The Asymmetry of the Soul

Across centuries and continents, human beings have reported memories, dreams, or visions that seem to belong to other lives. Children recall villages they have never seen; adults dream of battles fought in distant times; souls speak in symbols older than their present bodies. Science and psychology often explain these as fantasies, hallucinations, or subconscious recombinations. Yet their universality across cultures and epochs suggests something deeper: the phenomenon is real, even if interpretations differ.

Physics, surprisingly, offers metaphors that can help us contemplate this mystery. These metaphors are not meant literally but as images - bridges between the language of science and the yearning of the spirit.

The Physics of Asymmetry

In quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not empty. It seethes with fluctuations: particles and antiparticles emerge, exist for a moment, then vanish. Perfect balance would ensure that nothing endured. Yet in the early universe, there was a slight asymmetry: a tiny excess of matter over antimatter. This imbalance prevented total annihilation and allowed galaxies, stars, and eventually life to arise.

Existence itself proves that symmetry is never absolute - and that asymmetry creates persistence.

The Soul as Excitation

Perhaps the soul resembles a quantum excitation in the field of Being. Most souls rise, live their allotted time, and return gently to the divine baseline. The Qur’an affirms this:

  “Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return.” (Qur’an 2:156)

Yet sometimes, suffering, martyrdom, or overwhelming love create imbalances so profound that dissolution is delayed. Like matter itself, the soul persists.

The Qur’an hints at this mystery:

  “Do not say of those who are killed in the way of Allah, ‘They are dead.’ Rather, they are alive, but you perceive [it] not.” (Qur’an 2:154)

Some souls, it seems, remain in a special state - not dissolved, not absent, but preserved in a persistence beyond ordinary perception.

Cross-Cultural Coping

Different traditions have explained these persistent echoes in different ways:

-   Hinduism & Buddhism: The Bhagavad Gita compares the soul to a person changing garments:

      “Just as a man discards worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, the soul discards worn-out bodies and enters others.” (Bhagavad Gita 2:22)

    Buddhism, while denying an eternal soul, affirms continuity:

      “Not in the sky, not in the middle of the sea, not by entering into a cleft in the mountains, is there a place where one will not be overcome by death.” (Dhammapada 127)

    Rebirth continues until imbalance is resolved through enlightenment.

-   Islam & Christianity (orthodox): Islam emphasizes a single life, the barzakh (intermediate state), and then resurrection. Christianity likewise teaches:

      “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27)

    Here, memories of other lives are usually denied or explained away as illusion. Yet mystical voices within these traditions sometimes hint otherwise: certain Sufi thinkers and Christian theologians such as Origen speculated about the soul’s pre-existence or timelessness.

-   Sufism (esoteric Islam): Ibn ʿArabī spoke of creation as renewed in every instant:

      “The Real is in constant self-disclosure (tajallī), never repeating Himself. Creation is renewed at every moment, though people are veiled from perceiving this renewal.” (Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya)

    In this light, so-called past-life memories may be unveilings (kashf) of the soul’s timeless journey.

-   Indigenous traditions: Among the Lakota Sioux, wanagi (spirits) return among the living, guiding the people. In Australian Aboriginal cosmology, the Dreamtime connects past, present, and future in one continuum. Persistence and return are natural, not anomalous.

-   Jewish Mysticism: Kabbalah teaches gilgul neshamot - the “recycling” of souls through multiple lifetimes, a way of repairing imbalance (tikkun).

-   Wicca & Paganism: Gerald Gardner, founder of modern Wicca, affirmed:

      “We believe in reincarnation, and that we come back to learn more lessons.”

    Here, persistence is embraced as healing, a curriculum of the spirit.

The phenomenon is one: the interpretations are many.

The Hadronization of the Soul

The most powerful metaphor comes from the strong force.

A proton or neutron is not a simple particle but a bound state of quarks and gluons - a hadron. When physicists attempt to split a hadron, the strong force resists. Unlike other forces, it does not weaken with distance. The more the quarks are pulled apart, the stronger the bond becomes. Eventually, the energy invested does not destroy the particle but generates a cascade of new particles.

Instead of annihilation, the attempt to break a hadron produces more existence.

So too with the soul. Trauma, atrocity, or unbearable suffering do not erase it. Instead, the soul fractures into new manifestations, rebirths, echoes - multiplying its presence until balance is restored.

This is not a flaw but a healing mechanism of nature. Just as physics ensures that quarks cannot be isolated into nothingness, existence ensures that souls wounded by asymmetry are not erased but re-expressed until their imbalance is healed.

All Paths Converge

The Divine has many names. In the Qur’an alone there are ninety-nine - al-Raḥmān (the All-Merciful), al-Ḥaqq (the Reality), al-Nūr (the Light). Other traditions speak of Brahman, Tao, the Great Spirit, Ein Sof, or simply “the Sacred.” Each points to the same Source.

The fingerprints of this Source are visible everywhere:

-   In the microscopic, where quantum fields fluctuate and symmetry breaks to produce matter.
-   In the cosmos, where galaxies weave fractal webs that resemble trees, rivers, and veins.
-   In spiritual traditions, where doctrines diverge yet compassion and transcendence remain constants.
-   In human culture, where myths, rituals, and philosophies echo the same truths: that life has meaning, that all beings are connected, that existence tends toward harmony.

Science uncovers the patterns of nature; spirituality unveils their meaning. Together, they reveal that what seems divided is deeply one.

Conclusion

The universe exists because annihilation was not perfect. Matter endured through asymmetry. The soul, too, endures when love, sacrifice, or suffering create imbalances too great to dissolve in a single lifetime.

In such cases, annihilation gives way to multiplication; trauma becomes transformation; persistence becomes the recipe by which Being heals itself.

Just as splitting a hadron produces not emptiness but a storm of new particles, the splitting of the soul through suffering produces not nothingness but manifold manifestations. This is how existence balances itself: through persistence, through rebirth, through mercy.

In the end, all return to the baseline - to Allah, to the One, to the Source of Being. But until then, the soul may rise again and again, not as punishment, but as healing - the asymmetry of the universe written into the very fabric of our lives.

References

Islam & Sufism

-   The Qur’an 2:154, 2:156, 41:53.
-   Ibn ʿArabī, al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Openings), translated selections.
-   Chittick, William C. The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination. SUNY Press, 1989.

Christianity & Judaism

-   Hebrews 9:27 (New Testament).
-   Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles).
-   Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Schocken, 1941.

Hinduism

-   Bhagavad Gita, 2:22.

Buddhism

-   Dhammapada, verse 127.
-   Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. Grove Press, 1974.

Indigenous Traditions

-   Black Elk (Oglala Lakota), Black Elk Speaks. As told to John G. Neihardt, 1932.
-   Stanner, W.E.H. On Aboriginal Religion. University of Sydney, 1963.

Wicca & Paganism

-   Gardner, Gerald. Witchcraft Today. Rider, 1954.
-   Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: A Comprehensive Guide to the Old Religion in the Modern World. Thorsons, 1996.

Physics & Cosmology

-   Particle Data Group (PDG). “Review of Particle Physics.” 2022.
-   CERN. “Matter–Antimatter Asymmetry: CP Violation Experiments at the LHC.” 2022.
-   Griffiths, David. Introduction to Elementary Particles. Wiley-VCH, 2008.
-   Close, Frank. The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe. Basic Books, 2011.
-   Zee, Anthony. Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics. Princeton University Press, 2016.