[An experiment in technology]

There are moments—quiet, flickering, unnameable—when the edges of thought dissolve and the world appears new again. We often stumble upon them in dreams, in grief, in awe. We experience them in front of a canvas we do not yet understand—when our certainties falter and something deeper stirs. To truly know something, we must first forget what we think we know.  This paradoxical process is not only central to our understanding of abstract art but also resonates deeply within the realm of consciousness itself.

Consciousness, a multifaceted phenomenon, has been explored across various disciplines. Psychology defines it as awareness of thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and surroundings. Neuroscience examines the neural structures that generate conscious experience. Philosophy often explores consciousness as the interplay between awareness, perception, and self-reflection, examining how it both reveals and conceals aspects of reality.

Certain philosophical and spiritual traditions regard consciousness as boundless and all-encompassing. Advaita Vedanta posits that individual consciousness (Atman) is identical with the ultimate reality (Brahman), suggesting an infinite and unified awareness. Similarly, contemporary panpsychism considers consciousness a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe, implying its presence in all matter.

Yet, if consciousness is boundless, how can it experience anything at all? To perceive itself, it must take on form—splintering into individual perspectives shaped by memory, cognition, and sensory input. This fragmentation is not a contradiction of its infinitude but a condition of experience itself. This limitation isn’t a flaw but a necessity—by forgetting aspects of itself, consciousness creates contrast, making experience, growth, and discovery possible.

This cycle of forgetting and remembering isn’t confined to consciousness alone—it finds an unexpected parallel in abstract art. By disrupting ingrained perception, it immerses both artist and viewer in immediate, unstructured awareness. By eschewing representational forms, it fosters a non-verbal, non-conceptual awareness that mirrors the dynamics of consciousness itself. Whether through the artist’s immersion in creation, the viewer’s engagement with ambiguity, or the transcendence of narrative thought, non-representational abstract art serves as a gateway to direct, unfiltered experience. Just as consciousness veils its own infinitude to rediscover itself through contrast and growth, abstract art invites us into a similar process of exploration.

The Cycle of Forgetting and Remembering

If consciousness wants to fully explore itself, it first has to lose awareness of its own infinitude. In its purest state, consciousness is boundless, without distinctions or separations—merely limitless existence. This presents a paradox: how can something that encompasses everything comprehend itself? Without contrast, there’s no external reference point, no way to measure or experience itself. It’s like trying to see your own face without a mirror.

To resolve this, consciousness generates an illusion of separation, fragmenting into perspectives, beings, and realities that enable self-exploration. Yet, for these experiences to feel authentic, consciousness has to forget it is orchestrating the illusion.

Consider playing a game or watching a movie—if you knew every plot twist in advance, immersion would be compromised. The richness of experience comes from momentarily accepting the reality of the narrative, even while knowing, on some level, that it’s fiction.

Similarly, consciousness creates a deeply immersive reality, so convincing that it forgets its role as the creator. We’re facets of consciousness experiencing itself through these limited viewpoints. By forgetting its infinite nature, it embarks on journeys of discovery, despair, challenge, love, frustration, and growth—experiences that would be impossible without boundaries.

Rupert Spira, a contemporary non-duality teacher, suggests that the illusion of separateness arises when unlimited consciousness exclusively identifies with the body-mind. The remembering process begins when consciousness starts to lift the veil of this illusion, prompting introspective questions: Who am I truly? What is the nature of things? Such inquiries lead back to the realization of inherent unity. The act of forgetting introduces contrast; contrast fosters experience; experience cultivates understanding. And through this perpetual cycle, consciousness deepens its self-awareness.

This same cycle plays out in creative work. Just as consciousness has to forget its own infinitude to experience itself through limitation, the artistic process requires a similar dynamic of forgetting and rediscovering. Artists often abandon preconceptions, stepping into uncertainty to create something new. Nowhere is this more apparent than in abstract art, where the absence of fixed forms forces both artist and viewer into an unfiltered encounter with experience itself.

The Creative Process

The act of forgetting is paramount to the creative process and the making of abstract art. Just as consciousness must forget itself to truly know itself, the artist must forget themselves to truly know their art. To break free from rigid expectations and habitual modes of thinking, an artist must intentionally let go of learned conventions and predetermined outcomes. Jack Halberstam suggests that unlearning—releasing entrenched ways of knowing—creates the conditions for radically new forms of perception and thought. In art, this means breaking from (forgetting) ingrained structures, not as an erasure, but as a way to access discovery, spontaneity, and deeper engagement with the unknown.

