Emptiness as the Center

For the original version in Serbian, click here.

The center is a crucial element of every composition. The central motif, the central pillar, the center of focus. In everyday language, when we try to explain the concept of a center, we are guided by the logic of position. The center is a location. However, that same center can also be explained through its content. In terms of content, the center differs drastically from what surrounds it. It is not merely in the middle – it is different.

It is precisely this difference of the center – its ontological, not just geometrical nature – that this text attempts to articulate. Through examples from spiritual practice, psychological dynamics, and philosophical thought, we will explore the idea of the center not as a place, but as emptiness – and not just any emptiness, but a positive, functional, and ontological one.

Something about Silent Retreats and Depression – and How They Relate to the Center

On Silent Retreats

The concept of a silent retreat intrigued me from the very beginning. I first encountered it more intimately through the lectures of Alan Watts, where he mentions Hindus who abandoned everyday life, went into the forest and solitude, and practiced active forgetting of language to reconnect with their own (instinctive) nature. He describes how these people killed off their “individuality” and functioned entirely spontaneously, fully surrendering to the inertia of context. Although I cannot fully grasp this idea, I can to some extent identify with that state of consciousness.

Years ago, when I first learned that language is not acquired like other sciences, but rather that we are preprogrammed for linguistic adoption, I had an epiphanic realization: that without language, I would fully immerse into my animal being. My assumption at the time was that, stripped of language, I would be reduced to basic instinctual impulses – hunger, fear, sexuality, primal movement.

Silence Before Meaning

Pre-conceptual thought, or the “house of being,” as Heidegger would call it, is the ontological site that precedes all language. It is a state of consciousness that is unarticulated, unexpressed in words, and thus hard to describe. It’s difficult to speak about this “house of being” because it is, in essence, non-contentual in the classical sense – it contains no images or words, only the potential of form.

Plato, in his theory of ideas, mentions the “Idea of Differentiation.” This idea is the foundational law by which things, in their deepest structure, differ from one another. On the conscious level of the ego, we perceive this difference through comparative analysis of content. But Plato would argue that the “Idea of Differentiation” is not necessarily content-based, but logos-based – that it exists beneath existence, before manifestation. It doesn’t distinguish by what, but by how.

Silence as Method

In my view, silent retreats trigger something I would call artificial depression – and in doing so, they help people. As strange as that may sound, I will try to explain what I mean.

Depression as a Corrective

As I’ve moved through life, I’ve reached one conclusion. Depression – and here I don’t mean clinical depression, but the common, existential kind we all face from time to time – emerges as a consequence of poorly constructed systems of value and meaning. As human beings, we have a natural need to orient our existence through a value system. However, being imperfect, we often make mistakes in that delegation. Depression arises as a corrective mechanism.

In other words, depression is the negation of a value system. When we are depressed, nothing holds meaning or value. We become indifferent to both the external and internal world. I believe this is how the subconscious protects the whole from the errors of consciousness. When consciousness loses orientation, the subconscious revolts – radically:
“If you cannot establish values correctly, I (the subconscious) will return you to ground zero – where nothing has value, and nothing has meaning.”

That moment of total meaninglessness is what I call the starting point. In that emptiness, new meaning can be built. Without it – no true reconstruction is possible.

How Do Silent Retreats Lead to This State?

At the core of the silent retreat is non-linguistic experience. The idea is not to speak with others, not to write anything down, and – as much as possible – not to talk to ourselves either. Since our value delegation is primarily linguistic, the silent retreat introduces a complete counterpoint – a non-linguistic marking of reality.

What happens then?

Individuals begin to feel mood shifts, bodily sensations, spontaneous impulses, emotions without narrative. Neuroses, or repressed complexes, which were previously fenced off by language and thus kept under control, are now unleashed. Language no longer acts as a barrier – and the repressed comes to consciousness. These manifestations are not necessarily pleasant – often disturbing – but they are liberating.

The experience that follows is cathartic. The silent retreat, as a non-linguistic mechanism, provides a moment of release from the rigid constructs language often cements. Complexes can then emerge, no longer as unspoken problems, but as living beings, bodily experiences, images, intuitions.
The individual, in this non-linguistic space, leaves an empty center of focus – like a vessel. That emptiness is not nihil – but a functional ontological emptiness. Something ready to receive what has not yet arrived.

The Configuration of Central Value

A central value must have a negating nature. It must be an antithesis to everything previously held as thesis. Only in this way does the center become dynamic. And movement is life (Leonardo da Vinci).

Movement is exactly what is lacking in depression. Depression is a state of stagnation, of freezing. And a static center – whether it’s an ideology, goal, or dogma – creates a monolithic structure that limits the soul’s needs.

“Art for art’s sake,” Kant would say.

Regime art, in contrast, is impoverished political propaganda. Within it, there is nothing unpredictable, nothing unexpected, nothing magical. And the phenomenon of the soul, if it is to be likened to anything, resembles an artwork more than a political doctrine.

Corrective truth, as Heidegger would call it.

Homo Universalis, said Weininger.

Thesis and antithesis, as method.

If the center contains an intuited thesis – then truth demands an antithesis as correction. Dynamism is the ontology of the center.

Identity Through Negation

A child builds identity through negation:

“I am not my exterior,”
“I am not my parents,”
“I am not the objects I possess,”
“I am not my finger.”

Therefore, I am what remains – and that “something” I don’t know how to name. That is positive emptiness.

An adult, however, affirms their weaknesses – acknowledges errors and attempts to integrate them. They hope correction is possible in a new context. And that too is positive emptiness – a place for a future whole.

Such systems of negation confirm Heidegger, Weininger, Jung, and Buddha. Negation, when directed toward synthesis, can be a system of construction.

The spider’s web illustrates this vividly. A series of threads woven into a system, with emptiness at its center. That emptiness is not absence – but an ontologically active center. The point where the spider sits is not semantic – it means nothing – yet it holds the structure. It is an anchor point.

The Burden of Meaning

“Man must move between meaning and meaninglessness like a snake.” – Vladeta Jerotić

Guided by this quote, we can conclude that even meaning has its antithesis. Those who feel an inner need to bring all aspects of life under the umbrella of “meaning” know how burdensome that need can become. Meaning tends toward unification. It tries to subsume everything into one. This process leads toward ideas, but simultaneously drifts away from the material world, from motion, from everyday reality.

This isn’t necessarily bad – but it mustn’t become the everyday home.

Conclusion: The Center as Sacred Unknowing

The central element is not only positional but also semantic.

The irony is that this semantics is not something concrete – but a negation of semantics itself.

Sacred unknowing, the theologians would say.

Anti-knowledge, said Philemon.

The center as functional emptiness – the beginning of all meaning.

Not a place of dogma, but of openness.

Not meaning – but space for meaning.