 If we as finite relative beings can and do touch the infinite absolute, it is only by way of a mutual self-negation. Nishida calls this mutual self-negation “inverse correspondence” (gyakutaiō). By way of radically emptying ourselves, we can touch that which is the radical origin of self-emptying, the absolute as an essentially self-negating absolute nothingness. According to Nishida, an immanent principle of self-negation is, in fact, the very essence of life. “True life (seimei) must contain within itself an absolute nothingness, a [principle of] absolute negation” (NKZ VIII, 341). It is such a life that can truly be self-determining as a “creative element of a creative world.”