Cellular Feeling and Collective Belonging – Decolonial Neuroscience

“All consciousness begins in Feeling. And all Feeling begins in a cell.” — Jackson Cionek

Feeling before the brain

Long before birth — even before a nervous system existed — there was already Feeling.
The egg, that first cell, reacts to environmental cues: temperature, nutrients, electric fields.
It feels the environment — and based on that feeling, decides whether to divide or not.

That is the first act of bodily consciousness:
a cellular Feeling, where every external signal translates into internal movement.
The balance between what happens inside and what happens outside is the beginning of interoception and proprioception —
the foundations of the Damasian Mind.

mTOR on/off — metabolism as language

Inside the cell, the mTOR system works as the metabolic switch of life:

• mTOR on → growth, differentiation, multiplication.
  
  

• mTOR off → pause, repair, and metabolic rest.
  
  

These alternating states create a metabolic rhythm —
the pulse through which the cell senses, decides, and adapts.
This same rhythm scales up through evolution:
from cell → tissue → organism → society.

When mTOR is on, the body seeks expansion.
When off, it seeks coherence and regeneration.
Consciousness arises precisely from this alternation,
not as a miracle of the brain, but as metabolism perceiving itself.

Nerope — the Feeling of Life

Among the Yanomami, Nerope names the vital flow that animates all things.
It is the living feeling that circulates between plants, animals, and humans,
where inside and outside are not opposites but mirrors that breathe each other.

At the cellular level, Nerope is the bioelectrical field itself —
the same field that, in higher scales, synchronizes minds in shared attention.
It is the movement that keeps the organism in belonging with the world.

Feeling comes before emotions.
Emotions are fast variations on Feeling.
Feelings are the stable metabolism of that energetic field.

Just as the cell differentiates to form tissues, organs, and systems,
we differentiate to form societies, collectives, and cultures.
Collective Belonging is the social expression of Cellular Feeling.

From Feeling to Belonging

When humans share emotional and attentional synchrony,
their bodies and brains form coherent networks —
a living field where Nerope circulates collectively.
Science today measures this as inter-brain synchrony,
but Indigenous traditions already experienced it as shared spirit.

Human Quorum Sensing (QSH) is the biological extension of this principle:
the ability of one body to feel the state of the group,
just as a cell senses the density of its tissue.
It is the physiological and spiritual basis of Belonging.

Collective consciousness, therefore, is not a metaphor —
it is an emergent phenomenon of synchronized feeling across bodies.

Emotions and Feelings as modulators of Belonging

Emotions are short electrical bursts — peaks of energy and chemical release.
They trigger neuromodulators like dopamine, serotonin, cortisol, and noradrenaline,
which transiently reorganize attention and metabolism.

But it is the Feeling that maintains coherence.
Feeling is the metabolic atmosphere upon which consciousness rests.
Each emotion that enters, when metabolized in stability,
reinforces that feeling and the collective field of belonging.

In coherent groups — families, communities, research teams —
there exists a shared field of feelings,
a kind of social homeostasis where one body’s feeling resonates in others.

From individual Feeling to collective Feeling

Cellular Feeling is the root of all perception.
Through evolution, what began as chemical exchanges across membranes
became synaptic communication between neurons,
and later, electrical synchrony between brains.

But the base remains unchanged:
to feel another is to feel oneself in continuity.

When we forget this origin,
we fall into artificial desynchronizations — dopamine excess, ideological capture, algorithmic manipulation.
The result is the breakdown of bioelectrical coherence within collectives.

Decolonial Neuroscience aims to restore this perception:
to reconnect individual feeling to the cellular flow of Nerope,
where consciousness and belonging are expressions of the same living metabolism.

Synthesis

Feeling is the oldest code of life.
It guides DNA, organizes tissues, synchronizes hearts, and connects minds.
It is the invisible thread between body and cosmos —
the living language of Nerope —
where every cell is a micro-consciousness,
and every society, a living organism.

References (Post-2020)

• Damasio, A. (2021). Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious.
  
  

• Berntson, G. G., & Khalsa, S. S. (2021). Neural Circuits of Interoception. Trends in Neurosciences.
  
  

• Northoff, G. (2022). The Spontaneous Brain: From Mind–Body to World–Brain Relation.
  
  

• Simor, P. et al. (2023). Metastable Brain States and Consciousness.
  
  

• Pereira Jr., A. (2021). Triple-Aspect Monism and the Unity of Mind and Body.
  
  

• Khalsa, S. S., & Lapidus, R. C. (2023). Interoception and the Embodied Self. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.