The neurophysiologist who approached consciousness from the outside

Jacobo Grinberg, the Syntergic Theory, and the exploration of consciousness from within

A Synthesis

In December 1994, the Mexican neurophysiologist and psychologist Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum (1946–1994, presumed deceased) disappeared under circumstances that remain unresolved. His disappearance has since generated a mythology of its own, occasionally overshadowing the extraordinary intellectual project he left behind. Grinberg had attempted something that few scientists of his generation were prepared to undertake seriously: to construct a theory of consciousness that could accommodate both laboratory neurophysiology and the unusual experiences reported in advanced meditation and traditional shamanic practice.

Trained in psychology and neurophysiology, and associated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Grinberg conducted electrophysiological research while exploring meditation and the practices of Mexican healers, particularly the celebrated Pachita. These investigations eventually converged in what he called the Syntergic Theory, an ambitious attempt to explain how the brain, consciousness and the fundamental structure of reality might be related.

His theory remains highly speculative, particularly where it borrows concepts from physics. Nevertheless, it contains an intriguing conceptual structure that deserves reconsideration from a phenomenological perspective. Grinberg was attempting to describe, through a theoretical model of neural activity and space, a territory that we approach through systematic first-person investigation in the Inner Laboratory: the Ultrasubjective Hyperspace, or USH.

The resemblance becomes particularly interesting when we set aside his physical explanations and examine the experiential structure underlying his proposal. Both approaches concern a fundamental field or space, the appearance of differentiated experiences within it, and the possibility that changes in attention allow us to recognise something ordinarily concealed by the contents of consciousness.

The Lattice, the neuronal field and syntergy

Grinberg proposed that physical reality rests upon a fundamental informational structure that he called the Lattice. He imagined this as an extraordinarily coherent substrate underlying the familiar distinctions of space, time and physical objects. His use of holographic analogies expressed the idea that information is distributed throughout this fundamental structure rather than confined to isolated locations.

The brain, according to Grinberg, generates a neuronal field through its electrical and physiological activity. This field interacts with the Lattice, and ordinary perception emerges from that interaction. The world we experience is therefore neither a simple copy of an independently existing external reality nor an arbitrary invention of the brain. It is the result of a particular interaction between neural organisation and a deeper structure of reality.

The most interesting element of his theory is the concept of syntergy, a term combining synthesis and energy. Syntergy characterises the degree of coherence, organisation and informational integration attributed to a neuronal field. Grinberg suggested that different degrees of syntergy permit different relationships between neural activity and the underlying Lattice.

At relatively low levels of syntergy, experience is dominated by differentiation. Objects appear distinct, the perceiving subject experiences itself as separate from what it perceives, and the familiar spatial organisation of consciousness remains intact. At higher levels, according to his model, the field becomes capable of interacting with more fundamental levels of the Lattice. The boundaries separating observer and observed may then become less pronounced, potentially culminating in experiences described as undifferentiated awareness, luminosity or unity.

This is where Grinberg’s theory becomes relevant to the Inner Laboratory. His model suggests that the ordinary world of differentiated experience and the more fundamental states encountered in contemplation may be related through a continuous transformation in organisation.

There is, however, an essential scientific qualification. Syntergy was introduced as a theoretical concept and was never established as a validated physiological variable. We cannot currently assign a numerical syntergy value to a brain, nor can we conclude that a particular meditative experience corresponds to a demonstrable increase in syntergy. The concept remains valuable as a possible analogy, provided we distinguish the analogy from an experimentally demonstrated mechanism.

What interests us is the underlying proposition that the structure of experience changes systematically with the organisation of attention, and that these changes may reveal aspects of consciousness ordinarily obscured by perceptual and cognitive activity.

Three moments of the Ultrasubjective Hyperspace

Within the Inner Laboratory, the USH is approached through increasingly refined observation of consciousness itself. The starting point is simple enough: attention ordinarily moves between thoughts, images, sensations, emotions and perceptions, while the experiential space in which these phenomena appear remains largely unnoticed.

With sustained practice, this relationship can change.

The first moment involves the recognition of an apparently boundless phenomenal interior space. As attention becomes less occupied with individual objects, the background of experience begins to acquire its own presence. This space can appear remarkably extensive despite having no measurable physical dimensions. It is experienced as interior, although the ordinary distinction between inside and outside may become increasingly difficult to maintain.

Grinberg might have interpreted such an experience as a reduction in the differentiating activity of the neuronal field, allowing the more fundamental structure of the Lattice to become apparent. From our perspective, this remains an interpretation. What we can investigate directly is the emergence of the experience itself, its characteristic qualities and the conditions under which it occurs.

