Between Two States - From Brain Transition to Institutional Transition

The fullness of the moment when A still exists and B has not yet arrived

There is a strange moment in every transition.

We are still in A, but A is no longer experienced exactly as it was before. We know that B may arrive, but B does not yet fully exist.

Between the two, there is an interval.

Perhaps we spend much of our lives trying to shorten it.

We want to know the diagnosis as soon as possible, the test result, whether a relationship will continue, who will win an election, what will happen to the economy, who will hold a particular office. We try to turn the future into the present before the event itself has finished producing it.

In September 2026, Brazil is living through exactly one of these collective intervals. The first round of the General Elections will take place on October 4; where a second round is required, it will occur on October 25. Certification of the elected candidates must take place by December 18, and the presidential inauguration will occur on January 5, 2027.

This means that an election is not a point.

It is a trajectory.

There may be political continuity or a change of administration. Either way, there is an institutional passage from one cycle into another.

But this text is not about which B should happen.

It begins with a prior question:

can we perceive that we are living A → B while A → B is still happening?

The future can steal the present

I pick up my phone.

A poll.

I scroll.

A prediction.

I scroll.

A video claiming that a particular piece of information “changes everything.”

Another explaining why the first video is wrong.

A message in a group chat.

A candidate speaking.

A religious leader interprets the moment.

A commentator interprets the leader.

An influencer interprets the commentator.

The next post has already started before I have understood what the previous one produced in me.

And perhaps the greatest risk is not merely believing false information.

Perhaps it is crossing the transition itself without realizing that we were inside it.

Within BrainLatam’s conceptual construction, there is a question about the time required for perception, memory, body, and metacognition to participate in the formation of a first-person experience. BrainLatam has used approximately 3.1 seconds as an operational window for thinking about this conscious present. This should not be treated as a universal stopwatch: science describes conscious integration across multiple timescales. Still, contemporary research also identifies the relevance of approximately three-second windows in the organization of what has been called the subjective present.

The question, therefore, is not to claim:

“if another video arrives before 3.1 seconds, I was not conscious of the previous one.”

The question is more interesting:

how much of the previous stimulus was I able to perceive within myself before the next one began reorganizing me?

The brain also has an “in-between”

In Blog 01, we began with Hutcheon and colleagues.

During the first 150 seconds of normobaric hypoxia, participants’ SpO₂ was still falling. The relationships between EEG and SpO₂ observed during this desaturation differed from those found after stabilization.

When only the final 150 seconds were analyzed, once oxygen saturation had become more stable, those differences between conditions were no longer significant.

An election is not hypoxia.

A state is not a brain.

But Hutcheon offered us a powerful methodological question:

what disappears when we measure only A and B and ignore A → B?

Now we can return that question to the Body-Territory.

Perhaps I am so busy trying to discover B that I fail to perceive the singular state of being in-between.

Latent Heat: when a great deal is happening without appearing in the most obvious variable

In physics, during certain phase transitions, energy enters or leaves a system while its temperature temporarily remains unchanged. The energy involved in that phase transition is called latent heat.

W40/2026 uses this strictly as a metaphor. We are not claiming that elections, consciousness, or Metanoia possess thermodynamic latent heat.

The metaphor helps because it reminds us that an apparently stable variable does not mean that transformation is absent.

From the outside, perhaps my day looks the same.

I wake up.

I work.

I eat.

I open Instagram.

I talk to people.

I sleep.

But my country is between possible configurations. My expectations are changing. The future I imagine changes as new information reaches me. My relationship with other people may also be reorganizing.

A great deal of psychological, social, and symbolic “energy” may be circulating while, on the surface, we still appear to be in the same place.

Perhaps the latent heat of a transition is precisely what we can only feel if we do not immediately rush toward the result.

What if the “in-between” could be fully inhabited?

In Ancestral Future, Ailton Krenak questions both the future presented as catastrophe and the future presented as redemption when either removes us from what is actually around us.

Perhaps this becomes particularly important during an election.

