I've been using the sound as my main object for a couple months now. And I just got off a week long retreat where I used the sound. I actually wore earmuffs to block out all external noise during most of my sits. 

First thing is that the sound gets really loud. By the end of the retreat it got to the point where it felt like putting the earmuffs on was much nosier than taking them off. I like this effect because it makes concentration pretty easy. An analogy I kept thinking of was like cutting logs with a fresh chain on your chain saw. Once the blade enters the wood it kind of gets "sucked" into the log and there is little effort needed to finish the cut. During good practice sessions I found this was the case with the nada. 

I found that the time of day made a lot of difference in how pleasing the sound was. During the day I felt like the sound conglomerated into a ball and was very hard to split up into separate tones. This left me with no option but to listen to the lowest common denominator of sound, which was usually unpleasant and occasionally hellish. In contrast during the nighttime and early mornings the sound was usually very nice to me. As proscribed in Michael Edward Salim's "Law of Attention", the sound climbs the ladder of tonality getting higher in pitch and faster in vibration. When the sound was cooporating it was very easy to choose any number of tones to listen to. From here one can choose to stay with one tone and see what that has to offer. Usually what will happen is a new and higher tone will seemingly "pop" out of the previous tone and then one can choose to listen to the new tone and try and stablize it. This is mostly what I did. 

Things I wonder about: 

- At certain points I litterally had 6 or 7 different tones to choose from. Edward Michael Salim recommends the subtler and higher pitched tones to draw the meditator to higher heights within himself. I found this to be the case but also ran into some struggles. In particular once your up at a certain height, it can be difficult to balance a tone because these tones are subtle and juggling them requires really solid concentration. Furthermore once your at these heights the sounds tend to jump around more easily than the lower tones. This made them tough to really investigate in terms of vibrational speed. One thing I look to improve upon is stablazing concentration on these higher pitches. 

I'll leave this here for now and hopefully unpack some more tomorrow. 

I think there is something about listening that is different as far as mental states. Years ago when I was very into ham radio and using morse code at high speed, I would get into very strong concentration states just trying to listen thru noise or static and not get in the way of my brain converting dots and dashes to a message.
Very similiar in some ways to Kenneth Folks mahamudra practice of listening for 'ships in the harbor' even if you could in no way physically hear them. Anyone else notice this?

Thank you very much James,

This is nice find. I will read it next. At the moment I'm reading "the sound of silence" and listening to the "4th tower of Inverness"(spelling?) that was mentioned somewhere in this thread.
Also about 2 days ago I think I hit stream entry. For a short moment I was aware that everything but my attention and the sound is impernament and therfore not-me. That only the attention is somehow me'ish, but more in the sense that it is always there. From that moment my concentration is oh so strong, as I only have to point my attention at something and it stays there.

Regards,
Rafal

Cool stuff...thanks for posting...always wondered about the "sound"

They are equivalent (but obviously distinguishable, they are separate words and concepts after all) ways of referring to the same state of affairs. "Event" doesn't quite capture it because to me the word "event" has connotations of discreteness, "one-in-a-row-of-falling-dominoes being watched", lacking the subtle sense of self-sufficiency, self-evidence, and unboundedness.

Hard to express. Let me know whether I was able to convey it intelligibly.

Thanks for the references. I'm still reading the 8000-Verse Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. So now I know what's next on my reading list

Cheers,
Florian

I'd get it arrising right before I went into 1st jhana....and I'm pretty sure it stayed all thru 2-4 too.

Also, I get a slight pressure sensation in my skull. Almost as if wearing a beanie or ski cap...but way more subtle. Any one get that?

Something I stumbled upon on wikipedia -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverberation_of_Sound

Hi Andrew. Good spot: FWIW I've connected with an outlaw offshoot where John Yarr isn't involved at all. I'm not interested in framing the question in terms of 'Lifewave', but rather from samatha/vipassana angles with the dimesnion of shaktipat added.

I agree with the idea of using the sound current for concentration (merge with it): maybe there's the possibility of using some insight techniques as well, but since it's continuous, 'unstruck', then investigating impermanence may not offer much. Don't know.

Why would you have thought only vipassana offers 'genuine' enlightenment? ISTR suggestion that the Buddha having run through the samatha jhanas on the night of his enlightenment. And what makes you doubt that now?

You seem to know a lot about Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism. I would like to ask you if you have heard of a meditation practice that I read about in a book recently. I had never heard of it before. The book is A Hermit in the Himalayas by Paul Brunton, who was not a Buddhist.

@DeNada: What has been your experience though meditation over the last 30 years? What stage(s), realisations etc in your system have you achieved / had revealed?

Rich

OK, here goes then...

Thanks for replying, even though you're obviously wound up.

I wrote the stuff below the line first, and decided to leave it in as part of the conversation and to scope where I'm at (it's not where Witek is at).

The part of your response that *really* interests me however is where you say "a natural progression of using the inner spontaneous sounds, in a particular way, combined with well-known breath practices, led to actual visionary experiences". This suggests to me that you consider the channels/winds experiences (available without squeezing eyeballs btw) are not valid, and that you're somehow 'outside of' your biophysical/energetic system when those visionary experiences are occuring. Given that many Hindu, Tibetan and Taoist practices still major on channels/winds (by whatever name) & presumably consider them worthwhile, and the question of just how one perceives(?) extra-sensory visionary experience... can I ask you to please unpack those aspects a little more for me?

Best
Rich

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Kindergarten?! I was trying to gently undermine the uh, *unhelpful*, snarkiness between the two of you - ISTM you're pretty wrapped up in some tight mental/emotional loops. I haven't yet seen the Insight Timer threads, so maybe you're justified. But, you know, humour.

