The formless but specific feeling of the whole

In each of the examples I have given, the essence was that at each step of a living process one must be able to feel, ahead of time, the feeling which will later exist in the finished object, without yet knowing its form in detail.
We are able, somehow, to identify and carry in ourselves, this feeling which must be in the finished thing — and we can carry it in us eloquently enough, and specifically enough, so that as we move forward in the creative task, we can constantly check to see if the next action, the emerging form, this detail or that, does have that feeling and not some other.
The very specific nature of this feeling — when accurately experienced — can be remarkable. But it is very difficult to explain just what this feeling is like in character. It is not verbal, it is not visual, it is not auditory. Yet it is articulate and highly specific, very particular, unique each time that it occurs.
It is so articulate, and so specific, that it allows us to use it with great accuracy. When it is understood and felt clearly enough, it is so specific that it will allow me to consider 100 possible ways to make a roof, and reject them all, because they do not have this feeling, then to accept the 101st because it does have it.

In my view, our ability as artists depends very largely on our ability to experience, formulate, and carry such a feeling — first to feel it and witness it, then to carry it forward, remember it, keep it alive within us, and insist on it. Few buildings have anything profoundly significant in them, if they do not start with this.
Few paintings or drawings, or details in a building, or rooms, have much deep quality in them, if they do not come, first, from such an experience of feeling, which is first kept alive, and manifested then in actual geometrical form.
You know the feeling which the thing will have. But you do not yet know the form. In fact, you keep having to change the form, because as the work unfolds, you find out many, many details which have the wrong feeling, which do not function, in response to the whole, as you thought they would. Because you keep the feeling constant, you have to change the form.
If the form were kept constant to your original idea, then the feeling would be insubstantial, and would change. That would not protect or extend the wholeness. Instead of that you hold the feeling constant (that which does extend and protect the whole), you keep it alive in you, this formless feeling which is so vivid, so particular, that you can judge all your form-making as you make the thing, by matching it against that feeling. Thus we have, as a natural part of living process, the idea that a kind of emotional substance — something more solid than a feeling, but less formed than a thing — is guiding the process of designing and making at every step. It is solid enough to be clearly felt, and clear as an appropriate, fitting response to the nature of an object or a place. But it is as yet without geometry, without outline or solid form.
What I am saying then, is that before making anything, large or small, and before each step in the process of making it — before each step — we must be able to feel its emotional substance. We must get this emotional substance clear in our minds, and be clear that this emotional substance, and no other, is the one which is called forth by the conditions which that place or object creates.
That is what creates the whole, successfully, and allows life to emerge.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/14 Deep feeling#