Between the Vote and Transcendence -  When Feeling Colors a Reality We Cannot See as a Whole

The Body-Territory feels one part. Reality continues unfolding across many layers.

A person opens a social network.

Reads a news story.

Feels indignation.

Shares it.

Begins to perceive a certain candidate differently.

Months later, votes.

Another person enters a collective practice.

Breathes intensely.

The body begins to change.

Tingling appears.

Spatial perception shifts.

The boundaries of the self seem less defined.

The experience becomes profound.

It receives a word:

transcendence.

What do these two situations have in common?

In both, something truly happened within the Body-Territory.

But what was felt did not necessarily reveal all the material layers that participated in producing the experience.

This is where voting and transcendence begin to meet.

One reality can unfold across many layers at the same time

Brazilian researcher Alfredo Pereira Jr. proposes in Triple-Aspect Monism that conscious experience jointly involves:

the materiality of the living body,
dynamic patterns of information,
sentience.

These are not three independent worlds.

They are aspects of an integrated reality.

In his more recent formulation, Pereira also proposes Qualiomics as a field concerned with qualitative first-person experience, preserving the distinction between what can be measured from the outside and what the Body-Territory feels from within.

BrainLatam extrapolates this idea to think in terms of interconnected layers of materiality:

molecular,

metabolic,

respiratory,

cardiovascular,

neural,

interoceptive,

relational,

informational,

social,

institutional,

territorial.

These are not different realities.

They are different scales through which events within the same reality can acquire movement.

A change in one layer can modify probabilities in another without the Body-Territory consciously perceiving the entire chain.

Damasio: before interpreting the world, the organism is already feeling itself

Antonio and Hanna Damasio proposed in 2024 that a conscious mind continuously depends on interoceptive feelings, images generated from the organism’s sensory perspective, and the integration of these elements into subjective experience.

In other words, there is not first a neutral observer and only afterward a body.

The organism already arrives at the event:

breathing,

maintaining temperature,

receiving visceral information,

perceiving bodily position,

regulating energy,

carrying memories.

And it is from within this organism that a news story, a political conversation, or a ritual experience will be perceived.

This leads to a central distinction:

feeling is true as an event of the Body-Territory. But feeling does not automatically reveal all the material causes of that event.

From news to vote: how many layers exist between an image and a decision?

Imagine a political post.

First, there is an event.

Then someone selects it.

Crops an image.

Chooses a sentence.

Publishes it.

An algorithm partially determines its visibility.

The image reaches the retina.

Words activate semantic repertoires.

Previous memories participate in interpretation.

An emotion emerges.

The bodily state changes.

The person feels:

anger,

fear,

trust,

hope,

aversion,

closeness.

Then the person explains that feeling.

Finally, that explanation may become political action.

We can represent it as:

event
→ informational cut
→ algorithm/distribution
→ sensory perception
→ memory
→ emotion
→ physiology
→ qualia
→ interpretation
→ decision
→ vote.

The voter almost never consciously perceives all these layers.

They mainly perceive:

“I do not like him.”

or:

“I trust her.”

The feeling is real.

But its origin is more complex.

Social networks can actually participate in voting behavior

Brazilian researchers Pedro Mundim, Fábio Vasconcellos, and Lucas Okado analyzed data from the Brazilian Electoral Study and showed that, in the 2018 presidential election, using Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube as sources of political information was associated with almost twice the likelihood of voting for Jair Bolsonaro, even when other political and ideological variables were considered.

Because this was an observational study, it does not mean the platforms alone “caused” those votes.

But it shows that treating them merely as neutral channels of transmission is insufficient.

In 2024, an experiment with 1,033 Chilean voters, conducted by Andrés Mendiburo-Seguel, Patricio Navia, and colleagues, showed something even more direct: videos of candidates using humor changed emotions, sympathy, and declared voting probability.

For one candidate, the effect appeared mainly through increased positive emotions; for the other, through reduced negative emotions.

