[Nadha (Nada)]
Sound, tone, vibration, music.
▵ Nad goes beyond sound
What it means is sound, nad means sound – sound is not an appropriate translation but in…in English language there is no appropriate word for nad. Nad is more than sound. Probably because there is no appropriate translations in English language similar things have happened. I think – are there any bible readers? Anybody? Nobody? Oh. I think the…I’ve not read but I’ve only heard from people that it seems the first part of the bible is about ‘first there was a word and the word was with God and the word is God’ something like this. Is that right? Somebody knows? Something like that.
See right now whatever I’m uttering right now I’m only making sounds but you are interpreting these sounds as words, isn’t it? Yes?. I’m actually making only sound. Suppose I spoke in a language that you do not understand, the word would be sound and the sound would be word, isn’t it, in your experience? Even now it is so but you think they are words. They are not words they’re just sounds. So, somewhere when it came to English language sound would sound too abstract. So somebody made word out of it. What is a sound becomes a word in the human mind but in the existence a sound is just a sound, isn’t it? If there is nobody here in this hall, if I speak – it doesn’t matter in which language I speak – as far as the walls are concerned it’s just a sound. Only if you come and sit here you invent the words out of the sound, isn’t it?
So nad goes beyond sound. There’s no appropriate word but something more than sound because sound is not seen as a physical quantity. It is seen as the last…last bastion of physicality. In yoga we are looking at the sound as the last citadel of physicality; beyond that there is no physical. It means sound is everything and sound is life; all the life-forms are sound. Sound means a vibration. Today modern science physics is proving everything is just a reverberation in the existence. and what is karma and what is dharma means what entangles you is karma, what liberates you is dharma. Both are sound. What is bondage and what is liberation that is also sound. What is referred to as Shiva and Shakthi, that is also sound. Everything is sound. Whatever you know as physical creation is a sound because everything has a vibration. Where there’s a vibration there is a sound. Whether you can hear or not is the only question but there is a sound. Wherever there is a vibration there is a sound.
▵ Sadhguru at Kantisarovar: Nada Brahma Chant (Isha)