When Secularism Allows Us to Cease Being

Religion, art, belonging, and the flexibility of a consciousness that can transcend itself through encounters

The Image We Had Not Yet Discovered

Imagine walking into an art exhibition.

A painting catches your attention.

You observe its colors, shapes, and movements.

Perhaps you recognize a landscape. Perhaps you remember someone. Perhaps you experience an emotion you cannot explain.

Now imagine another person contemplating the same painting.

They notice details you overlooked.

They feel something different.

Both of you are standing before the same object.

Yet you are not necessarily having the same experience.

The painting is one. How many possibilities of Being can emerge when it encounters different Body-Territories?

Now imagine returning to the exhibition ten years later.

The painting remains.

But you have lived through other experiences.

Perhaps it awakens feelings that were previously inaccessible.

The object did not need to change for you to change.

This experience brings us closer to a question about spirituality:

Does what we have learned to believe allow us to recognize new possibilities of Being, or does it require us to find the same image of reality every time?

Yãy hã mĩy: Learning to Be

Within Tikmũ'ũn/Maxakali knowledge, Yãy hã mĩy belongs to a distinctive universe of relationships among beings, experiences, and transformations.

We must respect this knowledge without reducing it to a neuroscientific explanation.

At BrainLatam, we have developed an original interpretation called Extended Yãy hã mĩy.

We observe.

We imitate.

We repeat.

We learn.

We incorporate movements, customs, and beliefs.

What initially demanded attention becomes familiar.

Imagine a child learning a song.

The child observes.

Imitates.

Repeats.

Develops skills.

Over time, what once required concentration becomes natural.

The child can now sing confidently.

Something similar happens when we learn athletic movements, religious practices, musical instruments, and ways of interpreting events.

Our experiences participate in the formation of habits, customs, and beliefs.

These beliefs can become tools for Doing.

Imitation allows us to incorporate possibilities. Transcendence allows us to transform what we have incorporated.

Faith Can Support High Performance

Imagine a pianist preparing for a performance.

She has practiced a composition hundreds of times.

She knows the movements.

She trusts her abilities.

That confidence may support concentration and persistence.

At BrainLatam, we also investigate faith as an embodied conviction that sustains Doing.

We are not claiming that all confidence constitutes spirituality.

We are asking how expectations, learning, and feelings participate in organizing our actions.

Across different activities, neurobiological systems involved in motivation, attention, and reward contribute to experience.

We provocatively refer to these resources as our own drugs for every Doing.

There is, however, no substance exclusive to faith.

And the intensity of an emotion does not establish the truth of our interpretation.

Feeling confirms that we are experiencing something. It does not necessarily demonstrate that what we believe is true.

When Faith Encounters a Local Optimum

Now imagine that our pianist can perform her composition with extraordinary precision.

But someone proposes an improvisation.

The music changes.

An unexpected pause emerges.

Can she temporarily abandon the sequence she has learned?

Perhaps her preparation supports one kind of performance while making another more difficult.

In mathematical optimization, a local optimum represents a solution favored within a particular region of possibilities.

We use this expression metaphorically.

A belief may work sufficiently well to guide our actions for many years.

But it does not need to represent every available possibility of existence.

Faith may lead us to a local optimum. Blind faith may demand that we remain there.

Transcendence begins when we preserve the flexibility to recognize that other possibilities may exist.

We do not need to abandon all previous experience.

We need to remain capable of transforming it.

When A Encounters a New Object

Let us call A our current organization of perception, feelings, beliefs, and possibilities for action.

Now we encounter an object.

A painting.

A poem.

A piece of music.

A work of architecture.

Or a person who interprets the world differently.

The encounter may produce no significant change.

But it may also introduce an unexpected experience.

A memory acquires another meaning.

An emotion changes our expectations.

A question reveals a possibility we had not considered.

Let us call this new organization B.

B does not need to exist beforehand as a destination. It may emerge from the encounter between A and what A did not yet know.

Within the 5D Consciousness hypothesis, we propose understanding consciousness as a movement that perceives itself as Being within the metabolism produced.

In our original formulation, this metabolism includes movements of matter and energy within the perimeter of sensitivity of a Body-Territory.

Thus, we investigate the transformation from A to B as a possible reorganization of conscious experience in response to internal and external conditions.

This does not demonstrate the emergence of an independent consciousness.

Ceasing to Be may mean allowing a new way of perceiving ourselves as Being.

Art Does Not Demand a Single Truth

Imagine a piece of music that awakens joy in you.

