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Music for Inner Space: Techniques for Meditation and Visualization

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Nevill Drury (born 1947) is an editor and publisher, as well as author of many books such as The New Age: The History of a Movement, Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic, Merlin's Book of Magick and Enchantment, Magic and Witchcraft: From Shamanism to the Technopagans, The Shaman's Quest: Journeys in an Ancient Spiritual Practice, The Occult: A Sourcebook of Esoteric Wisdom, The Illustrated Dictionary of Natural Health, etc.

He wrote in the Foreword to this 1985 book, "This book is essentially about music, cosmology and meditation. I am sure there will be some purists who will take exception to some of the blendings of mysticism and music that are suggested here, but I do hope that there are also readers who believe, as I do, that spiritual frameworks which are truly vibrant are themselves capable of transformation... My approach has been to present background material on several major esoteric traditions alongside an account of trance and meditation music and the various techniques of activating the creative imagination."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Indian spiritual leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ... similarly encourages his followers to surrender themselves to their music. Rajneesh advocates meditation as a means of emptying the mind and has developed techniques which produce a state of catharsis. A particular form, Dynamic Meditation, is practiced daily for an hour and is accompanied by intense, chaotic music. After a phase of rapid breathing the sannysins plunge themselves into a free-form state." (Pg. 19)
"Music has many therapeutic qualities because of its capacity to stimulate feelings, emotions and associations. Some types of music exude a calming, relaxing quality suitable for alleviating stress, while other forms of music are intense and dramatic and help sharpen the intellect or produce specific, well-formed images in the mind's eye. Some types of music instil a sense of harmony and balance within us, while other discordant forms might leave us restless, on edge, or lacking resolution. Again, music can be trivial and whimsical or profound and inspiring. It can be formal and ponderously structured or very much alive and spontaneous." (Pg. 56)
"The main difficulty with (Steven) Halpern's system (e.g., in Spectrum Suite) is that, although it works neatly as a harmonic progression, it does not match the vibratory colours actually used by practitioners of Kundalini Yoga... It also has the drawback of imposing a framework which is not based on the actual belief system itself." (Pg. 76)