This does not mean:

“emotion controls the voter.”

It means:

changing how someone feels can change the probability of a political decision.

Media reality is not necessarily relational reality

Here Celso Amorim offers a particularly useful political image.

In Laços de confiança, published in 2022, Amorim revisits diplomatic relations among South American countries whose governments often held deeply divergent political positions.

When discussing his relationship with former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, Amorim recalls that there was no ideological affinity between them.

Yet trust existed.

Commitments made within the diplomatic relationship continued to have value.

Amorim also recalls that UNASUR was not formed by countries that thought alike: Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and others had governments and political projects that differed greatly, yet it remained possible to build spaces of integration.

BrainLatam makes its own interpretation here.

An experienced diplomat needs to distinguish:

the public statement,
media coverage,
ideological dispute,
national interest,
personal relationship,
institutional commitment.

These are different layers.

If we react only to the emotional coloring produced by a headline, we may confuse one layer with all the others.

Perhaps diplomacy is precisely the ability to continue perceiving other layers when one of them becomes extremely intense.

Now make the same movement with transcendence

An intense respiratory experience also has layers.

Imagine a collective breathing practice.

There is:

rhythm,

music,

other people,

expectation,

movement,

posture,

cultural memory.

Then ventilation changes.

CO₂ changes.

pH changes.

Cerebral circulation changes.

The relationship between breathing and heart changes.

Neural activity may also change.

All of this enters interoception.

Some of these differences acquire qualia.

The person feels:

expansion,

unity,

presence,

dissolution,

light,

belonging.

Then interpretation appears.

We can write:

ritual
→ movement
→ ventilation
→ CO₂/pH
→ cerebral circulation
→ neural activity
→ interoception
→ qualia
→ language
→ transcendent interpretation.

Just as with voting:

the feeling truly happens, but the feeling alone does not reveal the entire chain that produced it.

Intense breathing really changes materiality

A 2025 study followed experienced participants during Holotropic and Conscious-Connected Breathwork practices.

Among participants performing active hyperventilation, ETCO₂ dropped sharply.

The reduction in CO₂ was associated with the intensity of reported altered states.

Some participants reached ETCO₂ values of approximately 10 to 20 mmHg during the practice.

In 2026, another study found an average 45.5% reduction in global gray-matter cerebral blood flow during high-ventilation breathwork.

But something important happened:

the subjective intensity of the experience was not simply explained by the magnitude of cerebral blood-flow reduction.

There was also no significant group-level decrease in DMN connectivity.

Again:

many layers.

And what about DMT?

Here there is a fascinating hypothesis, but we must avoid turning it into scientific Blind Faith.

The human organism produces N,N-dimethyltryptamine — DMT — endogenously.

The enzyme INMT, associated with one known pathway for DMT synthesis, is expressed in several human tissues, with particularly high levels reported in the lung and adrenal glands.

Recent reviews therefore consider the lung an important site in investigating the peripheral biochemistry of INMT and methylated tryptamines.

This makes it biologically interesting to ask:

could profound respiratory changes modify the production, metabolism, or distribution of endogenous DMT, including in pulmonary tissues?

This is a legitimate question.

But today we need to say clearly:

we do not have evidence in humans showing that a breathing technique triggers pulmonary DMT release at concentrations sufficient to produce a psychedelic state.

A 2025 review of endogenous DMT discusses factors such as hypoxia, stress, alkalinization, and INMT regulation as potentially relevant to its production, while acknowledging that its physiological function and effective concentrations in humans remain poorly understood.

Therefore:

lung + INMT + endogenous DMT = biologically plausible materiality.

But:

specific breathing → pulmonary DMT → transcendence = an unproven hypothesis.

This is exactly the kind of hypothesis we can measure

Instead of repeating:

“breathwork releases DMT,”

we could create a BrainLatam NeuroChallenge.

Record during different practices:

ECG,

RespHRV,

two respiratory bands,

ETCO₂,

SpO₂,

EEG,

NIRS,

movement,

and first-person reports.

