Sound exists, but Tantra says sound can exist only because of silence; otherwise sound will be impossible. Silence is anti-sound. So wherever there is sound, just behind it there is silence. It cannot exist without silence; it is the other aspect of the same coin. So I utter a word; for example, aum. The more I utter it, just side by side, just behind it is the anti-phenomenon, soundlessness. So if you can use sounds as a technique to enter soundlessness, you will enter meditation. If you can use a word to go beyond words, you will move into meditation. Look at it in this way: mind is the word; meditation is no-mind. Mind is filled with sound and words and thought. Just by the corner is the other extreme – no-mind.

Zen masters have called meditation the state of no-mind. What is mind? If you analyze it, it is a process of thought. Or if you analyze it in terms of physics, then it is a process of sounds. This sound process is mind, then just near it the no-mind exists. And you cannot move into the no-mind without using the mind as the jumping board, because you cannot even conceive of what no-mind is without understanding what mind is. Mind has to be used as a jumping board, and from that jumping board you can have a plunge into the no-mind.

There have been two opposing schools. One school is there – it is known as “Sankhya.” Sankhya says mind has not to be used, because if you use mind you cannot go beyond it. The same is the teaching of J. Krishnamurti; he is a Sankhyaite. You cannot use mind. If you use mind you cannot go beyond it, because the very use of the mind will strengthen it, will make it more powerful. When you use it, you will be in its clutches. Using it, you cannot go beyond it. So don’t use mind. That is why Krishnamurti is against all techniques of meditation: because any technique is bound to use mind as a base. Mind has to be used if you are going to use a technique. Any technique is bound to be a sort of conditioning – or a reconditioning, or an unconditioning, or whatsoever name you give to it, but it is going to be with the mind.

Sankhya philosophy says that mind cannot be used: just understand this and take a jump. But yoga says this is impossible. Even this understanding is to be done by mind. Even with this understanding – that you cannot use mind, that no technique will be of help, that every technique will become a hindrance and whatsoever you do will create a new conditioning – you will still be using mind, you will move within mind. This too has to be understood by mind.

So yoga says there is no way in which mind is not used; mind will have to be used. It should not be used positively, it should be used negatively. It should not be used in such a way that it is strengthened, it should be used in such a way that it is weakened. And techniques are the ways to use the mind in such a way that you use it to jump beyond it. You use it just to go beyond it – as a jumping board.

If mind can be used as a jumping board – and Yoga and Tantra believe that it can – then something which belongs to mind has to be trained. Sound is one of the basic things, you can use sound to go into soundlessness.

The third technique on sound:

Intone a sound, as aum, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you.