One tone, into silence and back

1. Sit, or lie down. Eyes closed if you like.
2. Listen only to this sound. Nothing else is asked.
3. As it grows softer, go with it. Do not hold on to the loudness.
4. When it is gone, stay. This is the silence. Nothing has to happen here.
5. When the sound comes back, let it bring you back, slowly.
6. You are where you began. Sit a moment before you get up.

The silence takes about a third of the time. To end it sooner, hold anywhere: the sound comes back, the whole way. Even if you stop in the middle, it brings you back.

• The way back is always one hold away, or the button at the top: it never leaves you in the middle.
• Eyes may stay open in every form.
• If the heartbeat frightens you, stay with the breath at the nostrils. That is a whole practice.
• In the fading form, loud means loud for you. Never painful.

Sri Aurobindo, to someone afraid of the emptiness that came in concentration:

Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved.

Letters on Yoga III, CWSA 30, p. 276

Nādamaya Meditation was made at Jyotirgana and published by Megha KM, Arjun Ram Roj and Sanjib Patra in the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (2026). Its root is the Nāda Bindu Upaniṣad. What is here is a new form of it: one journey, with a return.

This form has not been tested. We claim no result from it.

the paper →

घनमुत्सृज्य वा सूक्ष्मे सूक्ष्ममुत्सृज्य वा घने ।
रममाणमपि क्षिप्तं मनो नान्यत्र चालयेत् ॥

Leaving the dense for the subtle, or leaving the subtle for the dense, the mind, though it delights and is thrown about, should not be moved elsewhere.

The way is both ways already: out to the subtle, and back to the dense.

मकरन्दं पिबन्भृङ्गो गन्धान्नापेक्षते तथा ।
नादासक्तं सदा चित्तं विषयं न हि काङ्क्षति ॥

As the bee drinking nectar does not care for the scent, so the mind ever held by the sound does not crave the objects of sense.

Not craving fought, but something sweeter found.

नादो यावन्मनस्तावन्नादान्तेऽपि मनोन्मनी ॥

As long as there is sound, there is mind; at the end of sound, the mind beyond mind.

The silence at the turn of every journey.

Nāda Bindu Upaniṣad, verses 37, 42 and the second half of 48, in the text of sanskritdocuments.org, typed by Sunder Hattangadi. The translations are ours.