In specific studies, add biochemical sampling with sensitive methods for DMT and its metabolites before, during, and after selected respiratory conditions.

The question changes from:

“does DMT explain transcendence?”

to:

“which layers changed, in what order, and which of them best predict different aspects of the experience?”

That is a major difference.

Qualia colors reality

Alfredo Pereira Jr. directs our attention precisely toward what third-person measurement cannot replace:

feeling.

A device can record:

ETCO₂ = 18 mmHg.

But the person does not feel:

18 mmHg.

They may feel:

lightness,

fear,

expansion,

presence.

Likewise, a network analysis may record:

thousands of shares.

The voter does not feel:

network centrality = 0.62.

They feel:

“everyone is talking about this.”

Qualia is the coloring that a certain material state acquires for that Body-Territory.

And that coloring can participate both in:

the vote

and:

transcendence.

The great mistake is confusing the coloring with the whole reality

A news story can generate genuine fear without the event being exactly as narrated.

A respiratory experience can generate genuine unity without the first biochemical or metaphysical explanation necessarily being correct.

As we have already formulated:

A false narrative can produce true friendship.
A mistaken explanation can produce real relief.
A belief can reduce real tension.

And:

what my feeling first confirms is that my Body-Territory was capable of reaching that state. What caused that state and what it means remain open.

Feeling changes the vote

This may be the central political formulation of this blog:

feeling does not need to reveal the whole reality in order to change a vote.

A voter does not need to know:

the algorithm,

the financing,

the diplomatic context,

the image editing,

the statistics,

the complete history.

They may vote from the phenomenological reality they were able to construct.

This is why the Informational Territory matters.

Brazilian research published in 2026 on municipal elections also argues that algorithms, emotions, and digital visibility transform online exposure into political capital and reshape electoral power relations.

The problem is not that feeling is the enemy of democracy.

It would be impossible to decide without feeling.

The problem appears when:

one emotionally intense layer prevents other layers from having an opportunity to be perceived.

Feeling also changes transcendence

The same applies to a profound experience.

When the Body-Territory materially changes, feeling changes.

And when feeling changes, it may also change:

the narrative about oneself,

belonging,

the perception of time,

the relationship with death,

the very idea of reality.

This can transform a life.

But the intensity of transformation does not require one single interpretation.

In the BrainLatam hypothesis, transcendence might instead be defined as:

not discovering a final explanation, but becoming able to perceive beyond the local optimum through which we usually perceive ourselves to Be.

Celso Amorim may offer us a methodological clue

Let us return to diplomacy.

Uribe and the Brazilian government could diverge ideologically.

The public layer could be conflictive.

But another layer could preserve trust and commitment.

Amorim summarizes this ability as plural interlocution: different countries could cooperate without needing to transform difference into the impossibility of relationship.

Perhaps we can learn something from this for our own consciousness.

An emotion may say:

“this is terrible.”

And another layer may ask:

“what else is happening?”

An experience may say:

“I found the answer.”

And another layer may respond:

“perhaps; let us continue investigating.”

This does not diminish feeling.

It expands our field.

Voting and transcendence need the same freedom

Perhaps democracy and transcendence share one condition:

we need to be able to feel deeply without immediately transforming feeling into the whole of reality.

In voting, this means perceiving that a news story is a cut.

In transcendence, perceiving that an extraordinary bodily state is also a cut.

In both:

memory,

information,

breathing,

metabolism,

relationships,

territory,

qualia

continue happening together.

The Body-Territory will rarely perceive everything.

But it can learn to ask:

“which layer am I feeling now — and which others have I not yet been able to perceive?”

Perhaps this is one of the most important tasks of a Decolonial Neuroscience.

Not teaching which vote is correct.

Not determining which transcendence is true.

But returning to the Body-Territory the capacity to distinguish:

what it feels,
what it interprets,
and what it has not yet been able to perceive.

Because:

Feeling is true. But by itself it does not show the whole of reality.

