it. Resuscitating, therefore, is restoring consciousness. It’s what happens inside us when a dead thought is rekindled or when a forgotten feeling begins to vibrate again. Every time inertia dissolves, the soul begins to breathe again. You don’t need to name it to recognize it: just feel it flowing in the silence of the body, in the beats of time, in words that suddenly regain meaning.

There are many ways to understand it: philosophy, mysticism, science. The first describes it as a logical and moral principle, the second as a current of energy that flows through everything, the third as a field of consciousness or quantum information. Different languages for the same intuition. Perhaps the soul is not located in a place, but in a state: it manifests itself in moments when the mind is silent and presence emerges, in flashes of awareness that dissolve the boundaries between self and world.

Being conscious, in this sense, is keeping the switch of reality on. Every act of observation is a creative act. Consciousness shapes matter, the soul gives it direction. Perhaps this is what physicists mean when they speak of the collapse of the wave function: the moment when possibility becomes event. And perhaps it’s the same thing mystics call presence: the awareness of being within the mystery, not at its edges. Ultimately, science and spirituality are not enemies: one seeks the laws of the universe, the other seeks its meaning.

We may never know whether the soul is a reality or a metaphor, but the very fact of searching for it demonstrates that we cannot do without it. It is the form that consciousness takes to know itself, the memory of the universe that continues to tell its story through us. As long as we continue to ask ourselves about it
—in laboratories, monasteries, or intensive care units—we will continue to bear witness that life is not limited to matter, but breathes in something that transcends and illuminates it.

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