The second moment concerns the relationship between this phenomenal space and the contents appearing within it. Thoughts, images, bodily sensations and even the sense of being an observer may gradually lose their apparent independence. They can be recognised as events occurring within the same experiential field, without requiring their suppression or disappearance.

This distinction is important. The practitioner does not necessarily enter a state devoid of mental content. Rather, the relationship to content changes. An image may remain clearly visible while no longer appearing separate from the space in which it arises. A thought may still occur, but its ability to capture the entire field of attention diminishes.

Grinberg’s notion of increasing syntergy provides an interesting theoretical analogy for this transformation. Differentiation gives way to integration, while the phenomena themselves may remain available to awareness.

The third moment is more difficult to describe because it concerns the possibility that awareness can be recognised independently of any particular object, image or spatial representation. In contemplative language, this recognition is sometimes described as awareness that was already present before the practitioner attempted to observe it.

The crucial point is that this recognition is experienced as a discovery rather than as the production of a new mental object. Even the vast phenomenal space encountered in the first moment may now be recognised as something appearing within awareness.

Here our approach diverges most clearly from Grinberg’s physical model. We make no claim that the underlying structure of physical reality has been revealed. We describe a transformation in the organisation and self-recognition of experience, while leaving its ultimate ontological interpretation open.

These three moments should also be understood as distinguishable aspects of practice rather than compulsory stages in a fixed sequence. Their relationship can be investigated, but the phenomenology should determine the description rather than being forced into a predetermined theoretical scheme.

Training consciousness: the Witness, the Operator and the experience of light

One of the most valuable features of Grinberg’s work is his conviction that the relevant transformations are accessible through disciplined practice. His investigations of meditation and shamanic methods were motivated by the possibility that consciousness can be trained to function in ways that ordinary waking experience rarely reveals.

This corresponds closely to the practical architecture of the Inner Laboratory, where two complementary functions are cultivated: the Witness and the Operator.

The Witness develops through the capacity to observe experience without immediately becoming absorbed in its contents. By repeatedly recognising thoughts, sensations, emotions and images as events within awareness, the practitioner gradually acquires greater stability of attention. This can make it possible to investigate the phenomenal background in which these events arise.

In Grinberg’s terminology, we might describe this as a movement towards greater functional coherence. Yet this is a phenomenological comparison, not an assertion that a measurable neuronal field has become more syntergic.

The Operator introduces a second capacity: the deliberate organisation and transformation of experience within the space disclosed by the Witness. Images, sounds, breath, symbols, sigils and intentional gestures can now be used as instruments of exploration.

The distinction is particularly important when working with imaginal material. A figure, symbol or presence may arise spontaneously during practice, or it may be evoked through a deliberate procedure. The Witness allows us to examine its appearance, stability, affective qualities and transformations, while the Operator permits a controlled interaction with it.

The two functions are therefore complementary. The Witness establishes the conditions for careful observation, while the Operator makes structured experimentation possible. Without sufficient stability of attention, deliberate imagery can easily become entangled with expectation, fantasy and suggestion, making subsequent evaluation difficult.

Grinberg interpreted the extraordinary healing practices he witnessed in Pachita through his theory of interactions between consciousness and the Lattice. We need not accept those interpretations to recognise the methodological importance of deliberate modulation of experience. In the Inner Laboratory, such modulation remains accessible to first-person investigation even when no external physical effect can be demonstrated.

A further point of contact concerns the experience of light.

Reports of internal luminosity occur across several contemplative traditions, and Grinberg associated advanced states of consciousness with increasingly fundamental and luminous experience. The Inner Laboratory approaches this domain through a six-phase taxonomy of phosphene and inner-light phenomena.

Here again, the resemblance warrants careful investigation rather than immediate identification. Phosphenes may arise through retinal, visual-cortical and other physiological processes, while contemplative experiences of luminosity may involve more complex perceptual and attentional transformations. A phenomenological taxonomy can distinguish their reported characteristics, temporal development and relationship to attention without assuming that they are manifestations of a particular cosmic substrate.

The useful question is whether repeated training produces recognisable patterns in these experiences, whether those patterns remain stable across sessions and whether different practitioners can describe comparable transitions without being instructed in advance what they should encounter.

This offers a more rigorous path forward than attempting to establish the existence of the Lattice through resemblance alone.

Where Grinberg’s theory ends and the USH begins

The similarities between the Syntergic Theory and the USH become most useful when their differences are kept clearly in view.

Grinberg attempted to formulate an ontology of consciousness, a theory about what reality ultimately consists of and how the brain interacts with it. His Lattice is intended to be an objective constituent of the universe, even though its existence and proposed properties have not been established experimentally.

The USH begins at a different level of inquiry. It is a descriptive concept referring to a particular domain of first-person experience and the transformations through which that domain may become accessible. Its validity therefore does not depend on proving the existence of a physical Lattice.