And precisely because of that:

it can change a vote.
It can transform transcendence.
And still leave reality open to continued investigation.

Main References

PEREIRA JR., A. (2023). Introdução à Metafísica do Monismo de Triplo Aspecto. ANPOF.
The Brazilian researcher proposes the materiality of the living body, dynamic informational patterns, and sentience as fundamental and integrated aspects of consciousness.

DAMASIO, A.; DAMASIO, H. (2024). Homeostatic Feelings and the Emergence of Consciousness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 36(8), 1653–1659.
Proposes that continuous interoceptive feelings, sensory images, and the organism’s integrated perspective participate in the construction of a conscious mind.

MUNDIM, P. S.; VASCONCELLOS, F.; OKADO, L. (2023). Redes Sociais e Aplicativos de Troca de Mensagens Instantâneas na Eleição de Jair Bolsonaro como Presidente do Brasil em 2018. Dados, 66(2).
Brazilian researchers show that using Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube as sources of political information was strongly associated with voting probabilities, indicating that digital media do not function merely as neutral channels.

MENDIBURO-SEGUEL, A.; OLAH, A. R.; PÁEZ, D.; NAVIA, P. (2024). Laughing your vote off: the impact of candidates’ humor on voters’ emotions and intentions. Frontiers in Political Science, 6, 1398686.
An experiment with 1,033 Chilean voters shows that political communication capable of changing emotion also altered candidate sympathy and declared voting probability.

TERRA, C. F. (2026). A lógica da influência digital: Como as redes sociais redefinem votos. Intercom: Revista Brasileira de Ciências da Comunicação, 49.
Analyzes Brazil’s 2024 municipal elections and discusses how algorithms, visibility, and emotion may transform digital presence into political capital.

AMORIM, C. (2022). Laços de confiança — O Brasil na América do Sul. Benvirá.
The Brazilian diplomat describes how trust and cooperation could be maintained between governments with deep ideological disagreements, allowing BrainLatam to distinguish media, ideological, relational, and institutional layers.

HAVENITH, M. N. et al. (2025). Decreased CO₂ saturation during circular breathwork supports emergence of altered states of consciousness. Communications Psychology, 3, 59.
Shows that circular hyperventilation strongly reduces ETCO₂ and that this reduction is associated with the intensity of altered states, providing a measurable physiological layer for subjectively profound experiences.

SCHMITZ, C. N. et al. (2026). How high ventilation breathwork alters consciousness: Hypoperfusion, network dynamics, and subjective experience. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, 149, 111873.
Finds a 45.5% reduction in global gray-matter cerebral blood flow during high-ventilation breathwork without demonstrating that one vascular variable alone explains subjective intensity.

SCHIMMELPFENNIG, J.; JANKOWIAK-SIUDA, K. (2025). Exploring DMT: Endogenous role and therapeutic potential. Neuropharmacology, 268, 110314.
Reviews endogenous DMT, synthesis pathways, INMT, and possible influences of stress, hypoxia, and metabolic conditions, while emphasizing major uncertainty regarding its physiological function in humans.

Implications of Indolethylamine N-Methyltransferase (INMT) in Health and Disease (2025).
Reviews the distribution of human INMT and highlights high pulmonary and adrenal expression, making the lung materially relevant to the study of endogenous DMT without demonstrating that breathwork triggers psychoactive pulmonary DMT release.

BrainLatam (2026). Feeling Is True. But It Does Not Prove the Belief Is True.
Distinguishes the phenomenological truth of feeling from the causal or metaphysical validity of the interpretation assigned to the lived state.

BrainLatam (2026). Layers of Reality / Body-Territory.
Proposes that molecular, physiological, neural, informational, relational, political, and territorial events may influence one another without the Body-Territory having simultaneous conscious access to all these scales.

The sentence that best synthesizes the blog in English is:

“The Body-Territory does not need to perceive the whole of reality for reality to modify what it feels; and what it feels can change both its vote and its transcendence.”