In another person, the same melody evokes longing.

A poem may reveal different meanings according to the reader's experiences.

Architecture may invite contemplation, retreat, or encounter.

Aesthetic experience does not need to produce identical interpretations.

We can share an object without sharing precisely the same meanings.

And we can talk.

Perhaps someone reveals a detail we had not noticed.

Our interpretation changes.

The other person's experience also becomes a new object of encounter.

Art may allow each Body-Territory to discover possibilities of Being that were not available before that encounter.

But this does not mean that every artistic experience produces profound or lasting transformations.

We need to investigate the relevant conditions, individual differences, and consequences.

Spirituality and Territory

Ailton Krenak questions conceptions that separate humanity from nature.

Davi Kopenawa, in dialogue with Bruce Albert, presents Yanomami spiritual knowledge deeply connected to the forest.

These experiences possess their own histories and meanings.

They should not be treated as incomplete versions of European religions or reduced to our 5D Consciousness framework.

Nevertheless, we can recognize a question worth sharing:

How many possibilities for understanding our existence remain invisible when only one tradition is authorized to determine which experiences are legitimate?

A religious community may offer learning, care, and belonging.

It may also have rules that its members consider important.

The question arises when disagreement means losing the freedom to continue Being.

The Allostasis of Belonging

Imagine that you have belonged to a community for many years.

You have built friendships.

Learned practices.

Found confidence.

Now a doubt emerges.

Can you express it?

Perhaps you encounter understanding.

Perhaps you fear losing important relationships.

These situations may involve different emotional and physiological responses.

Allostasis describes regulatory processes that allow organisms to respond to changing demands.

Respiration, heart rate, attention, and other measures may contribute to investigating these processes.

But no single physiological signal demonstrates freedom, belonging, or coercion.

We need to listen to lived experience.

Perhaps the possibility of disagreeing transforms not only what we think, but also the bodily conditions under which we can participate.

This is an experimental hypothesis.

Not a universal conclusion about religious communities.

Egregore Must Allow Contradiction

In Religare, we developed Egregore as a space of encounter among different perceived possibilities of Being.

During a dream, a single Body-Territory can generate experiences involving many characters.

During wakefulness, memories, feelings, and expectations also offer different perspectives.

Metacognition allows us to recognize and evaluate certain internal processes.

Now imagine that only one perspective is permitted to exist.

All others must remain silent.

Can we speak of freedom of Being when we cannot reconsider what we have learned to believe?

Truth may exist between Us without belonging exclusively to any one of Us.

In some people's spiritual experience, God may be felt in that encounter.

Others may understand God differently or may not believe in God.

Secularism protects coexistence among these possibilities without requiring a shared spiritual interpretation.

Ceasing to Be in Order to Allow Ourselves to Be

At BrainLatam, we propose a sequence:

Let It Come → Let It Stay → Let It Be → It May Disobey → Let It Go.

We can encounter a belief.

Experience its practices.

Choose to remain.

Develop our own interpretations.

And later disagree or leave a community.

This does not eliminate responsibilities toward other people.

It means recognizing that belonging should not become ownership of another person's consciousness.

Flexibility also applies to our encounters with art.

Perhaps a painting holds one meaning today.

Another tomorrow.

Perhaps a piece of music allows us to remember something we could not previously recognize.

Perhaps a conversation transforms our earlier interpretation.

We do not need to know beforehand who we want to Be. We need to preserve the flexibility to allow encounters to transform what we are capable of Being.

How Can We Investigate This Transformation?

We can imagine an experiment in which participants encounter paintings, music, and poems that allow different interpretations.

First, we record their individual perceptions and feelings.

Then we allow them to discuss their different interpretations.

Under another condition, they must follow a predetermined interpretation.

We investigate autonomy, belonging, interpretive flexibility, and subsequent changes in how the works are evaluated.

EEG, fNIRS, ECG, and respiration may help characterize aspects of physiological responses.

But they would not, by themselves, demonstrate transcendence or a collective consciousness.

The question would be whether free and reciprocal encounters expand the repertoire of interpretations and actions subsequently available to each participant.

When Secularism Allows Us to Continue Being

Let us return to the painting.

It remains before us.

You have found one meaning.

I have found another.

We can talk.

Perhaps our experiences will change.

Perhaps we will continue to disagree.

Neither possibility requires anyone to abandon their dignity.

The same principle can guide our investigation of the Jiwasa-State.

A secular State does not need to remove God from the experience of those who believe.

It needs to protect everyone's freedom of conscience, including those who understand spirituality differently or hold no religious beliefs.

