The Wonder of Being Many Without Ceasing to Be

Complex Systems, APUS, Tekoha, Human Quorum Sensing, and the Emergence of Jiwasa

The Square We Encounter in a Dream

Imagine that you are dreaming.

You are walking through an unfamiliar public square.

There are trees, benches, people talking, and children playing. In the distance, a monument catches your attention.

You approach it.

You meet someone who seems to know you.

You begin talking.

Perhaps that person reveals something surprising. Perhaps you feel joy, fear, or belonging.

Everything seems to be happening in that space.

Now wake up.

Your body was lying down.

You did not physically walk through that square.

Yet you experienced distances, movements, encounters, and emotions.

How did a single Body-Territory manage to generate so many characters, events, and possibilities of Being?

At BrainLatam, we investigate this experience through two original concepts within our 5D Consciousness framework: APUS and Tekoha.

APUS represents our hypothesis of extended proprioception, involving position, reach, orientation, and possibilities for movement in relation to the environment.

Tekoha represents extended interoception: the territory incorporated into physiological rhythms, memories, feelings, and the conditions of living.

During dreaming, the square is predominantly constructed internally. In our interpretation, we emphasize Tekoha, although spatial and motor representations resembling those associated with APUS may also be present.

In a dream, we can walk without physically moving our bodies through the square.

But what happens when we decide to visit it while awake?

When the Square Meets Our Body

Now we are walking through a real square.

We feel the ground beneath us.

We must adjust our balance, estimate distances, avoid obstacles, and reorganize our movements.

A staircase requires a particular kind of bodily preparation.

A ramp offers another possibility.

APUS, in our terminology, participates in this actual encounter between Body-Territory and environment.

But Tekoha remains present.

Our breathing, heart rate, previous experiences, and feelings accompany every step.

One person may feel safe.

Another person may experience discomfort in the very same square.

Architecture does not produce identical experiences for everyone.

In Architecture That Thinks With Me, we explored how turning a corner can change the demands of spatial attention.

A 2025 study by Zakaria Djebbara and colleagues used mobile EEG and virtual reality to investigate how architectural configurations influence attentional demands during navigation.

The dreamed square and the physically experienced square are not equivalent.

In the first, we experience a spatial representation without the corresponding external walk.

In the second, the body continuously encounters physical consequences that may confirm or contradict its expectations.

In both, however, our perception remains a construction involving the Body-Territory.

Who Designed Our Movements?

In 2021, physicist Giorgio Parisi received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to understanding complex systems.

In these systems, numerous components interact and may produce collective organizations that are difficult to understand by observing each element separately.

Let us return to the square.

People walk in different directions.

Small adjustments prevent collisions.

Collective flows may emerge without anyone determining every individual step.

But look again.

Who decided where the paths, benches, trees, and monuments would be placed?

A monumental square may direct people's attention and movement toward symbols of authority.

Another may offer varied pathways, spaces for contemplation, and opportunities for encounters.

Neither automatically determines our beliefs.

Nevertheless, their configurations influence possibilities for movement, perception, and interaction.

A square may celebrate diversity.

It may also represent a particular conception of order, nationhood, religion, or power.

The same monument may inspire pride in one person and evoke suffering in another.

Thus, collective emergence depends not only on the participants but also on the conditions offered by the territory.

A crowd following the same path does not necessarily constitute a Jiwasa.

Truth May Exist Between Us

Imagine two people standing before that monument.

Both are sincere.

One recognizes a history of achievements.

The other remembers experiences of exclusion.

Must we immediately choose one interpretation and silence the other?

Perhaps both know different aspects of history.

Perhaps one of their claims is mistaken.

We can examine documents, experiences, and evidence without denying either person's right to express a perspective.

The result does not need to be a compromise halfway between two opinions.

A third understanding may emerge, one that neither person could have constructed alone.

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

In some people's spiritual experience, God may also be felt in that encounter without being identified with any particular participant.

Others will find different meanings.

Freedom of conscience allows these experiences to coexist.

And metacognition can help us recognize that our interpretation does not necessarily encompass the whole of reality.

Five Hunters, Five Possibilities

Let us return, in our imagination, to the Atlantic Forest.

Five hunters associated with the archaeological Umbu tradition are tracking prey.

One notices movement among the trees.

Another identifies a possible danger.

A third changes direction.

The others need to reorganize.

We do not know the details of any particular ancient hunt. Our scene is a narrative construction inspired by Brazilian archaeological evidence.

Now imagine that the youngest hunter notices something unexpected.

He signals.

The most experienced hunter interrupts his movement.

The group changes its strategy.

Something interesting has happened.

Information from one participant has transformed the possibilities available to the others.

But this does not yet demonstrate the emergence of Jiwasa.

We need to ask whether every participant can genuinely influence, disagree with, and reorganize shared action.

The collective must not be confused with submission to leadership.

We can Be Many without requiring anyone to cease Being.

When Interaction Creates Meaning

Chilean researchers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela contributed to understanding cognition through the organization of living systems and their history of interactions.

Later, Hanne De Jaegher and Argentine researcher Ezequiel Di Paolo developed the concept of participatory sense-making.

This approach investigates how meanings can be transformed through the very dynamics of an encounter between people.

Imagine two musicians improvising.

One introduces a melody.

The other introduces a pause.

The first must reconsider what to do next.

Perhaps both discover a possibility that neither had prepared individually.

Now imagine five artistic swimmers.

When they perform a predetermined choreography, they demonstrate extraordinary coordination.

When they must reciprocally adapt their movements to an unexpected event, a different demand emerges.

The question is not which activity is superior.

It is who can transform what happens during the transition.

