The Inner Sound (Nāda)

Nāda is inner sound — the subtle resonance a yogin learns to hear within, not made by any outer striking. Haṭha-yoga teaches a practice of listening to this 'unstruck sound': as the mind grows absorbed in ever-finer inner tones, it is gradually drawn inward and dissolved into stillness, like a bee losing itself in a flower's scent. In the wider philosophy of sacred sound, nāda also names the primal vibration out of which language and the manifest world are held to emerge.