Abstraction: The State Before Thought

The alphabet begins with abstraction — and not by accident. Everything begins with abstraction: it is not even chaos yet in the subtle energies, but absolute choice — that state of matter in which it is arranged so that any other matter can be created out of it. The state of energies before the process of thinking. Before the first thought — but already ready for any thought at all.

When people say “I’m looking at this abstractly”, they do not yet understand how they are looking. We only ever see where the gaze is pointed — and the body follows it. Stand on a wakesurf board: look ahead, and that is where the body strains to go; look down, and you can no longer move deliberately along the horizontal. This applies to everything: where a person looks is where they move — and what they create.

Where a person looks is what they create.

The window between “not yet asleep” and “already asleep”

To understand objectively what you are creating, you need to look abstractly at the position of the elements involved in your thinking — how they stand in relation to one another. That is the background of your abstraction. How do you get there? Recall the state between “you are not yet asleep” and “you are already asleep”. It is in that narrow gap that what people call “magic” happens: the elements of energy take up the position in space that will lead to the realisation of what you are creating.

It can fail in only one case — when the desire is not in agreement with what the soul is focused on. And to find out what it is focused on, you have to enter that state. There are other doors as well: the memory of a deep, untroubled tiredness — when the brain is saturated and simply wants to switch off, the same “window” of connection with your creative energies opens. Or a meditation in which attention travels through the body from the crown to the feet: by the end of the journey you arrive at the same threshold.

Step away from focus in order to create.

Figures that freeze at a thought

Picture figures floating in space with a shifting number of faces. From whatever angle you look, you see new polyhedra inside the same figure. They drift smoothly, shimmer with light, pass into one another and out again; they seem to hang on threads, but there are no threads. Even changeable chaos still has its regularity and the boundaries of its movement. And now the main thing: the moment you form a thought, the figures freeze in a definite position — and through their faces they direct energy towards its realisation.

That is why the meaning of abstract art lies in its absence of meaning. Absolute abstraction is one hundred per cent present and one hundred per cent absent at the same time. Looking at it, each person can create their own — from an impossible machine to a new self. It is like a reset: a screen on which nothing has yet been drawn, but on which everything is already possible.

So do not rush to “focus”. First, defocus all the way — down to the state before thinking. That is where you can see what your soul is standing on. Only then will the first thought freeze in the right faces.

Abstraction is the state of energies before the process of thinking.

Cover work — “Abstraction” →

— Evgeny Fleysher