We can spend weeks imagining:

“when they win…”

“when they lose…”

“when things change…”

“when things continue…”

And lose the only place in which we are alive:

now.

To fully inhabit the transition does not mean enjoying the political situation.

It does not mean becoming indifferent.

It does not mean abandoning voting, participation, argument, or the defense of what we believe.

It means allowing there to be consciousness of the in-between.

I still do not know B.

And perhaps, for a few moments, I do not need to.

Perhaps this is where a possibility of transcendence exists

Transcendence, in this text, does not mean proving a supernatural reality.

We are referring to the phenomenological experience of temporarily moving beyond the ordinary perspective of the self.

Recent research on awe shows that experiences of wonder or vastness can broaden perspective, temporarily reduce the centrality of the habitual self, and increase a sense of connection to something larger. Such experiences are culturally and contextually shaped and are not necessarily pleasant.

An election does not automatically produce this.

But consider the moment.

Millions of first-person subjects, most of them unknown to one another, simultaneously participate in a process whose result none of them individually controls.

I am one vote.

You are another.

Millions of different Body-Territories participate in producing a collective result that does not yet exist.

Perhaps there is a possibility of everyday transcendence here:

for a few moments, realizing that I participate in something larger than myself without needing to disappear into the collective.

This brings us close to Jiwasa.

In BrainLatam’s extension of the concept, Jiwasa is not mass conformity, obedience, or the elimination of individual differences. It is a we in which distinct first-person subjects continue to exist.

I do not need to vote as you do in order to recognize:

we are crossing this interval together.

Epiphany is not receiving a ready-made answer

There is another possibility within the in-between: epiphany.

In research on insight, the “Aha!” experience can accompany a sudden restructuring of how a problem is represented. But the scientific literature also warns that the subjective experience of Aha and a correct restructuring are not the same thing; the feeling of clarity does not, by itself, guarantee that a conclusion is true.

This becomes especially relevant during an election.

I may feel:

“Now everything makes sense!”

Yet the feeling of clarity still has to meet the facts.

Perhaps the most important epiphany of this period is not discovering “who is right.”

It may be recognizing:

I was trying to force the future to arrive before its time.

And something changes.

Not necessarily my vote.

Perhaps what changes is my relationship with uncertainty.

This is where Metanoia may begin

Contemporary research on transformative experiences describes changes capable of reorganizing worldview, self-perception, relationships with others, and subsequent ways of acting. There is no single definition or universal biomarker for such processes.

Within W40/2026, we use Metanoia to describe the possibility of a transformation in perspective that cannot be reduced to simply changing an opinion.

Electoral Metanoia, therefore, does not mean switching candidates.

It may happen when I realize that my expectation is not the result; my fear is not a prediction; my group does not possess the whole of reality; what I feel is real as an experience but does not, by itself, prove my interpretation; and I can remain for a few moments in front of the not yet.

It is a smaller change than converting someone.

And perhaps a much larger one.

Who occupies the interval?

Campaigns, political parties, religious communities, news organizations, influencers, digital platforms, friends, and families all legitimately participate in constructing political interpretations. That does not mean that every form of mobilization is manipulation.

But any narrative can occupy so much of the interval that we stop living it in the first person.

The “hijacking of the in-between,” as a BrainLatam metaphor, begins when someone — or an algorithm, or even our own fear — seems compelled to fill every second with certainty, threat, promise, or belonging.

BrainLatam has formulated a useful question: when faced with a piece of news, beyond asking “is it true or false?”, we can also ask who is trying to establish my attention right now, and with what consequence for my Body-Territory?

Sometimes the best answer will not be another post.

It will be an interval.

The fullness of not having arrived yet

Perhaps we have learned to celebrate arrivals.

Result.

Victory.

Defeat.

Inauguration.

New government.

Continuity.

But we have almost no rituals for being in the middle.

We are still in A.

B has not arrived.

There is anxiety.

There is dispute.

There is hope.

There is fear.

There is news.

There is noise.

But there is also this extraordinary instant in which the future remains open.

Perhaps we can remain here for a moment.

