VEQF Gravity in the Mode-Soup Ontology: Passive Mass vs. Active Poloidal Drive

Within the Vacuum Energy Quanta Field (VEQF) framework under the continuous mode-soup ontology, a precise ontological clarification is required regarding the roles of mass and the poloidal pump in the phenomenon traditionally called “gravity.” Mass is not an active attractive agent. It is a passive architect: its topological defects impose a long-range mode-locking deficit field 𝒟(r) upon the continuous mode soup that constitutes space itself. The gradient of this deficit field supplies the navigational landscape. Inertia is the direct manifestation of the topological configuration’s resistance to reconfiguration of its mode-locking. In contrast, the active engine of gravitational acceleration is the poloidal pump internal to every topological soliton. The poloidal flux stream P_z acts as a cyclic spectral engine that preferentially couples to the available (unlocked) modes of the soup, producing a directed spectral relaxation that propels the soliton along ∇𝒟. This mechanism is best visualised as spectral self-pulling. Gravitational acceleration is therefore the directed, self-driven migration of solitons along the mode-locking-deficit map created by mass distributions. This document formalizes the distinction under the mode-soup ontology, derives the self-pulling mechanism from first principles, recovers the Newtonian limit, and articulates the far-reaching ontological and physical consequences of this purification.