‘Nada’ is the sanskrit word which means the sound or tone or vibration or stream or river. Hence, Nada represent the internal object of “sound stream” as the object of meditation. According to physics, the whole world is nothing but a vibration or energy. Everything is vibrating and everything is sound. The training of Nada Yoga is found in the oldest religious text called Rig-Veda where we found Nada-Bindu Upanishad, which teaches meditation on the nada or The Inner Sacred Sound.
Nada Yoga is the Yoga of listening. It is the way to turn inward on a journey that leads to the awakening. According to Nada yoga sound is more than what is heard through ears, it is an internal sound that is far beyond our senses, by focusing our mind on this internal sound we reunite with our inner being and experience bliss in both body and mind.
The meaning of Bindu is nboth physical and metaphysical that means, a point, a drop, or a dot. We generally understand Bindu as the point of concentration power. It is also the potential for creation. it is the point at which the capacity for the unmanifest to become manifest is realized. By Nada yoga Practice, we realized that Bindu is a portal through which we find the Nada and reconnect our individual consciousness with universal consciousness.
Laya yoga, the “yoga of mergence,” involves meditation on the inner sound current, called nada, which arises when the mind becomes pure and clear. We can hear this vibratory sound if we close our ears and listen deeply with attentive awareness. Swami Sivananada, describes Laya as “the state of mind when one forgets all the objects of the senses and becomes absorbed in the object of meditation. Laya enables one to have perfect control over five sense and mind. In laya yoga the fluctuations of mind stops and prana will be entirely subdued.” He states that “the experience of ecstasy created by the process of laya yoga is none other than moksha or samadhi.”
There are many types of nada that exist. These are said to be like the sounds of a bell, a drum, a flute, the ocean, or other sounds. Nada is the celestial music within us. We hear these sounds with our inner ear, the subtle counterpart of our gross organ of hearing. They reflect the sound of the cosmic intelligence inherent in space, which is the source of all knowledge.
Nada is the inner power behind the mantra. The outer mantra works to awaken the inner nada. Then the nada repeats the mantra, which is held in our inner sound current. The nada itself can assume the form of the mantra. This indicates that the mantra is resonating with our inner being.
To meditate upon the nada is not just to listen to or to repeat a sound. It is also to inquire into the origin of sound, to follow the sound current back to its origin. This is to inquire into the origin of our own consciousness, which itself is a manifestation of sound. It is to contact our inner Self in the spiritual heart from which the sound current arises.
All forms of spiritual music come under the Yoga of Sound if we follow their vibrations back to the Divine Word within us. This includes vocal and instrumental music in all their beauty and diversity. Music, in turn, may be allied with poetry, drama and dance. Poetry is a kind of verbal music. Drama is the enactment of poetry. Dance is its expression. The internal usage of music can energize the various chakras that reflect the music of our soul.
