Science, Spirituality, and the Immune System: A Psychobiological Existential Reflection
By Mohiuddin Ahmed, Ph.D.
Retired Clinical Psychologist with over 40 years of practice experience and early academic training in Philosophy. Actively engaged in mental-health writing, publication, and blogging.
Introduction: The Meeting of Two Lenses
This reflection was prompted by reading Alessandro Sette’s First Person essay in the November–December 2025 issue of American Scientist, in which the author described the lifelong curiosity that drives his research on the immune system. His account awakened in me a recognition that science and spirituality, though often seen as separate, are both expressions of the same search for coherence and meaning in life.
Further inspiration came from Eric Topol’s writings on longevity, digital medicine, and the biology of aging, which sharpened my appreciation of how scientific progress is reshaping our understanding of health across the lifespan. Equally formative was Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, a work I have read twice, whose exploration of cancer as both a biological and historical phenomenon deepened my reflections on immunity, cellular regulation, and the fragile intelligence of life itself. While I have only browsed The Song of the Cell, its themes remain relevant to this broader inquiry into how cells communicate, defend, and sometimes betray the organism they serve.
These scientific narratives resonate with my earlier intellectual formation. During my graduate training in clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, my engagement with Freud’s foundational ideas—particularly the dynamics of conflict, regulation, and the failure of control—was complemented by readings in psychoanalytic theory, including Fenichel’s The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, which emphasized systemic balance, breakdown, and adaptation. Long before these clinical encounters, my academic grounding in philosophy at the University of Dhaka, especially Kantian philosophy, shaped my enduring interest in how mind, body, and moral judgment organize human experience.
More recently, popular science has continued to feed this integrative perspective. I was particularly struck by the chapter “Life Organizing the Atoms” in Nigel Henbest’s The Exploding Universe, which poetically frames life as an emergent ordering principle within the cosmos. Together, these scientific, psychoanalytic, and philosophical influences reinforce a central conviction of this essay: that the immune system and the human psyche reflect parallel struggles involving information processing, boundary recognition, balance, and meaning within a living entity striving for optimal adaptation—and that scientific insight, metaphysical reflection, and spiritual wisdom need not compete, but can illuminate one another in our ongoing effort to understand what it means to be human.
Modern science and timeless spirituality are not opposing worldviews but complementary ways of knowing. Both explore how life sustains itself—through the immune system’s biological vigilance and through the human spirit’s enduring search for harmony.
1. The Immune System and the Human Condition
The immune system is a remarkable defense network, constantly distinguishing between what belongs to us and what does not. Antibodies identify and neutralize foreign invaders before illness begins, while T-cells target and destroy those that have already entered and caused harm.
Yet this intricate system can fail in two opposing ways:
- Cancer — the immune system fails to recognize its own cells turning malignant, allowing them to multiply unchecked.
- Autoimmunity — the system mistakes healthy cells for enemies, attacking the very body it is meant to protect.
Both breakdowns reflect a disturbance in the boundary between “self” and “non-self.” In this sense, the immune system’s challenges echo the human condition: we struggle, individually and collectively, to discern what truly threatens us and what we merely misperceive as danger.
2. Echoes of Evolution
From an evolutionary perspective, this pattern reflects our biological origins. Primitive single-celled organisms that existed billions of years ago behaved much like cancer cells—endlessly multiplying, seemingly immortal, without the regulation and cooperation we see in complex organisms today.
As Earth’s chemistry evolved, multicellular life emerged, bringing specialization, collaboration, and programmed cell death. These developments allowed for higher-order functioning and continuity of life through genetic transmission. Yet those primitive tendencies still reside within us. When suppression mechanisms fail—due to factors not yet fully understood—dormant cancer cells may re-emerge, creating dysfunction and, ultimately, death.
3. The Psychological Parallel
The same evolutionary story unfolds in the realm of the mind. Freud’s concepts of the id, ego, and superego reflect a similar movement from primitive impulse to regulated behavior. The id represents raw, instinctive drives; the ego and superego develop later to restrain and channel these impulses toward social harmony and moral order.
