The Syntergic Theory of Jacobo Grinberg and Matrix
What if you are not a spectator of the world, but its architect? A journey through the Mexican neuroscience that proposed that reality is constructed—not observed—crossed with the analogy that Matrix made famous. Science, philosophy, and practice to question how solid what you call "real" is.
🔬 What is the Syntergic Theory?
A model proposed by the Mexican neuroscientist Jacobo Grinberg that suggests that perceived reality arises from the interaction between the brain and an information field he called "The Latis".
🎬 The bridge with Matrix
The film popularized, unknowingly, a similar idea: a base code that the brain (or the "connection ports") translates into the experience we call reality.
🧘 From theory to your life
Beyond whether it is scientifically proven, the model is a powerful tool to question your automatic perceptions and train a more active consciousness.
What if you are not seeing the world, but creating it?
Before talking about the Matrix, information fields, or healers, let's start with the person behind this theory: a Mexican neuroscientist who dedicated his career to studying what consciousness actually is.
🧑🔬 Jacobo Grinberg
Mexican neuroscientist and psychologist, one of the most unique researchers of consciousness science in Latin America during the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
🏛️ The INEC
He founded the National Institute for the Study of Consciousness, from where he researched perception, telepathy, healing, and altered states using experimental methodology.
📚 More than 20 books
He wrote extensively on neurophysiology and consciousness; his most cited book develops precisely the Syntergic Theory that we will explore in this workshop.
The central idea: you do not inhabit reality, you decode it
Everyday experience convinces us of something we take for granted: that objects, colors, and shapes exist "out there," independent of us, and that our eyes and brain simply "receive" them. The Syntergic Theory reverses that premise. It proposes that what we call reality is not observed passively — it is actively constructed, in every instant, by the interaction between your brain and an information field that surrounds everything.
👁️ Passive observer
We believe that a cube is "just" a cube: a shape that exists by itself and that our senses simply register, without us participating in its construction.
🏗️ Active architect
The brain constantly decodes information and translates it into objects, colors, and textures. We do not "see" the cube: we generate it, instant by instant, along with everything else.
✏️ Exercise: find your own "cube"
Think of something you see or feel as completely "obvious" and "objective" in your day-to-day life (a color, a sound, an emotion about someone). Describe how your experience of that would change if you assumed, even for a moment, that your brain is actively constructing it.
The Latis: the field that contains everything
To understand how reality is constructed, we first need to talk about the raw material from which it is built.
🌐 The entire universe is interconnected by a field of pure information
Grinberg called it "The Latis". It is an invisible field that encompasses and wraps absolutely everything. It contains, in theory, the total information of the universe — but in its pure state it lacks form, color, texture, or any quality that you can perceive. It has no "experience" of its own: it is undecoded information.
- It is not a physical place you can visit.
- It has no form, color, or texture by itself — those qualities appear only after being decoded.
- It is not an entity with its own intention; it is, in the model, a neutral field of information.
✏️ Exercise: formless information
Close your eyes for 60 seconds and imagine "pure information" without form, color, or sound—just data. What does it feel like to try to imagine something without qualities? Write down what you noticed.
The brain: from raw data to physical hologram
We already know what The Latis is. Now let's see, step by step, how the brain converts it into the world you "see".
Raw data
The brain constantly interacts with The Lattice, taking fragments of pure information — still without form.
The decoder
That flow of information goes through a neural translation process, instantaneous and outside of your deliberate consciousness.
The physical hologram
The result is what you experience as "the world": objects with shape, color, and texture, solid and consistent.
🏛️ Reality as a building
Imagine "perceived reality" as a temple built upon an invisible network of information. You live inside the temple without seeing the foundations — but the foundations are what support everything you see.
🔎 Questioning the "obviously so"
If the blind spot is real, then a good portion of what you call "common sense" about reality is, in fact, a decoding habit — and habits can be observed and, with practice, modified.
✏️ Exercise: hunting the blind spot
Today, choose an everyday object (your coffee mug, your phone) and, for 10 seconds, observe it while trying to "catch" the moment your brain has already interpreted it as an object. Describe what you noticed when trying to do this.
The Matrix already explained this to us
Contemporary culture illustrated, unintentionally, a model very similar to the syntergic one. Let's compare both.
🧠 "Whoever understands the nature of the code can rewrite its rules"
Just as Neo learns to read the code behind the simulation, the syntergic model proposes that more trained consciousnesses not only perceive the final result (the "finished" reality), but access more directly the information network from which it arises — and that, in theory, would allow them to influence it in ways that would seem impossible to an ordinary observer.
- Both models propose a "base" layer of information invisible to the common user.
- Both position the brain (or "the ports") as the translator between that base layer and conscious experience.
- Both suggest that specific training or an "awakening" allows for more direct access to the base code.
- The Matrix is fiction: a narrative designed for entertainment, with a simulation deliberately created by machines.
- The Syntergic Theory is a philosophical-scientific proposal: it does not suggest that someone "designed" the simulation, but rather that reality emerges from the physics of information.
- We use The Matrix here only as a conceptual bridge to make the idea easier to visualize — not as evidence of anything.
✏️ Exercise: your own "red pill"
If you could "see the code" behind a specific area of your life (a relationship, your work, a habit), which one would you choose and why? No mystical answer is needed — it is enough to identify which area you feel is most "automated" or taken for granted.