Human Quorum Sensing and Egregore

In microbiology, quorum sensing describes chemical communication mechanisms through which bacteria regulate certain responses according to the signals present in their environment.

At BrainLatam, we use Human Quorum Sensing as an original hypothesis.

We are not claiming that humans use the same bacterial mechanism.

We want to investigate how gestures, feelings, movements, language, and expectations participate in the emergence of collective organizations.

But another possibility exists.

During dreams, we may encounter many characters generated within the experience of a single Body-Territory.

In Religare, we use the term Egregore to describe a space of encounter among different perceived possibilities of Being.

This experience does not necessarily require multiple bodies.

We can investigate inner multiplicity through mental imagery, memories, inner dialogue, and metacognition.

This does not demonstrate the existence of independent consciousnesses within us.

Perhaps the first collective we need to understand is the one we can experience within a single One.

And perhaps encounters with others add possibilities that we cannot individually control.

Can We Investigate Emergence?

Imagine five participants performing tasks involving movement, perception, and decision-making.

First, each acts individually.

Then everyone follows a common instruction.

Finally, they must construct a solution that any participant can modify.

We record EEG, fNIRS, ECG, heart rate variability, respiration, and behavior.

We investigate feelings, belonging, disagreement, and possibilities for action.

We can also compare physical environments with different architectural configurations and imagined spatial experiences.

We need to distinguish synchronization produced by common stimuli from genuinely reciprocal changes.

No single measurement will demonstrate a collective consciousness.

But we can identify conditions in which individual contributions transform shared organization.

The Wonder of Continuing to Be

Brazilian Indigenous thinker Ailton Krenak invites us to question conceptions of humanity separated from the Earth and other living beings.

This perspective broadens our question about belonging.

In a dream, a Body-Territory can generate an entire square within its experience.

During wakefulness, it encounters a historically constructed square, shared with people whose movements it cannot control.

APUS and Tekoha provide our original conceptual language for investigating the differences between the territory encountered and the territory incorporated.

Metacognition allows us to question the images we recognize as reality.

Egregore preserves the possibility of multiplicity within One.

And Jiwasa invites us to investigate encounters in which differences can expand shared possibilities.

In Science, this requires freedom to question.

In Religion, respect for spiritual experiences.

In Politics, institutions that allow participation and the revision of decisions.

Perhaps a democracy should not be recognized merely because many people are gathered together.

Jiwasa may emerge when each Body-Territory retains the possibility of transforming what everyone is building together.

Let us return to the square.

You perceive one path.

I perceive another.

We may continue separately.

We may follow a leader.

Or we may create a passage that did not previously exist.

The wonder of Being Many without ceasing to Be may lie in discovering that We do not need to erase any One in order to continue creating.

Our question remains:

How can we recognize a Jiwasa in which every Body-Territory participates in transforming the collective without losing its agency?

Annotated References

Parisi, Giorgio (2021). The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021. Nobel Prize Outreach.

Recognizes his contributions to understanding disorder and fluctuations in complex physical systems. Provides foundations for investigating emergence without equating physical phenomena with human consciousness.

Maturana, Humberto; Varela, Francisco (1984). El árbol del conocimiento: las bases biológicas del entendimiento humano. Editorial Universitaria.

A foundational Chilean contribution to understanding cognition, the organization of living systems, and their historical relationships with the environment.

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 the concept of participatory sense-making, allowing us to investigate how meanings change during interaction without eliminating individual autonomy.

Djebbara, Zakaria; Huynh, Dylan Chau; Koselevs, Aleksandrs; Chen, Yiru; Fich, Lars Brorson; Gramann, Klaus (2025). Turning corners in built environments shifts spatial attention costs. NeuroImage, 322, 121549.

Uses mobile EEG and virtual reality to investigate how different architectural configurations influence spatial attention processes.

Mukherjee, Sampriti; Bassler, Bonnie L. (2019). Bacterial quorum sensing in complex and dynamically changing environments. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 17, 371–382.

Reviews the molecular mechanisms of bacterial communication. Provides a scientific reference and a point of distinction for the original Human Quorum Sensing hypothesis.

Schmitz, Pedro Ignácio; Rogge, Jairo Henrique (2015). Tradição Umbu na Mata Atlântica de Taió, SC.

Documents archaeological occupations associated with the Umbu tradition, providing context for the imagined scene of five hunters.

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 the discussion of belonging, territory, and diverse ways of existing.

BrainLatam (2025). Apus — A Propriocepção Estendida do Ser.

Develops BrainLatam's original interpretation of APUS as an expanded relationship among the body, spatial position, and territory.

BrainLatam. Neuroscience Perception Avatars.

Introduces APUS and Tekoha as conceptual avatars of extended proprioception and extended interoception.

BrainLatam (2025). Arquitectura que piensa conmigo — Doblar esquinas y el costo oculto de la atención espacial.

Connects neuroarchitecture, spatial attention, movement, and the Body-Territory concept.

BrainLatam (2023). A Arte de Velar e Desvelar a Verdade.

Develops reflections on memory, cognitive biases, perceived images, and the subjective construction of reality.

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

A philosophical and spiritual work introducing Egregore, CRIAturas, and the I Am Room as ways of conceptualizing experiential multiplicity within a single Body-Territory.

Conceptual note: APUS and Tekoha are used according to BrainLatam's original framework, not as scientifically established neuroanatomical systems. Their names also have distinct meanings in Andean and Guarani traditions that deserve recognition. Human Quorum Sensing and Jiwasa remain research hypotheses, while the scientific references provide evidence about complex systems, spatial attention, and participatory sense-making.

BrainLatam | W44/2026 · Complex Systems · APUS · Tekoha · Human Quorum Sensing · Jiwasa-State