The Mysticism of Sound and Music
Sound is not a metaphor for the sacred — it is the mechanism. Music is a small expression of the harmony the whole universe is already doing.
Inayat Khan was an Indian Sufi master of the Chishti order — the first teacher to bring Islamic mysticism to the West — and an accomplished musician who toured Indian classical music through Europe and America. Both halves are in this book.
His claim is that music is not an art that gestures at the divine. It is a small instance of the harmony the universe is already made of, which is why it moves us the way it does. The chapters range from the mysticism of sound proper through language, breath, and the music of the spheres.
Sits next to the Kashmir Shaiva material for me: one tradition calls it spanda, this one calls it harmony. Same observation from two directions.