Symbols, Ritual & the Language of Consciousness

How symbols compress meaning, why rituals reshape consciousness, and what this reveals about our participation in reality.

“Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence.”

— Paracelsus —

Although fundamentally different concepts, we often treat information and meaning as if they were the same thing. Where information is simply organised data, meaning emerges from information once it has been interpreted by the mind. We can find a good example of this by looking at ourselves and how our brains and minds function. Research across cognitive science, neuroscience and even information theory shows that the brain is constantly taking in vast amounts of raw sensory data — or information. It is only once our minds transform that perceptual information into a coherent picture of the world that it becomes meaningful.

Philosopher Evan Thompson argues that meaning does not exist independently in the world waiting to be discovered. Instead, he posits, it only emerges once there is an ongoing interaction between a living organism and its environment. Information is simply organised data. Meaning is something we participate in, emerging through the interactions and relationship that exist between mind and matter. A page of writing, an ancient symbol, a strand of DNA all contain enormous amounts of information, but without someone to understand it they are little more than organised patterns.

Symbols in Dreams, Visions & Altered States

Symbolic images appear again and again in dreams, meditation, psychedelic states, near-death experiences and mystical visions. Despite very different triggers, people often report similar kinds of imagery: spirals, tunnels, geometric patterns, snakes, lights, vast landscapes, and encounters with figures that feel meaningful or familiar.

What is interesting is that these patterns remain quite universal regardless of culture, geography or time period. As I’ve written in Do DMT Experiences Reveal Other Realms of Reality? many people report a similar arc in their experiences that focus around geometric shapes, tunnels, spirals and figures that seem archetypal or universally familiar. Thus, while culture shapes the details to some extent (i.e., different religious figures, symbols or narratives may appear), the underlying structures often look surprisingly alike, suggesting that certain aspects of symbolic imagery may come from shared features of the human mind rather than purely learned content.

The prevailing scientific explanation is that these experiences emerge from an interaction between biology, cognition and culture: A reflection of a combination of deep structures within the architecture of the mind, the brain’s tendency to generate meaning when ordinary perception is reduced, and the symbolic material accumulated through memory and experience.

The idea is that altered states of consciousness produce such vivid and meaningful imagery because the brain is no longer anchored as strongly to external sensory input. During these altered states, the networks involved in maintaining ordinary perception and a stable sense of self change their usual patterns of activity, while at the same time, internal processes involving memory, emotions dan imagination become more influential. With fewer constraints from the external world, the brain now becomes heavily reliant on internal patterns and associations to construct experience. The result can be imagery that feels profound, emotionally significant and sometimes more real than ordinary perception.

Experiments that directly stimulate the brain support aspects of this explanation. When parts of the visual system are artificially activated, people report simple geometric forms similar to those seen during altered states. Psychedelic research reveals comparable patterns, where changes in large-scale brain networks are associated with increased sensory richness, unusual associations and more fluid forms of imagery. This suggests that symbolic imagery appear to be a natural feature of consciousness when the brain is operating outside its usual perceptual constraints, and that dreams, visions and mystical experiences reveal something fundamental about how the mind constructs meaning. They show that consciousness does not simply record reality; it actively organises, interprets and transforms experience.

Although modern neuroscience can tell us a great deal about how symbolic imagery is generated, it is far less certain about why particular symbolic forms recur so consistently across human experience. Whether these recurring patterns reflect shared neurobiology, deep cognitive structures, or something more fundamental remains an open question. But this raises a deeper question: If symbolic patterns emerge so consistently across different cultures and states of consciousness, does this universality simply reflect the shared architecture of the human brain? Or could it point towards something more fundamental about consciousness itself?

Before exploring that possibility, however, we first need to understand why symbols themselves are such powerful tools for organising human experience.

Why Humans Think in Symbols

Everywhere you look, from cave paintings and ancient myths to company logos, road signs and emojis, we use simple images and ideas to represent something much bigger than themselves. Humans are inherently symbolic in nature. In fact, we couldn’t effectively function without them, and the reason for this is surprisingly practical.

The world around us is vivid, noisy and complex, and our brains simply can’t process every detail all at once. Instead, it looks for patterns it then compresses into symbols — the Rod of Asclepius represents healing; a skull and bones, danger; an arrow, a direction; a four leaved clover, luck. So, rather than storing millions of individual experiences, the mind creates symbolic shortcuts that help us recognise, remember and respond to the world much more quickly and efficiently.

