Within the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, the practice of inner sound (nada) is presented as a direct doorway into the recognition of Bhairava, pure consciousness. The practitioner is invited to shift attention from the outer field of hearing toward increasingly subtle inner resonances, listening with relaxed yet unwavering awareness. These inner sounds are not treated as mere sensory phenomena but as expressions of the underlying consciousness itself. As attention is refined, awareness is drawn away from gross, objectified sound and toward the very source of hearing, where the distinction between inner and outer begins to lose its force.

The text describes a progression in this listening: from coarser, more obvious sounds toward subtler, more ethereal tonalities that arise spontaneously within awareness. By maintaining steady attention on these inner sound currents, the mind’s usual discursiveness gradually quiets, and thought processes lose their grip. The practitioner does not analyze or conceptually interpret the sounds; rather, there is a simple, non-judging listening that allows sound to reveal its own depths. Over time, this one-pointed listening matures into an effortless abidance, in which sound, the act of hearing, and the hearer begin to converge.

A crucial aspect of the method is sensitivity to the arising and subsiding of sound. The tantra emphasizes the moment when sound dissolves, the subtle gap in which no object is present and yet awareness is vividly awake. Resting in that gap, again and again, reveals a luminous, objectless presence that is not dependent on any particular sound. In this way, nada functions not as an end in itself but as a vehicle that carries attention back to its own ground.

As this process deepens, the practitioner is led beyond even the most refined inner sound into what is described as the “unstruck” dimension of sound, a soundless fullness that is no longer part of the manifest play of phenomena. Here, the triad of listener, listening, and sound collapses into a single, undivided field of awareness. The practice thus uses sound and its cessation to erode subject–object duality, allowing consciousness to recognize itself as self-luminous and free. In that recognition, transcendental awareness is not something attained but the ever-present reality that inner sound has quietly been pointing toward all along.