From Sound to Silence

 

From Sound to Silence

I have heard the song Adiyogi many times over the years. I loved it instantly — Kailash Kher’s unmistakable voice, the resounding beats, the strange but compelling almost hypnotic rhythm that lingers long after the song ends.  For me, it was always a powerful song about Shiva — about vastness, energy, and a cosmic dance unfolding somewhere beyond the known universe.

I had also seen the Adiyogi statue at the Isha Foundation in Coimbatore. With my eyes closed, it was easy to let the song and the statue float together — sound, form, devotion, all merging into a single, vivid image. I never felt the need to go beyond that. The song worked exactly where it was — dramatic, uplifting, external. What I heard produced sensations - certain words vibrating, certain lines repeating, and a strange pull to listen again

Today, almost casually, I looked up the lyrics in Hindi and their meaning. What followed was not an intellectual exercise but a small inner jolt — the uncomfortable realisation that I had been hearing the song correctly all along, but understanding it very differently. And that difference mattered. This is more like a confession to me.

The song opens with a line I thought I understood well:

“दूर उस आकाश की गहराइयों में…”

I had always taken this at face value — a majestic distance, the vast sky, Shiva somewhere far away, unreachable and immense. It felt cinematic, the way I imagine it to be. Only later did it occur to me that this distance might not be physical at all. Perhaps it was pointing to something far more familiar — the distance between where my body is and where my attention usually wanders.

That subtle shift already began to turn the song. Then came the line that followed:

“इक नदी से बह रहे हैं आदियोगी”

For years, I had heard this as Adiyogi flowing from a river — as though the river was a source, and Shiva emerged from it. Poetic, yes. But the line actually says something else. Adiyogi is flowing like a river. He is the cosmic flow.

Not arriving from somewhere. Simply flowing — continuously, effortlessly. The source itself. A single word — से instead of जैसे — had quietly altered the image I carried all these years. From origin to movement. 

Another line deepened this unease in the best possible way:

“मौन से सब कह रहे हैं आदियोगी”

I had always heard this as people speaking about Adiyogi in hushed tones — devotion expressed quietly. But the meaning turns the direction around. It is not everyone saying something about Adiyogi. It is Adiyogi saying everything through silence.

No words. No explanation. Just presence. Stillness.

At this point, I realised something important about how I listen — not just to songs, but to life itself. I often assume meaning is delivered through sound, through clarity, through articulation. But here, the song was suggesting something else entirely — that what matters most may be communicated when attention settles — not just on words, but on tone, context, and what is left unsaid.

Soon after, words themselves begin to loosen. Sounds repeat. Rhythm takes over. 

“सांस शाश्वत…”

“प्राण गुंजन…”

Breath becomes eternal… life-energy hums.

Earlier, I experienced these sections as musical texture — engaging, vibrant. Now they feel closer to something as ordinary as noticing your breath while waiting or a heartbeat — repetitive, ordinary, and quietly essential. The words in the song were no longer holding my attention through meaning. 

And then comes the line or should I say a letter रें  which I had heard as रे that changed the song entirely for me. Just a dot.

“उतरें मुझ में आदियोगी”

I had always heard this as something already achieved — Adiyogi entered me. A celebratory moment. But the line did not declare anything. It is actually an invitation. A request.

Enter me. Descend into me. Or perhaps — become me.

At that moment, the song stopped being about Shiva somewhere else. It became about the possibility of awareness settling here. Not in thought. Not in imagination. But in this body, this breath, this moment.

Even the fierce-sounding line that follows took on a new texture:

“पीस दो अस्तित्व मेरा

और कर दो चुरा चुरा”

I had earlier understood this as dramatic devotion — grind my existence, annihilate me. Shiva in his fiercest Tandava form. But listening now, it felt less violent and more tired. Tired of holding an identity together. Tired of being in charge of everything all the time. 

Crush that. Not life. Not living. Just my false centre that refuses to let go. A powerful ego-surrender.

By now, it felt as though the song was following its own inner journey. It begins with vast cosmic imagery. It moves through rhythm, sound, breath. And without ever announcing it, it turns inward. To ego dissolution.

From Shiva. To yoga.

From dance. To breath.

From sound. To silence.

And finally — to attention itself.

Perhaps that is why the song hit me so strongly today. Not because it had changed, but because something in me had. I have been living enough moments of restlessness and overthinking, enough attempts at meditation, enough encounters with my own wandering mind to recognise what the song was quietly pointing toward. Toward presence — toward being here, now, with what is already happening.

I don’t claim to have understood the song fully. I’m not even sure it can be understood by me. But I know this — what I once experienced as an external, vibrant celebration now feels like an inward movement, asking for less interpretation and more listening.

Like a river that doesn’t explain its flow. It simply moves.