Nāda

Nāda · nāda, “sound, inner resonance”

Grammar: masculine noun, from the root nad, “to sound, to resound”.

Meaning: sound, resonance; above all the subtle inner sound that arises in the heart from the consciousness of the ātmā, from which the Oṃkāra and all speech come forth. The unstruck inner sound is the anāhata nāda.

In the scriptures: Sūta Maharshi, answering Śaunaka Maharshi’s question on how the Vedas were divided, begins with nāda. When Brahmā, the master of all the worlds, was one-pointed in mind, nāda arose from the cit-ākāśa, the space of consciousness, in his heart. We too can experience that anāhata nāda, by closing the ears and merging the mind into the consciousness of the ātmā. The manyness of adhyātma (the body and senses), adhibhūta (the five elements) and adhidaiva (the devatās) is the impurity of the antaḥkaraṇa; yogīs worship that nāda, wash the impurity away, and attain moksha with no further birth. From that nāda arose the Oṃkāra of three mātrās, the sign of Parabrahman, the innermost ātmā. Even when hearing has ceased, the inner consciousness keeps hearing the unmanifest nāda, and by the Oṃkāra that becomes manifest from it in the space of the heart, the whole world of sound appears (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 12, Chapter 6).

Śrī Kṛshṇa tells Uddhava that the Veda is Brahman in the form of sound, rising as prāṇa-śakti in the navel, taking the form of saṅkalpa in the heart and of outer speech in the throat. “I am unlimited, the Parabrahman, of infinite śakti. The speech made to grow by me is seen in living beings as nāda, like the fine thread inside a lotus stalk” (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 11, Chapter 21).

Nārada Maharshi, teaching Yudhishṭhira the inner offering of the sādhaka devoted to nivṛtti, gives nāda its place in the ladder of dissolution: the acts of yajña are dissolved into the senses, the senses into the mind, the mind into speech, speech into the mātṛkā of the letters, the letters into Om, the Oṃkāra into the bindu (the nasal sound), the bindu into the nāda (the long resonance), the nāda into the sūtrātmā (the prāṇa that pervades the world), and the sūtrātmā into Parabrahma (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 7, Chapter 15).

Related terms: Oṃkāra · Bindu · Anāhata · Śabda-Brahman · Vāk · Sūtrātmā · Nivṛtti

Sources

• Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 7, Chapter 15; Skandha 11, Chapter 21; Skandha 12, Chapter 6