The creation of abstract art employs the dynamic interplay between knowing and not knowing, familiarity and uncertainty. This tension resides in the metaxy—an intermediate space where contradictions coexist, bridging different realms of reality. Creativity thrives in this liminal space, where artists oscillate between the known and the unknown, fostering innovation by venturing beyond comfort zones.

At times, artists experience flow, a state of seemingly effortless immersion in creation. While desirable, flow derives its power from prior experience and technical mastery—it’s built on what’s already known, leaving little room for doubt. Yet, originality necessitates stepping into the unknown, a space that’s often uncomfortable and initiates a messy process filled with wrong turns and dead ends. In this space, doubt and frustration often reign, reminding us of our imperfection and the difficulty of true innovation.

Pablo Picasso captured this paradox—the tension between mastery and the struggle to forget—when he remarked, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” His journey exemplifies how deep technical knowledge, when paired with intentional forgetting, allows for uninhibited, innovative expression.

The Viewer’s Experience

Just as the artist may strive to forget rote techniques to create something new, the viewer must let go of conditioned ways of seeing to fully engage with the work. The act of perceiving abstraction is itself a kind of forgetting—one that challenges the mind to operate beyond recognition and into a space where meaning remains elusive, resisting closure and inviting ongoing exploration.

Engaging with abstract art provides a unique lens into consciousness. Unlike representational art, which offers familiar visual cues, abstract art presents ambiguity, compelling viewers to interact with it in a way that resists a singular, fixed interpretation.

Neuroscientific studies reveal that viewing abstract art activates multiple brain regions, including those responsible for visual processing, complex thought, and emotion. The lack of explicit imagery encourages the brain to form novel associations, stimulating divergent thinking and enhancing problem-solving abilities.

Yet, this ambiguity can also evoke discomfort. The absence of clear meaning may challenge expectations, creating tension. This response reflects the mind’s intrinsic need to find patterns and assign meaning. At the same time, experiencing abstract art requires a temporary forgetting of these mental shortcuts, allowing for a deeper, more fluid mode of perception. Instead of a limitation, this process offers an opportunity to navigate uncertainty without immediate resolution, fostering adaptability and deeper awareness, thereby inviting exploration of the unknown rather than retreating from it.

When viewers are able to let go of the need for immediate comprehension, something shifts. The painting stops being a puzzle to solve and becomes an experience to inhabit. Meaning emerges not through recognition, but through resonance. In this space of open perception, abstract art invites a kind of presence—a direct encounter with feeling, form, and awareness all at once—unmediated by expectation. What begins in ambiguity unfolds into a quiet clarity, not by resolving the unknown, but by making room for it.

Philosophical Perspectives

The interplay between forgetting and remembering is central to consciousness, a theme explored across philosophical traditions—and one that takes on new life within abstract art. Each thinker below illuminates a different dimension of how consciousness stretches beyond surface perception. While most of them were not writing specifically about abstraction, their ideas shed light on why non-representational art is so uniquely suited to evoking those deeper layers of experience.

Henri Bergson helps us understand abstraction as a portal to deep memory. In Matter and Memory, he distinguishes between habitual memory, tied to bodily routines and utilitarian recall, and pure memory, which preserves past experience in its full, intuitive richness. While habitual memory organizes the world into predictable patterns, pure memory gives consciousness access to forgotten layers of perception. Although Bergson was not writing about visual art in particular, his framework resonates strongly with the experience of abstraction. Because non-representational work resists literal recognition, it bypasses automatic response and reawakens more intuitive, layered forms of awareness—evoking associations that rise from memory, mood, and emotional tone rather than from representation.

Arthur Schopenhauer offers a contemplative lens. Writing well before abstraction emerged, he viewed art in general as a reprieve from the restless striving of the will—the part of us always grasping, desiring, striving. In aesthetic contemplation, he believed we could temporarily transcend personal longing and enter a state of pure perception. Though his context was representational art, his ideas help explain why abstraction is so powerful in evoking this kind of stillness. Devoid of narrative or familiar subject matter, abstract works don’t ask us to interpret—they ask us to pause. In that pause, the will quiets. We are no longer pulled toward meaning or mastery, and something deeper—some inner clarity, some deeper connection—may surface. The forgetting of egoic striving opens the possibility of remembering what lies beneath it.

