It was a quiet night as Tarun and Vishal sat gazing at the stars outside their camp. Vishal asked Tarun if he could hear the slight whirring sounds of the wind. Both of them discussed that despite the apparent inactivity, there was not complete silence. Even in the serene surroundings, there was some sound if you listened closely.

“Is there a form to sound, Vishal?” Tarun wondered aloud.

“Yes, there is,” Vishal replied remembering a lecture he had attended, “In fact, it is said that every sound has a form attached to it and every form has a sound attached to it.” 

Tarun was not convinced, “How can something invisible to the eye have a form?”

“Do you see that owl flying over there, Tarun?”

“No!” Tarun exclaimed, trying to look around, almost standing up as he had never seen an owl.
“Okay, what about that bat near that tree?”

“Where are you seeing all these?” Tarun questioned squinting his eyes to take a closer look. 

“Actually, I am not seeing them either.” Tarun was confused now.

But tell me, when I said “bat” what were you trying to see?

I was obviously trying to look for a black bird with those distinct wings that the bat has, why?

See, even when you didn’t see a bat, you had some form already associated with it in your mind based on the word I said, or what you heard, basically the word is an interpretation of a sound. 

Hmmm, interesting, I never thought of it that way.

Remember the Inside India trip that I went to? There we were informed that there are four kinds of sounds. 

• The first type of sound is vaikari. This is the sound that I speak and you hear – the physical sound. 
• The second form is madhyama, “the middle one.” It is a sound that comes from a dimension of our mind. 
• The third dimension of sound is referred to as pashyanti, which is our mind’s ability to create an image to a sound even when we hear it the first time. 
• The fourth dimension is called para vak. “Vak” means “voice,” “para” means “the divine” or the source of creation.

And so, the yogic lore goes that sound is the basis of creation.

Wow, that’s quite a lot of information. But tell me more about the last bit.

You know sounds originate from reverberations, right?

The source of creation is vibrations and reverberations. And that is not just what the yogic lore says but what even modern science proves. Be it the Big Bang Theory of the universe, or the galaxy sounds that NASA recently shared with the world, our existence is seen as reverberations of energy at different levels of vibrations. Where there is a vibration, there is bound to be a sound. So the entire existence is a kind of sound or a complex amalgamation of sounds. On a more scientific level, if you feed any sound into an oscilloscope – a sound measuring instrument – depending upon its frequency and amplitude, a form is created. “The sound AUM itself is considered the very root of physical creation. In the yogic culture, the entire existence is seen as a web of sounds, for which the root sounds “Aa”, “Oo”, and “Mm”, are uttered together as “Aum.” In fact, that’s why even in silence you can sense these basic sounds if you listen carefully.

“Is that why my mother stresses on me pronouncing every word correctly and clearly? I would definitely like to read more about it,” quips Tarun.

Sure, let’s do that tomorrow. We should sleep now.

(This Concept Note originally appeared in the Music edition of The Plus magazine.)