Faith may teach us to recognize one image. Art may reveal others. And transcendence may begin when we preserve the flexibility not to remain confined to the first image we learned to call truth.

Freedom does not require us to cease Being A forever.

It allows A to encounter B.

B to encounter C.

And each Body-Territory to continue participating in the construction of its own possibilities.

Our question remains open:

How does the possibility of believing, disagreeing, encountering new experiences, or leaving a community transform belonging, physiological regulation, and the flexibility with which we allow new ways of Being to emerge?

Annotated References

Espaço do Conhecimento UFMG (2019–2023). Mundos Indígenas.

An exhibition developed with Indigenous curators, including Tikmũ'ũn/Maxakali representatives. It presents Yãy hã mĩy within its own cultural context, distinguishing it from BrainLatam's extended interpretations.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2025). Yãy hã mĩy - Imitar-se Ser para Transcender-se Ser.

Develops the original interpretation of imitation, learning, confidence, habits, and the transcendence of previously incorporated possibilities of Being.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). Yãy hã mĩy (Maxakali): Imitar, Crer e Repetir - Quando a Fé Liberta ou Aprisiona.

Examines the transition from learning to belief and faith, emphasizing the distinction between developing capabilities and becoming trapped in inflexible repetition.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2024). Fé é o Quadro que Sufoca sua Imagem.

Presents faith as a possible resource for high performance while examining the importance of flexibility in transforming beliefs, habits, and interpretations.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). O contexto entrou no cérebro — ou nunca esteve fora dele?.

Develops the hypothesis that encounters with objects participate in transforming the subject, potentially changing how subsequent encounters are experienced.

BrainLatam — Cionek, Jackson (2026). Quando nos reunimos — liberdade, alostase e o “um entre nós”.

Connects collective encounters, art, ritual, freedom, and belonging while distinguishing physiological coordination from shared experience.

Krenak, Ailton (2019). Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo (Ideas to Postpone the End of the World). Companhia das Letras.

Questions the separation of humanity from nature and broadens our understanding of existence, belonging, and territory.

Kopenawa, Davi; Albert, Bruce (2015). A queda do céu: palavras de um xamã Yanomami (The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman). Companhia das Letras.

Presents Yanomami spiritual knowledge and reflections on the forest, ancestry, relationships among beings, and the consequences of colonialism.

Chatterjee, Anjan; Vartanian, Oshin (2014). Neuroaesthetics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(7), 370–375.

Reviews perceptual, emotional, and evaluative processes involved in aesthetic experiences, providing a foundation for investigating how artistic objects participate in constructing meaning.

Vessel, Edward A.; Starr, G. Gabrielle; Rubin, Nava (2012). The brain on art: Intense aesthetic experience activates the default mode network. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 66.

Investigates individual differences in responses to paintings and relates intense aesthetic experiences to activity in brain networks involved in self-referential processing.

Janata, Petr (2009). The neural architecture of music-evoked autobiographical memories. Cerebral Cortex, 19(11), 2579–2594.

Investigates relationships among music, autobiographical memories, and brain activity, helping explain how a melody may encounter different personal histories.

McEwen, Bruce S.; Wingfield, John C. (2003). The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and Behavior, 43(1), 2–15.

Provides a foundational account of allostasis as physiological regulation in response to changing environmental demands.

De Jaegher, Hanne; Di Paolo, Ezequiel (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6, 485–507.

Develops participatory sense-making, a relevant framework for examining how different interpretations of a work of art can change through interpersonal encounters.

Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (1988). Articles 5 and 19.

Establishes protections for freedom of conscience and belief and constitutional limits on relationships between the State and religious institutions.

Cionek, Jackson. Religare — Religiosidade Plena em um Estado Democrático, Laico e de Direito.

An original philosophical work developing the concepts of Egregore, CRIAturas, and freedom of Being in dialogue with experiential multiplicity and democratic coexistence.

Scientific and conceptual note: The article distinguishes established research on aesthetic experience, memory, learning, and allostasis from BrainLatam's original 5D Consciousness hypothesis. The transition from A to B describes a possible transformation of experience and the Body-Territory's repertoire, not proof of an independent consciousness or a guarantee that every artistic encounter produces lasting change. The Tikmũ'ũn/Maxakali concept of Yãy hã mĩy retains its distinct cultural meaning.

BrainLatam | W44/2026 · 5D Consciousness · Extended Yãy hã mĩy · Art · Spirituality · Allostasis · Jiwasa-State