Sound and Vibration in Vedanta

Recitation of mantras plays such an important role in Vedanta that the path of realisation prescribed by it can also be called Mantra Yoga or Nada Yoga. Even the Sanskrit language, in which all the Vedic verses were composed, bears a clear testimony to this deep connection between Yoga and sound. In the Vedic tradition, a lot of emphasis is given on the rote learning of the hymns with the main purpose of making the students properly learn the phonetics of each mantra. It is often said that the sounds produced by properly chanting the mantras are much more important than the meaning one may associate with it. Meaning is a mental construct which may vary from person to person, but sounds have an objective reality to them. It is even said that this whole world is created out of sound. As Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says, "When unmanifest existence - often referred to as space or silence - began to reverberate, the first manifestation was sound". This thought also finds mention in some of the western philosophical traditions. For example, the Bible says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".

If we look from the perspective of modern science, sound is a very gross manifestation of more fundamental forces which according to physics are four in number: electromagnetics, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity. And each of these forces are associated with a wave which can also manifest in the form of a fundamental particle (called bosons, named after the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose). Sound figures nowhere in this list and is instead a manifestation of pressure waves in aggregate matter at a very gross level. There is no concept of sound at the level of fundamental particles. This seems to contradict the most fundamental proposition of Vedantic philosophy and other spiritual traditions. Vedanta also places lot of emphasis on light and visions, which is more directly connected to electromagnetic waves which are considered to be fundamental in physics also. One may then say that it is light and not sound that should be considered more fundamental by these philosophical traditions.

It is very important to understand the meaning of the word 'sound' when used in these different contexts. In the Vedantic context, the word 'sound' does not necessarily refer to the pressure variations created in aggregate matter. Here it is important to understand that the direction of evolution in modern science is in some sense opposite to that in Vedanta. According to modern science, first there was a big bang which resulted in creation of matter, which slowly led to planets and galaxies, then on our Earth arose simple cells which then evolved to form higher organisms with a nervous system, which eventually led to humans with a full fledged consciousness. In Vedanta, consciousness is considered to be the most fundamental and is said to have an existence independent of everything else. By consciousness is not meant the faculty of awareness experienced by a human being in the waking state but to the fundamental reality that leads to the possibility of subjective cognition. So in Vedanta, consciousness existed before the big bang and will continue to exist after the dissolution. So the process of evolution is said to begin with a vibration in the state of perfect consciousness. As Sadhguru says, it is these vibrations that first manifest as sound and then matter arises after many stages of evolution. But, if we take sound in its physical sense, how can these vibrations lead to sound in the absence of matter?

In Vedanta, what is meant by sound is not its physical gross aspect, but the property of associating a 'name' with something. What is that something? Is it an object? In Sanskrit, objects do not have names and only attributes do. For example, a lotus flower does not have a unique name in Sanskrit. Instead it can be called by any name associated with any of its attributes (that it grows in water or that it is pink in colour). That is why also the same object can have multiple names in Sanskrit by virtue of the object having several attributes. So when vibrations arise in the state of perfect consciousness, the first thing that gets created is not a material object, but various attributes. And each of these attributes have a name and a form. This fundamental nature of names and forms is often referred to as nama-rupa in Vedanta. So what is meant by the primordial sound in Vedanta is this property of every attribute having a name associated with it. And among all these sounds/names, the most primordial one is referred to as OM or AUM and is said to represent the entire cosmos. And it is this form of an attribute that is associated with light (or vision). So nama-rupa can be roughly translated as sound-light. So in this sense, light is also considered in Vedanta to be as fundamental as sound. In fact, like there is a Mantra Yoga, there is also a Yantra Yoga which uses various geometrical constructions to elevate a soul to its highest potential. However, there is no doubt that the path of Mantras is much more popular than the path of Yantras in the various schools of Vedanta. In other words, despite considering nama and rupa to be inseparable and equally fundamental, there seems to be much more emphasis on using sounds in Yogic path as compared to using light.

One reason for the higher emphasis on Mantras could be the more prevalent use of spoken language in human communication. If there a society where sign language was the chosen mode of communication, then perhaps Yantra Yoga would carry much more weightage there. In fact, Sadhguru once said, "This happened to me as a child: I would be staring at someone who would be talking. Initially, I heard their words, then just the sounds. After some time, I just saw some crazy patterns happening around them which so engrossed, amazed and amused me that I could just sit staring at them forever, not understanding a single word because I was not listening to the words at all." So perhaps the relative difference of importance between sound and light is only at a gross level and decided by the state of human communication. As one goes deeper, names and forms perhaps merge into that one undivided reality, an experience beyond all words and visions.