Many researchers believe this is why similar symbols appear across different cultures. Whether they arise from shared human psychology, common experiences or something deeper, symbols allow us to organise experience into meaningful patterns. Brain imaging even shows that symbolic thinking brings together many different parts of the brain, linking perception, memory, emotion and imagination into a single coherent experience. This has the important consequence that symbols are how the mind organises reality. It also means that working with symbols means working with the mind itself, where a symbol is transcends beyond being just a picture or an object, but carries an entire network of associations, memories and emotions that can be activated almost instantly.

This is why myths and rituals have been so powerful throughout history. Myths package complex knowledge about life, society and the natural world into memorable stories, while rituals bring those symbolic patterns to life through action. Together they shape perception, behaviour and consciousness itself.

Myth as Symbolic Language

Myths are often dismissed as primitive attempts to explain the world before science. But what if they were trying to do something completely different? Rather than recording history or explaining natural events, myths use symbols and stories to model reality. They explore timeless questions about where we come from, why we suffer, how we should live, and what it means to be human. In that sense, myths are less like history books that are trying to tell us exactly what happened, but more like maps that help us navigate our lived experiences.

If myths function as symbolic models of reality, it may also explain why remarkably similar myths appear across cultures. Stories of heroes, tricksters, floods, death and rebirth, and journeys into the unknown are found across cultures separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years. Whether these similarities arise from shared human psychology, common experiences or something deeper, they suggest that human beings naturally organise experience into recurring symbolic patterns. And modern research increasingly supports this idea.

Anthropologists see myths as ways of preserving knowledge and cultural values. Cognitive scientists describe them as mental models that help us understand relationships, solve problems and imagine possible futures. Neuroscientists have even found that shared narratives can synchronise patterns of brain activity between listeners, allowing groups to develop shared understanding and remember complex ideas more easily.

The implication is that, if myths are symbolic maps of reality, then rituals provide the means through which we participate in those maps. Through symbolic action, myth becomes lived experience, shaping perception, memory and behaviour. When symbols, myths and rituals come together, they form a technology of consciousness that utilise patterns to organise how we understand ourselves and the world we inhabit.

The Science of Ritual States

Many rituals do something very specific: they alter the state of consciousness of the participant, and sometimes even of the observer. Across cultures and traditions, people use practices like chanting, prayer, meditation, drumming, dancing, fasting, breath control, or collective silence to shift how the mind works because they have the ability to reliably produce different modes of awareness. They calm, they focus, they create emotional intensity, they raise energy and vibration, they induce trance, create states of ecstasy, and in some cases even die rise to psychedelic-like experiences.

Modern science has repeatedly shown that practices such as meditation and rhythmic movement are associated with measurable changes in brain activity, particularly in networks involved in self-referential thinking and day-to-day mental chatter. In deep meditative or trance states, activity in the brain’s “default mode” network tends to quiet down, while other systems involved in attention, emotion and sensory processing become more active or even reorganised. At the same time, rhythms in brain activity shift, and the body’s stress and reward systems are affected through breathing, movement and sound. In other words, ritual changes the operating state of the mind.

Different theories describe the same underlying shift in slightly different ways. One view is that rhythmic repetition and structured sensory input gradually loosen the brain’s usual grip on its internal model of reality, making perception less fixed and allowing new patterns of thought, emotion and imagery to emerge. A closely related perspective focuses on self-referential processing where activity in networks associated with self-focused thinking quietens down, attention is no longer anchored so strongly to the usual sense of “me” and “my story.” As this happens, other forms of awareness such as imagery, emotion, memory and altered perception become more prominent. Although framed differently, both accounts point to the same core idea: ritual shifts the balance of mental activity away from rigid self-models and toward more flexible, experience-driven states of awareness.

This is supported by a wide range of findings. Studies of meditation, prayer and chanting consistently show reduced activity in self-referential brain networks alongside increased synchronisation in brain rhythms associated with calm and focused attention. Rhythmic practices such as drumming or group chanting can also synchronise physiological rhythms, including heart rate and breathing, while strengthening feelings of unity and absorption. Even simple elements such as controlled breathing, repetition, sound and sensory restriction can reliably shift consciousness into noticeably different states.

