From the Void to the Mind: The Universe as a Process of Energy Encoding

The origin of the universe can be conceived as a transition from the indeterminate to form. Not as absolute nothingness, but as a state of pure potentiality, where differentiation does not yet exist, yet every possibility of becoming is present. This primordial threshold may be described as zero, not in the sense of absence, but as an undeployed totality, a latent field of configuration. From this state, the emergence of the first stable structure may be understood as a rupture of indeterminacy: the appearance of one as the principle of organization, the first act of order arising within the undifferentiated flow of possibility.
In the pythagorean tradition¹, this intuition takes the form of the  monad, understood as the primordial unity from which quantifiable reality becomes possible. The One is not merely a number, but the first principle of intelligibility, the initial crystallization of what previously existed only as pure potential. In this sense, reality does not "begin" as an object, but as organization: as rhythm, as structure, as a pattern that stabilizes within the indeterminate.
When this principle is extended to the realm of living systems and cognition, the brain emerges as a highly sophisticated continuation of the same organizing process. Through the free energy principle, Karl Friston² proposes that the brain is not a passive receiver of the external world, but an active inferential system that constructs internal models in order to reduce uncertainty. Perception is not simply the registration of sensory information, but the anticipation of experience. Likewise, living is not merely reacting, but continuously predicting and correcting the discrepancy between expectation and reality. From this perspective, the brain does not seek truth as a static correspondence with the world; rather, it seeks the dynamic stability that enables it to persist as a self-organizing system.

From this perspective, all mental activity can be understood as a variation of the same fundamental process: the minimization of surprise, the reduction of uncertainty, and the continuous organization of energetic flow into coherent patterns of information. Life, therefore, is not a passive state of equilibrium but an active tension maintained far from equilibrium, in which form is preserved precisely because it is continuously reorganized.

In a convergent line of thought, in the book The Convergence of Exponential Technologies & the Technological Singularity³, we argued that the human being cannot be reduced to its biological substrate but should instead be understood as a process of progressively increasing energy encoding, originating in the cosmic evolution that began with the Big Bang. From this perspective, the mind is not a local accident of matter but an advanced expression of a universal trajectory of increasing complexity, in which energy becomes progressively organized into ever denser levels of information and structure.

In the article Brain, Free Energy, and Electromagnetism: Toward an Integrated Nanopsychology⁴˒⁵, this idea is developed further by proposing the brain as a dynamic, predictive, and multiscale system in which the mind emerges not only from neuronal activity but also from the continuous interaction among matter, energy, and information. The brain thus ceases to be viewed as a closed organ and instead becomes a node of interaction—an open system in which multiple levels of organization are intertwined within a single dynamic process of meaning generation.

When these perspectives are integrated, what emerges is not merely a collection of theories but a coherent conceptual continuity: from the void understood as undifferentiated potential, through the emergence of the One as the first principle of order, to the brain as one of the most complex forms of the self-organization of energy. Along this trajectory, matter is not opposed to energy, nor is energy opposed to information; rather, they are dimensions of the same progressive process of the structuring of being.

Within this framework, the brain can be understood as the most refined materialization of energy organized as information. It is not a passive receiver of the world but an active generator of the world. The mind, far from being a separate or immaterial entity, emerges as the mode through which this organization attains such a degree of complexity that it becomes capable of recognizing itself within the electromagnetic flow that constitutes it.

References

1) D’Andrea Alberto L. (2022). La numerología pitagórica, los quarks y el nanocosmos. Biotecnología & Nanotecnología al Instante.
https://infobiotecnologia.blogspot.com/2022/05/la-numerologia-pitagorica-los-quarks-y.html

2) Friston, Karl. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787

3) D’Andrea, Alberto L. y col. (2017). La convergencia de las tecnologías exponenciales & la singularidad tecnológica. Editorial TEMAS. Argentina.

4) D’Andrea, Alberto L. (2026). Cerebro, energía libre y electromagnetismo: hacia una nanopsicología integrada. Biotecnología & Nanotecnología al Instante. https://infobiotecnologia.blogspot.com/2026/05/cerebro-energia-libre-y.html

5) D’Andrea, Alberto L. (2026). Nanopsicología. La psicología del siglo XXI. Editorial de  Autores de Argentina. 

www.amazon.co.uk/Nanopsicolog%C3%ADa-psicolog%C3%ADa-del-siglo-Spanish-ebook/dp/B0GHLJGCK9