I'm not particularly interested in (his) *continual* reference back to scripture. I'm interested in direct experience, and while the experience of folk 00's/'000's years ago is interesting, it seems to snag people (like us?) more than it liberates.

I find the term 'grace' annoying: usually a way of asserting authority and control when used in the sort of context we're in. In Witek's (John Yarr/Lifewave) context it was a battering ram of 'shut up and don't be difficult'. OTOH I don't agree that shit happens (in the context of awakening): I think there's plenty to do that's clear and repeatable that brings about definite results. Moreso in the world of Theravada/mindfulness and non-dual advaita techniques, but I suspect that's more to do with the fact that the guru&grace mythology around Light&Sound practices, as well as it's lesser popularity in places like Boulder , has deterred genuine investigation and systematisation, than to a natural impenetrability of the mode.

Your answer about energy transmissions *seems* definitive, and your list of experiences is indeed IMHO related to winds/channels. However you've omitted to consider the experiences of those 'sat down' who have had experiences during that 'period of grace(!)' which they describe as vastly different from the ordinary visuals, and lasting (indeed affecting them in wider ways than mere visuals). Don't get hung up on squeezing the eyeballs - even JY was known to wonder why people were still doing that. It is true that a fair number of people in JY's system & its' recent offshoot (it must be in the hundreds by now) have had tremendous and lasting classical enlightenment 'experience' and I don't think that should be dismissed as glibly as you can dismiss the assistive techniques.

I'd make no suggestion that your visionary experiences are invalid in any way: that's a feature of Witek's peculiar inversion.

I'd also agree that precision is important, however when I'm reaching to describe or ask about something I don't already assume I know about that can be difficult, and I for one don't have the scriptural background nor am I aligned with any particular school. I too am irritated by Witek's claim to knowledge (superiority) but subsequently avoiding actually saying anything about his own results.

Does this apparent attempt to paraphrase something that you claim I said constitute a genuine question (i.e. are you asking me if I consider that Grace (cf. "grace") is connected to compassion and/or if I consider Grace to be a more a "blessing" than compassion?)?

If that's the case, I'm happy to clarify your misunderstanding. If it's not, I've no interest whatsoever, because I was taught that:

इत्येतत्कथितं देवि परमामृतम् उत्तमम् ।
एतच् च नैव कस्यापि प्रकाश्यं तु कदाचन ॥ १५७॥
परशिष्ये खले क्रूरे अभक्ते गुरुपादयोः ।
निर्विकल्पमतीनां तु वीराणाम् उन्नतात्मनाम् ॥ १५८॥
भक्तानां गुरुवर्गस्य दातव्यं निर्विशङ्कया ।

That's a great read! You've described precisely what I observe in my senses. My ears produce what I now know to be called a nada sound but sometimes it seems it's inside my head. It changes from various high pitches to various droning noises and often both at the same time. Sometimes it wavers and suddenly stops and that feels nice but then it powers up again.

My eyes have the same kind of static nada type noise but in visual form and this too wavers (more like a flickering) and stops then powers back on again.

Thought also have this static structure. If I place my attention squarely on a thought it dissolves into particles, but not all the time and there's plenty more thoughts afterwards.

My body has a similar thing going on.

Sometimes I will shift my attention between these four senses and observe the impermanence of the noise in its various manifestations. 

Today I was at sangha. We were meditating on loving-kindness but since Linda bumped this thread up yesterday I've been more curious about this nada in my head, so I placed my attention on it during meditation and tried to use it as an object. Nothing much to report on that but I'll keep it up. 

I first noticed (or re-noticed; I remember listening to it as a child) the nada sound when I was trying to access mental talk in my early practice. The verbal thoughts were shy but the sound of silence wasn't. I was investigating impermanence. Michael Taft wanted me to do it with mental talk and mental images and feelings, but the more I listened inside, the more I could hear the nada sound and the more vibrations showed up both kinesthetically and visually. So then I was instructed to focus on that (noting "gone") but with special attention to the impermanence of anything that felt like me or mine. The latter was what led to stream entry, which is another story. 

I have similar experiences of what you call nada sight. Sometimes it seems light the sound is light, if that makes any sense. The fields of sensations seems to merge. The kinesthetic version of it has been accessable for me pretty much all my life, I guess, although I used to escape from it. I think that's basically what my tics are about. They make my body feel solid. When I get relaxed, it sort of loses its boundaries. 

The idea of nada showing up in all sensory fields makes a lot of sense. I guess that's what Shinzen Yong refers to as rest and flow. That's basically what I meant with "champagne bubbles" earlier in the thread. It's not piti. It's more like the deconstruction of sensory experiences while being at rest.

Now I have experienced thoughts vibrating in and out of existence. I found that very cool. Most of the time that is however still out of reach. I do find that cognition is very often going on at a less conscious and less conceptual level, though, which I guess is related to that. In my research, that is often how I find the analytical focus. I haved described that elsewhere on this forum, how I tune into this vibrational cloud with tentacles coming out from it. 

Yeah, there's an entire symphony going on in the silence. Awsome, isn't it? I often play with the different tones and locations. A dharma freind asked me to focus on one of the tones on the right side consistently. I did that for two hours and found that it made words inaccessable. That was her experience as well. She had worked with that for years and had all sorts of experiences from it in a wordless mode, making her wordless for days at a time. 

In the review phase after second path I was doing shamatha and tried out the hypothesis that the nada sound could be a nimitta as I'm not that visual. I don't know if that's valid, but it seemed to work at the time. It made fourth shamatha jhana turn totally white. It also drew me into multiple fruitions in a slow gradual way that almost felt violent, taking away the world layer by layer. In the end it was completely silent, as even the nada sound was gone. 

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I think I need to attend to the businesses of this new day now, but I will return to this thread and respond to Bardo Cruiser as well as soon as I find the time and space for it.