Susanne Langer contributes a symbolic dimension. In her philosophy of art, she distinguishes between discursive symbols, like language, which unfold meaning step by step, and presentational symbols, like music or visual art, which convey meaning holistically. While her theory applies to art broadly, abstraction offers a vivid example of this symbolic immediacy. Instead of guiding the viewer toward a singular interpretation, non-representational work immerses us in a constellation of form, color, and rhythm all at once, bypassing language. Meaning is felt, not explained. Yet this doesn’t mean the experience is simplistic or fleeting. Precisely because abstraction resists closure, it invites us to return again and again—each encounter offering new insight, shaped by emotion, context, and attention. This slow unfolding mirrors the layered logic of consciousness itself.

Michel Henry focuses on the inward dimension of art. He believed that meaningful aesthetic experience doesn’t point outward to the world, but inward to the structure of subjective life. Art, in his view, bypasses intellect and speaks directly to our affective, emotional core. While Henry’s theory applies to all art, it becomes especially resonant when applied to abstraction. Non-representational works don’t show—they evoke. They create conditions in which we don’t merely think about emotion but actually feel more vividly. In the absence of defined content, viewers are invited to confront themselves. Abstraction, in this reading, becomes a mirror for inner life—a means of remembering what we often forget: that our deepest truths may be felt long before they’re understood.

Finally, Emmanuel Levinas brings an ethical lens. Often wary of art’s potential to foster moral detachment, he questioned whether aesthetic experience might serve as a retreat from ethical responsibility. Yet he also acknowledged that art can call us to account—especially when it resists easy interpretation. While Levinas didn’t speak to abstraction directly, his concerns help illuminate its ethical possibilities. Because abstract art refuses to tell us what to think or feel, it shares  responsibility with the viewer. Ambiguity becomes a site of encounter. We are asked to participate, to interpret, to respond. In this way, abstraction prompts a kind of ethical remembering—an active engagement with the unknown, where certainty gives way to openness and the self is called into deeper presence.

Each of these philosophers adds a dimension—memory, contemplation, symbolism, subjectivity, ethics. Though they were not all speaking of abstraction, their ideas converge in its practice. Abstract art does not depict consciousness; it enacts it. It creates a space where perception slows, where interpretation is suspended, and where awareness deepens through the very act of not knowing. It offers more than aesthetic experience—it becomes a method for remembering what lives just beneath the surface, waiting to be felt, seen, and known anew.

Interwoven Paths

Abstract art reflects the cycle of forgetting and remembering at the heart of conscious experience. By disrupting habitual perception, it invites both artist and viewer into immediate and unstructured awareness. Just as consciousness must veil its own infinitude to experience itself, abstract art fosters engagement with the unknown, offering a glimpse into the deeper structures of awareness itself. And yet, this awareness—like a Möbius strip—loops back into a deeper recognition of unity, revealing that self-exploration and the interconnectedness of all things are not separate, but one and the same.

The art of forgetting is not merely a passive occurrence but an active discipline—one that can transform how we create, perceive, and think. This practice extends beyond the canvas and the mind; it offers a way of engaging with life itself. Forgetting rigid definitions, fixed beliefs, and entrenched perspectives allows for renewal, growth, and creative expansion in all areas of thought and action. In a world that often equates knowledge with certainty, perhaps true wisdom lies in our willingness to forget, unlearn, and approach the world with fresh eyes.

Whether as creators or observers, we can cultivate this capacity and embrace forgetting as a tool—not for erasure, but for renewal and transformation. If we are willing to let go, what new ways of seeing might we discover?

Crafting this essay was an experiment in collaborating with ChatGPT—using AI not as a shortcut, but as a tool to help refine my thinking, deepen the argument, and sharpen the language. While the AI assisted in shaping the prose, the core ideas, arguments, and structural choices are my own. This partnership allowed me to focus on the essence of the subject matter, ensuring that the final piece resonates with human insight and authenticity. The words, in some cases, were AI-generated. But the act of turning scattered questions into a coherent argument—that was the work of a curious, human mind. My hope is that, regardless of how this was written, the substance of what it explores remains relevant.

© 2025 Mark Dunst. All rights reserved. No part of this essay may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of Mark Dunst and WhoDaThunk Publishing.