There is also a fundamental difference in how the two approaches understand the production of experience. Within Grinberg’s model, perceptual experience emerges through interaction between the neuronal field and the Lattice. In the deepest forms of USH experience, awareness may be recognised as the condition within which all appearances, including the sense of neural or mental activity, are encountered.

This recognition does not establish that awareness exists independently of the brain. It describes how the relationship between awareness and its contents presents itself in a particular contemplative state. Whether that relationship has implications for the metaphysics of consciousness remains an open philosophical and scientific question.

A third distinction concerns Grinberg’s hipercampo, or hyperfield. He proposed that interactions between the neuronal fields of different individuals contribute to a larger collective field. His well-known experiments on so-called transferred potentials were intended to investigate whether unusual correlations could occur between the EEG recordings of physically separated participants.

In the 1994 experiment, Grinberg and colleagues reported EEG responses in unstimulated participants that appeared temporally related to visual stimulation delivered to another person. Subsequent investigations produced mixed findings, while a carefully analysed replication by Wolfgang Ambach in 2008 found no statistically significant association. These results do not establish nonlocal communication between brains, and the interpretation in terms of quantum entanglement remains unsupported.

The distinction between the hipercampo and the USH is nevertheless conceptually interesting. Grinberg was investigating a possible field of interaction between individuals, whereas the term ultrasubjective points towards an investigation within subjectivity, extending to the point where the experiencing subject itself becomes an object of observation.

These are different directions of inquiry. The possibility of shared or correlated experiences can be studied separately, without assuming that such phenomena explain the ultrasubjective domain.

From speculative theory to practical investigation

What, then, can the Inner Laboratory learn from Jacobo Grinberg?

His most important contribution may be the recognition that consciousness should be studied across a wider range of systematically cultivated states than those ordinarily investigated in the laboratory. He understood that prolonged meditation and other disciplined practices could reveal experiential structures that remain largely inaccessible during conventional psychological testing.

His explanatory framework was speculative, and some of his most ambitious interpretations went considerably beyond the available evidence. Yet the questions motivating his research remain relevant. How does sustained attention alter the organisation of experience? Under what conditions does the distinction between observer and observed become less pronounced? Why do experiences of spaciousness, unity and luminosity recur in different contemplative settings, and which features are genuinely reproducible?

The Inner Laboratory offers a practical way of approaching these questions through disciplined first-person inquiry. Experiences can be recorded, compared across sessions and examined for their dependence on expectation, technique and prior conceptual knowledge. Their significance can be evaluated through reproducibility, stability over time and their consequences for ordinary psychological functioning.

There is a particular methodological advantage in resisting premature metaphysical explanations. If an experience of boundless awareness is immediately identified with the fundamental structure of the universe, investigation risks becoming circular: the experience is interpreted through the theory, and the theory is then claimed to be confirmed by the experience.

A more productive procedure is to allow the experience to disclose its characteristics before deciding what theoretical language, if any, adequately explains it.

This is how Grinberg becomes a valuable historical interlocutor. His theory offers a conceptual analogy between coherence, differentiation and the disclosure of a fundamental experiential ground. It also demonstrates the difficulty of translating contemplative phenomenology into claims about physical reality without an independently testable bridge between the two.

For the Inner Laboratory, that bridge remains a research problem rather than an accomplished fact.

Grinberg’s disappearance has made him an enigmatic figure, but the enduring interest of his work lies elsewhere. He recognised that the systematic transformation of consciousness deserves investigation and attempted to build a theoretical language capable of accommodating it.

The Ultrasubjective Hyperspace continues that exploration from the other direction, beginning with experience itself and asking what can be reliably discovered through sustained observation and deliberate practice.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can take from Grinberg is therefore methodological. When different contemplative traditions and theoretical approaches point towards comparable structures of experience, that convergence provides a reason to investigate them more carefully. It does not settle their ultimate nature.

The task of the Inner Laboratory is to turn such convergence into a disciplined programme of observation, experimentation and critical reflection.

References

1. Grinberg-Zylberbaum, J. (1991). La teoría sintérgica. Instituto Nacional para el Estudio de la Conciencia, Mexico.
2. Grinberg-Zylberbaum, J., Delaflor, M., Attie, L., & Goswami, A. (1994). The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in the brain: The transferred potential. Physics Essays, 7(4), 422–428.
3. Wackermann, J., Seiter, C., Keibel, H., & Walach, H. (2003). Correlations between brain electrical activities of two spatially separated human subjects. Neuroscience Letters, 336(1), 60–64.
4. Ambach, W. (2008). Correlations between the EEGs of two spatially separated subjects: A replication study. European Journal of Parapsychology, 23(2), 131–146.