Abstract

This article presents a phenomenological investigation of auditory perception in which silence, background auditory noise, and bodily resonance are examined not as secondary or deficient phenomena, but as fundamental dimensions of auditory consciousness. In contrast to event-based, neurophysiological, and clinical approaches that primarily understand hearing as a response to acoustic stimuli, the proposed analysis focuses on the wave-based and level-structured organization of auditory experience that persists even in the absence of external sounds. Special attention is given to the phenomenon of background hearing, which in everyday discourse is often pathologized under the term tinnitus. Within the framework of this study, background hearing is described as an autonomous process of the auditory field that lacks object-like or event-based status and cannot be unequivocally localized either within the body or within the external environment. It is shown that this phenomenon reveals the impossibility of a complete “switching off” of hearing and bears witness to its continuous wave-like nature. A key element of the analysis is the bodily dimension of hearing. The body is approached not as a passive carrier of sensory mechanisms, but as a resonant structure that shapes the thresholds of auditory sensitivity. Muscular tension is interpreted as a form of bodily oscillation, whose amplitude and rhythm are directly related to the structure of the auditory field. It is demonstrated that intense tension produces an illusion of statics due to the extremely high velocity of oscillations, whereas bodily relaxation reduces internal oscillatory density and opens access to subtler and slower wave-based processes. The central conceptual outcome of the article is an understanding of silence as a multi-level field of auditory consciousness. Silence is described not as the absence of sound, but as a mode in which the same dominant tonal structures of experience are preserved while functioning at a different level of the conscious field. The distinction between sound and silence thus appears not as ontological but as level-based, allowing for a reconsideration of the very nature of auditory perception. The proposed approach expands the phenomenology of sensory experience beyond reductionist models and outlines hearing as a processual, level-organized field in which body, silence, and wave oscillations form a unified structure of experience.