Of course, not everyone responds in the same way, and not every ritual produces dramatic effects. Some researchers argue that these changes are side effects rather than the main purpose of ritual, or that belief and expectation play a major role in shaping the experience. Others reduce it to conditioning or social signalling. But even with these caveats, the core finding remains: structured ritual practices can reliably shift consciousness in predictable ways, and the implication is important.

If ritual can consistently alter how the brain and body organises experience, then it becomes a practical method for shaping consciousness itself. By combining rhythm, movement, attention and repetition, ritual provides a way of temporarily stepping outside ordinary patterns of thought and into different modes of awareness. Philosopher Alva Noë takes this idea a step further, arguing that consciousness is not something that happens solely inside the brain but something we actively do through our engagement with the world. From this perspective, ritual changes consciousness because it changes the way we participate in reality through movement, attention and action. Ritual is effective not because it implants new ideas, but because it reshapes the relationship between consciousness and experience.

This supports the idea of ritual as a technology, not in the mechanical sense, but as a repeatable method for entering particular modes of awareness through embodied participation.

Ritual States in the Individual

If ritual can consistently alter how the brain and body organise experience, it becomes more than a cultural tradition or symbolic performance; it becomes a practical method for shaping consciousness itself. By combining rhythm, movement, attention and repetition, ritual provides a repeatable way of stepping outside ordinary patterns of thought and entering different modes of awareness. Philosopher Alva Noë even go as far as arguing that consciousness is not something that happens solely inside the brain but something we actively do through our engagement with the world. Ritual changes consciousness because it changes the way we participate in reality through movement, attention and action, being effective not because it implants new ideas, but because it reshapes the relationship between consciousness and experience.

Seen in this way, ritual can be understood as a technology—not in the mechanical sense, but as a repeatable method for entering particular modes of awareness through embodied participation.

Ritual States in the Collective

The effects of ritual do not end with the individual. When performed collectively, ritual has the remarkable ability to bring individual states of consciousness into alignment. Across cultures, people who move, sing, chant, pray or dance together often begin to share common patterns of attention, emotion and behaviour, creating a temporary sense of coherence that extends beyond any single participant.

We tend to think of ritual as something archaic and occult, yet we can see the same process at work in something as modern and familiar as a wedding ceremony. What begins as separate individuals with their own histories and expectations becomes reorganised into a shared social structure. The ritual does not simply mark that transition; it enacts it, producing a coordinated shift in identity, emotion and social reality.

Research across neuroscience, psychology and complexity science suggests several overlapping mechanisms for how this happens. When people engage in synchronised activity, their attention and physiology begin to align. Heart rate, breathing and even patterns of brain activity become more synchronised, while shared rhythmic action strengthens trust, cooperation and emotional bonding. In effect, multiple nervous systems begin to settle into a common pattern. Although researchers explain this process in different ways — through social entrainment, neurochemistry or predictive processing — they broadly agree that ritual increases coordination between brains, bodies and behaviour.

Cognitive scientists Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo extend this idea further, arguing that meaning emerges through interaction rather than existing solely within individual minds. From this perspective, ritual is not simply an expression of shared beliefs but a participatory process through which shared reality is actively constructed, an interpretation is supported by a growing body of evidence. Group rituals involving synchronised movement or sound reliably increase cooperation, prosocial behaviour and measurable physiological synchrony between participants, suggesting that groups are not merely behaving together but temporarily functioning within a shared rhythm of attention and emotion.

Ritual can therefore be understood as a mechanism for organising coherence across multiple levels of human experience—neural, emotional, bodily and social. By aligning attention and synchronising action, ritual temporarily stabilises shared reality, reduces fragmentation and increases predictability, allowing groups to function as coordinated systems rather than isolated minds. But this also brings us closer to a deeper question: if ritual can reliably induce new states of consciousness and organise those states into shared coherence, what exactly is happening to consciousness itself when we enter ritual?

Why Ritual Changes Consciousness

One of the biggest misconceptions about ritual is that it exists primarily to express belief. But modern in neuroscience and psychology research is increasingly suggesting that ritual does something even more interesting. It helps create belief by changing experience itself because the body has the ability to change the mind.

Unlike abstract ideas, rituals engage the whole body through movement, posture, breathing, rhythm, music, chanting and repeated symbolic action in such a way that it shapes attention, emotion and perception even before conscious reflection has begun. Anyone who has stood in silence beneath a cathedral ceiling, joined a drumming circle or walked mindfully through a forest knows that these experiences feel fundamentally different from simply thinking about them.