Architects of reality: Pachita, Jesus, and Buddha
Grinberg cited historical and traditional figures as examples—within his own theoretical framework—of levels of consciousness capable of modifying the physical.
🙌 Pachita
Mexican healer studied by Grinberg himself. She is attributed with the ability to "materialize" organs and close wounds with her hands, according to accounts and testimonies from that era.
✝️ Jesus
In biblical accounts, he is attributed with altering matter: turning water into wine, multiplying fish, and healing the sick—examples that the model interprets as consciousness modifying physical reality.
🪷 Buddha
Represents, within this framework, the absolute expansion of perception and total detachment from physical illusion—a different level of consciousness, more linked to transcending reality than modifying it.
Ordinary consciousness vs. expanded consciousness
✏️ Exercise: moments of "creator"
Think of a moment in your life where you felt you actively influenced how a situation unfolded (a difficult conversation, a project, a decision). What differentiated that moment from feeling like a "spectator" of your own life?
Your mind: the bridge between the infinite and the earthly
The level of consciousness with which you perceive the world—not just the "outside" world—determines what you are capable of experiencing and influencing.
The reality you experience does not depend solely on the "outside world," but on the level of consciousness with which you perceive it. The human being, according to this model, possesses a much greater potential than they usually believe—most simply have not trained the "bridge."
Ordinary perception
Accepting illusory limits: living the final result of decoding as if it were the only possible reality.
Inner awakening
Starting to question the nature of reality: noticing the blind spot, observing your perceptual automatisms.
Active modification
Expand the very possibilities of reality: open up new ways to perceive, interpret, and influence your life.
✏️ Exercise: place yourself on the spectrum
At what point on the spectrum do you feel you live most of your day? What would you need—a practice, a question, a habit—to move one step toward the next level?
The mystery he left unsolved
No workshop on Grinberg would be complete without mentioning the episode surrounding the end of his public story — treated here with the facts that are known, without unnecessary speculation.
❓ What is known
In December 1994, Jacobo Grinberg disappeared in Mexico City without a definitive explanation ever being known. His case was never officially solved and, to this day, there is no proven version of what happened.
🏛️ The INEC and its influence
The institute he founded established a line of research that was uncommon in Mexico: applying experimental methodology to phenomena of perception and consciousness, including studies on traditional healers.
🌱 Subsequent influence
Their work has influenced circles of popularization regarding consciousness, practical spirituality, and alternative neuroscience in the Spanish-speaking world — which is, to a large extent, how this theoretical framework reached this workshop.
✏️ Exercise: holding the unresolved
Is there any important question in your life that you have been trying to "close" with a quick answer for a long time? What would change if you held it open a little longer, without forcing a conclusion?
Exercises to train your own decoding
Theory is interesting, but what makes it useful is practice. Here are micro-exercises inspired by the syntergic model.
🌬️ Conscious breathing
3 minutes focusing attention only on breathing, without labeling thoughts — train attention to the process, not just the result.
👁️ Observation without labeling
Look at an everyday object trying "not to name it" mentally for a few seconds, just noticing shape, color, and texture.
📓 Perception journaling
Every night, write down a moment of the day when you "decided" how to interpret something, instead of assuming you just "saw" it.
🕳️ Informational void meditation
5 minutes imagining a field of information without form —like The Latis— and noticing what it feels like "before" your mind gives it structure.
5-day routine
Day 1 — Notice
Just observe. Choose 3 moments of the day to notice your perceptual blind spot, without trying to change anything yet.
Day 2 — Breathe
Practice conscious breathing twice, morning and night.
Day 3 — Observe without naming
Choose a different object each day and practice observation without labeling.
Day 4 — Write
Do your first perception journaling before going to sleep.
Day 5 — Integrate
Close the week with the informational void meditation and a review of what you noticed in the previous 4 days.
✏️ Final exercise: your personal plan
Choose one of the 4 practices and define when, where, and how often you will do it over the next 5 days.
From observer to conscious architect
You went through eight modules ranging from Mexican neuroscience to science fiction, passing through healers, philosophers, and an unsolved disappearance. This is the essential takeaway.
🧠 The brain as creator
You do not inhabit reality, you decode it — and Grinberg dedicated his life to studying that process.
🌐 The Latis
A field of pure, formless information from which every possible experience is extracted.
🔄 The mechanism
Raw data → decoder → physical hologram. And a blind spot that makes us forget that we participate.
🎬 The Matrix analogy
A useful conceptual bridge: The Latis is to the brain what the green code is to the connection ports.
✨ Architects of reality
Pachita, Jesus, and Buddha as examples —within the theoretical framework— of expanded consciousness.
🌉 The bridge of consciousness
Your mind connects infinite informational potential with your concrete earthly experience.
❓ The legacy and the mystery
Grinberg's unsolved disappearance, treated with honesty, not sensationalism.
🧘 Practice
4 micro-practices and a 5-day routine to train your own decoding.
Suggested next steps
Complete the 5-day routine
If you haven't finished it yet, go back to Module 08 and follow up on your personal plan.
Explore other ALMA workshops
"Your internal dialogue" and "Practical spirituality" delve into topics that connect directly with what was seen here.
Deepen with original sources
If you are interested, research Jacobo Grinberg's work directly and contrast it with standard neuroscience sources to form your own criteria.
💌 Do you want to continue exploring the ALMA dimension of CMA+F?
Write to us at sergio@cmaf.com.mx or visit cmaf.com.mx to see the rest of the Body, Mind, Soul, and Finance workshop catalog.