He stumbled on his feet and knocked his head against the floor. Rising with a daze his mind was clear of thoughts. Vivid, lucid, remarkably flavourful was each passing detail. People passed and their eyes were coated by some oily film, some layer of distraction. “They are all asleep!” the man mused to himself, startled with great surprise.

There are brief moments in which the great passivity of the human condition becomes incontrovertible. So many things are flustering our attention and narrowing our sight. There are dreams some pursue which say nothing about the person and yet everything about their conditions. Little tiny dramas unfold like the marching of ants, one by one in succession. The motion, like time, continues without pause and one twitch arises an itch that begs for yet another scratch. A man’s inner landscape reflects his programming rather than his intentions, leaving him with little choice but to spend the long hours carrying out tasks without consciousness in command. He walks to some destination and by the time he arrives he has barely any memory of how he got there.

Our passivity, this indulgence to the temptations of never-ending inner dialogue — chattering in our heads and preoccupying us as we interact with the world with half-shut eyes — represents a great shackle. A human being is the sum of its parts, be it the glands which flood it with secretions and hormones that colour its emotions, the mental or motor functions, and the instinctive sensations. They all mesh into an intertwined system which houses an ego and allows it, by their health or dysfunction, to perceive itself and the world in a particular way. Very few realize that our quality of attention determines the quality of these functions. If a man, for instance, actively listens to the sounds around him and strains to hear more, the consistency of this effort will bear results which lead to a gradual development of that specific function.

Each function of a man is like a musical instrument which in combination with all the others plays out a symphony. In such a way those high above can perceive the signature of a man, by the quality of this personal symphony. His feet will sound one chord and his hands another. They will play out dull or brilliant tunes according to the level of attention afforded to them by the ego. If enough attention is conveyed to a sufficient quantity of these functions, they will even begin to play together, in sync and in harmony, creating melodies which are both sweet and profound. This is the magic of what a man can be should he realize the great importance in developing the quality of his attention to its uttermost capacity.

Taken one scale above, with the same principle applied, a melodious man in combination with other melodious fellows will endow the environment with a richness hitherto unknown. Each will understand the other in a way which is otherwise impossible by ordinary standards and expectations. Such a grand word as ‘love’ will be imbued with genuine meaning, where the individual instrument understands quite deeply how much more delightful it is when he performs his music in concert with all the others. Greater possibilities are awarded to groups than to individuals on their own, and the fruits of the former will be conveyed to every single member. At first seen as a sacrifice and later understood as a path towards greater harmony, the man resigns from his own personal glory in favour of causes far higher than he himself.