In this sense, both body and mind follow parallel paths—from unrestrained expansion to disciplined balance. Just as mature cells restrain primitive cellular rebellion, the conscious mind disciplines instinct through reflection, reason, and morality. When this balance is lost, psychological distress or maladaptive behavior emerges, mirroring the immune system’s loss of healthy control.
4. Beyond the Traditional: The Quantum Turn
If cancer is not merely an external enemy but an internal echo of our evolutionary past, then lasting solutions may require more than the traditional “cut, burn, and poison” methods of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.
An emerging frontier involves integrating molecular biology, immunology, and genetic engineering with the power of quantum computation. Quantum-informed modeling may one day help us understand each person’s unique “immune signature” at a level of complexity that surpasses current methods. This could open the way to more precise and individualized treatments—maximizing benefit while minimizing harm.
5. Quantum Entanglement and Spiritual Connection
Quantum science also opens an unexpected bridge between science and spirituality. Concepts such as quantum entanglement suggest that particles, once linked, can remain connected across vast distances. Past, present, and future interactions may be woven together in ways the human mind can only partially grasp.
Spiritual traditions have long spoken of a similar unity—an invisible bond among all beings and between the living and the dead. When I visit the grave of our only child, who died of cancer at age 54, I often feel that my body vibrates in resonance with his remains beneath the earth. It is as though our shared experiences, love, and memories continue to connect us beyond space and time.
Science may call this an imaginative experience or look for explanations in quantum theory; faith may call it spiritual unity. For me, both perspectives point toward the same underlying reality: connection that transcends ordinary measures of distance and time.
6. Allergies and Misattribution: Body–Mind Parallels
Allergies provide another window into misdirected defense. In allergic reactions, the immune system attacks harmless substances—pollen, dust, certain foods—as if they were dangerous invaders. The system confuses friend with foe.
This has a psychological parallel. In states of anxiety, trauma, or paranoia, the mind may perceive hostility or threat where none actually exists. Neutral comments, everyday interactions, or ambiguous expressions can be experienced as dangerous. In both allergy and psychological misattribution, confusion arises at the boundary between safe and unsafe, self and other.
These analogies highlight the importance of restoring clarity and balance in our self-regulatory systems. In clinical practice, many therapeutic models seek to address this confusion. One approach I have developed, Mind Stimulation Therapy (MST), combines awareness, mindfulness, cognitive stimulation, and positive redirection. It encourages individuals to recalibrate perception, movement, and thinking toward more adaptive and integrated functioning.
7. The Singularity and the Supreme Being
On the cosmic scale, we encounter similar metaphors of unity. Cosmologists speak of a Point of Singularity at the origin of the universe—a state in which all matter, energy, space, and time were compressed into one. Many spiritual traditions speak of God, the Supreme Being, or a universal consciousness as the source from which all creation flows and to which it ultimately returns.
Science seeks to explain how life exists: the mechanisms of cells, genes, and immune responses. Spirituality seeks to reveal why life exists: the purpose, value, and meaning behind our experiences of joy, loss, growth, and mortality. When viewed together, they offer two lenses focusing on a single truth—that life, death, and continuity are interwoven expressions of an underlying unity.
8. Toward Tolerant Coexistence
Our collective task is not to choose between science and spirituality but to allow them to inform and enrich one another. Respecting diverse beliefs—while honoring empirical knowledge—may guide humanity toward greater tolerance, understanding, and peace.
Across traditions and disciplines—religious, scientific, philosophical, and cultural—each offers meaningful ways to cope with the Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable. All our scientific pursuits and spiritual longings ultimately converge on a shared insight: we are diverse expressions of a single, interconnected reality, bound together in origin and destiny.
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Mohiuddin Ahmed, Ph.D.
Retired Clinical Psychologist with over 40 years of practice experience and early academic training in Philosophy. Actively engaged in mental-health writing, publication, and blogging.
Existential Thoughts and Ruminations 