If there is a single basic form of awareness then it is neither like perception nor cognition, neither external nor internal, neither temporal not intemporal, but such that all these divisions can be abstracted out of it in an attention that seeks clear boundaries, something analogous to measurement. Music is the closest we have to a direct exposure of this kind. as if the very first experiences emerging from the void and at one with the void were musical gestures, unbearably intense and freighted with potential depths of meaning.