The evidence we’ve explored points in a remarkably consistent direction. At the level of the individual, ritual reliably shifts attention, emotion and awareness into different states of consciousness. At the collective level, it synchronises those states across groups, strengthening social bonds, shared attention and collective meaning. Rather than simply communicating ideas, ritual creates the conditions in which those ideas can be directly experienced. Meaning emerges through participation as much as through explanation.

This may also explain why rituals are found in almost every culture. Their effectiveness does not depend on participants fully understanding every symbol, movement or doctrine. The ritual itself guides attention, focuses awareness and creates a shared emotional and cognitive experience. By repeatedly engaging the body with meaningful symbols, narratives, movements and rhythms, ritual cultivates new habits of attention, emotion and perception. It does more than tell us how to see the world; it invites us to embody and experience it differently.

Ritual is therefore best understood as a practical technology of participation. Through symbolic action, it reshapes the relationship between consciousness and experience, preparing us for a deeper possibility: that symbols are not merely tools the human mind has invented, but the natural forms through which consciousness itself organises and participates in reality.

Symbols & Rituals May Be the Native Language of Consciousness

Research across neuroscience, anthropology, psychology and cognitive science points in a remarkably consistent direction. Humans do not simply use symbols and rituals to express ideas; we use them to organise experience itself. Symbols compress complexity into meaningful patterns, while ritual transforms those patterns into lived experience by directing attention, emotion, perception and action. Together they provide a framework through which consciousness interprets, structures and engages with reality.

Many questions remain unanswered. We still do not know whether ritual evolved primarily for social coordination, individual transformation or something else entirely. Nor is it fully understood how changes in brain activity become the rich, meaningful experiences people describe during dreams, ritual and mystical states. Yet these debates concern how ritual works rather than whether it works. Across cultures and scientific disciplines alike, symbolic action consistently alters consciousness in reliable and measurable ways.

This is where the discussion moves beyond science and into philosophy.

Again and again, similar symbolic patterns emerge spontaneously in dreams, visions, myths, altered states and ritual. They are not confined to any one religion, culture or historical period, but appear wherever consciousness becomes less constrained and more deeply engaged with itself. The prevailing scientific explanation is that these patterns arise from shared features of human cognition. That remains both plausible and well supported. Yet it may not be the only possibility.

If consciousness is more fundamental than matter, as several philosophical traditions and consciousness-first models propose, then perhaps the universality of symbols reflects something deeper than shared neurobiology. Perhaps symbolic thought is not simply a human invention, but one of the natural ways consciousness organises experience. Ritual then becomes more than cultural performance. Through symbolic action, it gives those patterns sequence, rhythm, movement and embodiment, allowing consciousness not merely to represent reality but to participate in it.

Perhaps, then, symbols are the native language of consciousness, while ritual provides the grammar through which that language is enacted. Rather than being arbitrary cognitive shortcuts for compressing information, symbols may be the forms through which consciousness structures its relationship with reality and enters into dialogue with it.

Whether this symbolic language ultimately emerges from the architecture of the human mind, from a deeper field of consciousness, or from a participatory universe in which mind and reality are inseparable remains an open question. Yet the convergence of evidence throughout this essay suggests a remarkable possibility: symbols may be more than things we create. They may be the means through which consciousness comes to know itself—and through ritual, the means by which it consciously participates in the unfolding of reality.

A Note on the Framework

The ideas explored in this article are based on a perspective I have developed across several previous essays and in my ebooks; what I call the conscious holographic universe. Rather than viewing consciousness as something produced by the brain, this framework treats consciousness as a fundamental aspect of reality, one that participates in the unfolding of the world rather than merely observing it.

In a consciousness-first holographic universe, reality is less like a collection of separate and fixed objects and more like an evolving field of possibilities where matter, mind and information are different expressions of a deeper underlying process. In other words, consciousness participates in shaping which possibilities become actual through attention, meaning, intention and interaction.

This is not a claim that thoughts magically override the laws of nature. Rather, it suggests that consciousness and the world exist in a reciprocal relationship. We influence reality, and reality influences us, in an ongoing process of participation. This shift in perspective changes what many ancient and esoteric ideas appear to be, where rituals become more than empty ceremony, symbols more than decorative metaphors, and myths more than stories. Practices developed by the ancient mystery schools, shamans, gnostic traditions, and esoteric philosophers begin to look less like superstition and more like attempts to understand, and deliberately engage with, the relationship between consciousness and reality.

