Nothingness as Generative Ground

A cross-disciplinary investigation into the thesis that emptiness is the container of awareness.

David Celekli, with AI-assisted research and synthesis. February 2026.

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The Thesis

Nothingness is the container that allows awareness to become everything.

Across physics, mathematics, philosophy, neuroscience, and the contemplative traditions of every major civilization, a single structural insight keeps appearing: the boundary between something and nothing is not a boundary at all. Zero is not empty — it is the most fertile state there is. This paper series assembles the evidence.

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The Evidence

Sound waves cancel their inverses into silence. Positive and negative charges balance. Matter and antimatter annihilate to within one part per billion. The total energy of the universe may be exactly zero. The same structural insight appears across physics, mathematics, philosophy, neuroscience, and the contemplative traditions of every major civilization.

Papers and Reading Guide

#	Title	Focus
1	Everything Sums to Zero	Physics, cosmology, ecology
2	Awareness as Symmetry-Breaking Function	Mathematics, formal logic
3	The Generative Void	Western and Eastern philosophy
4	The Luminous Void	Consciousness science, contemplative practice

Master Paper — the complete cross-disciplinary synthesis (~12,000 words)

Formal Paper — mathematical formalization with category theory and Laws of Form

Start here if you want the hook:

Paper 1: Everything Sums to Zero Sound waves cancel. Charges neutralize. Matter and antimatter annihilate. The universe's total energy may be exactly zero. Nature keeps its books balanced — and from that balance, everything arises. (~3,000 words)

Then go deeper:

Paper 2: Awareness as Symmetry-Breaking Function A single distinction, drawn in nothingness, generates all of logic. Category theory shows nothing is uniquely related to everything. Self-referential systems have irreducible fixed points. The formal statement: D: U → S. (~4,000 words)

Paper 3: The Generative Void — 2,500 Years of Philosophy From Anaximander's apeiron to Nagarjuna's sunyata, from Eckhart's divine nothingness to Sartre's consciousness-as-void — the philosophical traditions of East and West converge on a shared structural insight. (~4,000 words)

Paper 4: The Luminous Void — Consciousness Science Meets Contemplative Practice Meditation neuroscience, Integrated Information Theory, predictive processing, and 40,000 years of contemplative practice converge: contentless awareness is not empty. It is consciousness in its most fundamental mode. (~3,500 words)

Or read the unified work:

Master Paper: Nothingness as Generative Ground The complete cross-disciplinary synthesis — all four papers woven into a single argument. (~12,000 words)

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How to Cite

@misc{celekli2026nothingness,
  author       = {Celekli, David},
  title        = {Nothingness as Generative Ground: A Cross-Disciplinary
                  Investigation into the Thesis That Emptiness Is the
                  Container of Awareness},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {2},
  note         = {With AI-assisted research and synthesis},
  url          = {https://github.com/davidcelekli/zero-thesis}
}

Or in prose: Celekli, D. (2026). Nothingness as Generative Ground: A Cross-Disciplinary Investigation into the Thesis That Emptiness Is the Container of Awareness. With AI-assisted research and synthesis.

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Epistemic Commitment

• All citations refer to publicly accessible, verifiable sources
• No references have been fabricated
• Structural analogies between domains are identified as analogies, not causal connections
• Epistemic status is distinguished throughout: established science, frontier research, philosophical analysis, and contemplative phenomenology are never conflated
• Research was AI-assisted: the author directed the investigation; AI tools performed literature search, synthesis, and drafting under human editorial oversight

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License

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 — you are free to share, adapt, and build upon it, provided you give attribution and share adaptations under the same license.

See LICENSE for full terms.

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Contributing

Corrections, additional citations, translations, and scholarly responses are welcome. Please open an issue or pull request.

If you find an error in a citation, a misrepresentation of a philosophical position, or a factual mistake, please flag it — epistemic integrity is the foundation of this work.

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"The fish does not know it is in water. The eye cannot see itself. What is looking through your eyes right now?"