Not to escape democracy.

But to perceive it happening.

Not to abandon our choices.

But to recognize where those choices are emerging from.

Not to find a transcendence produced for us by a political party, a church, a platform, or a leader.

But to preserve the possibility of an experience that still belongs to us — and that, precisely for this reason, can encounter another person.

Jiwasa.

I remain I.

You remain you.

And for a few moments, both of us may perceive:

we have not arrived yet.

Perhaps Latent Heat is here.

Perhaps an epiphany happens here.

Perhaps some form of transcendence is possible here.

Perhaps Metanoia does not need to wait for B.

Perhaps it begins when, instead of rushing to escape the transition, we perceive the fullness of being alive precisely between A and B.

Commented References

• Hutcheon, E. A., Vakorin, V. A., Nunes, A., et al. (2023). Associations between spontaneous electroencephalogram oscillations and oxygen saturation across normobaric and hypobaric hypoxia. Human Brain Mapping, 44(6), 2345–2364.
  What this reference represents: it establishes the scientific starting point of W40/2026. During changing SpO₂, EEG–oxygenation relationships emerged that were not identical after stabilization. It introduces the central question: what does the transient reveal that stabilized states conceal?

• Tribunal Superior Eleitoral — TSE. (2026). 2026 Brazilian General Election Calendar.
  What this reference represents: it anchors the blog in the real institutional process. The first round, a possible second round, certification, and inauguration are temporally distinct stages; there is concretely an institutional in-between.

• Zhao, C., Mu, N., Zhang, J., & Bao, Y. (2024). The temporal transition zone: A gradual approach to a subjective set-point within the three-second time window.
  What this reference represents: it provides a scientific bridge for thinking about the subjective present on a timescale of approximately a few seconds, without turning 3.1 seconds into a universal law of consciousness.

• Jiang, T., Hicks, J. A., Yuan, W., et al. (2024). The unique nature and psychosocial implications of awe. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3, 475–488.
  What this reference represents: it allows us to discuss transcendence with phenomenological rigor. Awe can broaden perspective beyond the habitual self and change our relationship with something perceived as larger than ourselves.

• Wiley, J., & Danek, A. H. (2024). Restructuring processes and Aha! experiences in insight problem solving. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3, 42–55.
  What this reference represents: it separates felt epiphany from demonstrated truth. An Aha experience may accompany cognitive restructuring, but the feeling of clarity does not guarantee that the conclusion is correct.

• Gaggioli, A., et al. (2022). Defining Transformative Experiences: A Conceptual Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 790300.
  What this reference represents: it supports caution when speaking about Metanoia. Transformative experiences may change worldview, self, and action, but they remain a heterogeneous field without one universal definition or neurobiological signature.

• Pizzolante, M., Pelowski, M., Demmer, T. R., et al. (2024). Aesthetic experiences and their transformative power: a systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology.
  What this reference represents: it shows that transformation can involve discrepancy, insight, epiphany, and later integration. A transformative event does not necessarily end at its moment of greatest intensity; it must become integrated into lived experience.

• Krenak, A. (2022). Futuro ancestral [Ancestral Future]. Companhia das Letras.
  What this reference represents: it returns the discussion to Latin American and Indigenous thought and to the lived present. A future understood only as threat or salvation can distance us from what is already happening around us.

• OpenStax. Phase Change and Latent Heat. College Physics 2e.
  What this reference represents: it provides the physical basis of the Latent Heat metaphor: during a phase transition, energy can be absorbed or released without immediately appearing as a temperature change. In W40/2026, this is used exclusively as an analogy, not as a brain or political mechanism.

• BrainLatam. (2026). Jiwasa — When WE Feel the State Within the Body-Territory; Jiwasa Verdadero; Who Sets Your Attention?.
  What this reference represents: it provides the BrainLatam conceptual extension that runs throughout the blog: Jiwasa as a we that does not erase first-person subjects, and the conscious interval as a space in which we may perceive who is trying to organize our attention before surrendering to someone else the interpretation of what we are living.