The purpose of this article is not to prove that broader framework but to simply explore one implication of it. If you’d like a more detailed explanation of the participatory model of consciousness and reality, you can read my essay Cosmic Consciousness and the Holographic Universe. For the wider context and the ideas that connect all of these topics, you’ll find a much deeper exploration in my Consciousness and the Cosmic Hologram: The Role of Consciousness in the Creation of Matter, Structure & Reality in a Holographic Universe.

Explore a growing library of works designed to help you understand how attention, intention, and structure interact so you can move from passive observer to conscious participant in how your reality unfolds. To support the work you can subscribe to my Substack, or make a small donation.

Reference List & Further Reading

Information, Meaning and Cognition

Clark, A. (2016). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind. Oxford University Press.
Deacon, T. W. (2011). Incomplete Nature. W. W. Norton.
Floridi, L. (2011). The Philosophy of Information. Oxford University Press.
Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Harvard University Press.

Symbols, Dreams and Altered States

Carhart-Harris, R. L., et al. (2014). The entropic brain: A theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 20.
Fletcher, P. C., & Frith, C. D. (2009). Perceiving is believing: A Bayesian approach to explaining the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 48–58.
Greyson, B. (2021). Near-death experience research.
Hobson, J. A. (2009). The Dreaming Brain. Basic Books.
Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Doubleday.
Jung, C. G. (1968). Psychology and Alchemy. Princeton University Press.
Winkelman, M. (2010). Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing. Praeger.

Symbols and Symbolic Thought

Cassirer, E. (1953–1957). The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Vols. 1–3). Yale University Press.
Deacon, T. W. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. W. W. Norton.
Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind. Harvard University Press.
Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787
Jung, C. G. (1968). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works Vol. 9, Part 1). Princeton University Press.

Myth and Symbolic Language

Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Pantheon Books.
Eliade, M. (1963). Myth and Reality. Harper & Row.
Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Doubleday.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1955). The structural study of myth. Journal of American Folklore, 68(270), 428–444.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1964–1971). Mythologiques (4 vols.). Plon.

Embodied Cognition and Ritual

Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.
Grimes, R. L. (2014). The Craft of Ritual Studies. Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. Basic Books.
Noë, A. (2009). Out of our heads: Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness. Hill and Wang.
Thompson, E., Varela, F. J., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind. MIT Press.
Hobson, N. M., et al. (2018). The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(3), 260–284.

Ritual and Altered States of Consciousness

Brewer, J. A., et al. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20254–20259.
Carhart-Harris, R. L., et al. (2014). The entropic brain: A theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 20.
De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 485–507. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9
Greyson, B., et al. (2021). Neural correlates of shamanic trance. Brain Sciences.
Hilgard, E. R. (1977). Divided Consciousness. Wiley.
Newberg, A., & Waldman, M. (2009). How God Changes Your Brain. Ballantine Books.
Tart, C. T. (1969). Altered States of Consciousness. Wiley.

Ritual, Synchrony and Social Coherence

Durkheim, É. (1912/1995). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Free Press.
Gordon, I., et al. (2020). Synchrony and social bonding during group drumming. Scientific Reports.
Hasson, U., et al. (2012). Brain-to-brain coupling: A mechanism for creating and sharing a social world. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 114–121.
Henrich, J. (2015). The Secret of Our Success. Princeton University Press.
Seligman, A. B., et al. (2008). Ritual and Its Consequences. Oxford University Press.
Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of Human Communication. MIT Press.
Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity. AltaMira Press.

Lieze Boshoff is an author and researcher exploring consciousness, metaphysics, and anomalous experience through the lenses of contemporary science, psychology, and philosophy. With a background in clinical psychology, neuropsychology, and doctoral research on consciousness and perception, her work examines reality as a participatory, holographic field in which mind and matter are inseparable. She writes at the intersection of science, symbolism, and the unseen, investigating how experience itself shapes the cosmos we inhabit.

DISCLAIMER: Every essay published here reflects my own research, ideas, analysis and judgement. I occasionally use an AI grammar tool as an editorial assistant to improve grammar and structure, much as authors have long worked with human editors. Every substantive argument, interpretation and final editorial decision remains my own.