Beyond textbook science, there is a profound yogic science that comes from a deeper perception of life. Here, Sadhguru explores a fundamental aspect of life from a yogic perspective – sound.
Sadhguru: Approximately 6,000 years ago, a Yogi declared there is a certain sound that travels through pure space, and unless you hear that sound, your life is not fulfilled. This was picked up by scientists a few years ago, and they laughed at it, saying, “This Yogi needs some basic high school science lessons because sound cannot travel through empty space. Sound needs a medium to travel.”
Now physicists have completely changed their opinion on that. When this Yogi spoke about sound travelling through space, he did not come from ignorance. In yogic science, we are talking about four kinds of sounds.
The first type of sound is called vaikhari. This is the sound that I speak and you hear – the physical sound. The second form of sound is called madhyamaa, which means “the middle one.” Suppose I say “chocolate” or show you something that looks like chocolate, and your mind thinks, “Oh, chocolate,” it is not just a thought – it is a sound that comes from a dimension of your mind. It is not just an abstraction – it is a voice that you hear, a vibration of thought.
The third dimension of sound is referred to as pasyanti. Pasyanti is your mind’s ability to think up a particular sound. I did not show you anything; I did not say “chocolate”; without any input from outside, from some deep recess in your mind, “chocolate” comes up. It is not a reflection or a rebound of what I said. Your mind can create it from within.
The fourth dimension of sound is referred to as para vak. Vak means voice, para means the Divine or the source of creation. It is like hearing the voice of the Creator. I am not talking about the kind of scatterbrains who have been making up or imagining things about hearing God speak according to their convenience. I am talking about the reverberation that is the basis of creation and Creator.
So much nonsense has been done in the name of the Divine, in the name of the spiritual process, in the name of hearing voices. But one significant thing is, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” A word is a human interpretation of a sound.
When I talk, am I throwing out words or making sounds? I am just making sounds – you are interpreting the sounds as words. There is no word anywhere in the universe; there are only sounds. Because we want to use different sounds to identify different things, we call them words. Otherwise, they are only sounds. So, when they said, “the Word,” they were referring to the sound that is more than whatever forms of gods you have imagined. That is the sound the Yogi was referring to when he said that if one has heard that sound, one’s life is absolutely fulfilled.
The sound that is the core of the soundless, utterly still consciousness is known as para vak. If we went on educating you about the different dimensions of life, creation, existence, perception, different dimensions of experience and expression, it would be an endless story because it is an endless universe. But if you hear this one sound which is beginning-less or anaadhi, then it is all here.
When the anaadhi is heard, then there is no more stretching into an endless scape, no more story. It is all here in one shot.
