11 April 2025
Tuning In
Experiencing Music in Psychedelic States
By Steven J. Gelberg
Foreword by William A. Richards; Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
MAPS Bulletin: Volume XXXIV
In psychedelic states, music is no longer music as we “know” it. As if in a dream, it shape-shifts into something vastly more significant, multi-dimensional, an opening to other worlds. In a chapter titled “Expressing the Inexpressible: Music as Mysticism” in my book Tuning In: Experiencing Music in Psychedelic States, I gather a number of statements from religious and philosophical thinkers who, through the centuries, have given voice to the transcendent and transformative qualities of music. Here are two few brief examples, one ancient and one modern. The first is from 11th-century Persian philosopher and mystic Al-Gazzali (Becker, 2004):
The heart of man has been so constituted by the Almighty that, like a flint, it contains a hidden fire which is evoked by music and harmony, and renders man beside himself with ecstasy. These harmonies are echoes of that higher world of beauty which we call the world of spirits. They remind man of his relationship to that world, and produce in him an emotion so deep and strange that he himself is powerless to explain it.
The second is from a pre-psychedelic Aldous Huxley (1931): “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. On another plane of being, music is the equivalent of some of man’s most significant and most inexpressible experiences.” Speaking of that other plane of being, psychedelic pioneer William Richards (2016), writes,
When listening to music during the action of entheogens, it is common to hear claims of “having become the music,” or “entering into the mind of the composer,” or of beholding the eternal truth that the composer was attempting to depict or express in his or her composition. Music is thus often understood to be a nonverbal language that seeks to express, and is indeed capable of expressing, the deepest processes and ultimate truths within human consciousness.
Music is no longer music as we ‘know’ it. As if in a dream, it shape-shifts into something vastly more significant.
I have devoted the last several years to an immersive study of the rich and endlessly fascinating subject of how psychedelics and music interact to nourish and deepen each other. It is truly a remarkable synergy: music deepening and helping to guide the psychedelic experience (whether in a formal therapeutic context or otherwise), and psychedelic consciousness providing a unique portal into the mysteries and hidden beauties of music. While one of my book’s longest chapters focuses on the history and development of the use of music in psychedelic-assisted therapy, surveying the views and practices of many of the field’s best known innovators (e.g., Helen Bonny, Walter Pahnke, Betty Grover Eisner, Stanislav Grof, William Richards, Myron Stolaroff, Claudio Naranjo), the book is much broader in scope. It’s approach is largely humanistic, phenomenological, and aesthetic—essentially experiential—focusing on the human experience of music within the highly intensified states of consciousness offered by psychedelics. Rather than relying on purely clinical approaches to the subject (which get their share of attention), the book brings together numerous rich and detailed first-person accounts of experiencing music on psychedelics, drawn largely from published trip-reports. The book demonstrates the importance of such first-hand accounts in comprehending the profundity of psychedelic states. As Terrence McKenna (1991) wrote:
What’s always been lacking in psychedelic research is an examination of the content of the experience, so we need to give these compounds to . . . people who are willing to work with them in situations other than a clinical setting. . . The early approach with psychedelics was the correct one. This is the notion that intelligent, thoughtful people should take psychedelics and try and understand what’s going on. Mature, intelligent people need to share their experiences. It’s too early for a science. What we need now are the diaries of explorers. We need many diaries of many explorers so we can begin to get a feeling for the territory.
Yes, a feeling for the territory. If you want to deeply feel and comprehend, say, a motion picture, you can study film or digital technology and the physics of light and image projection, or you can give yourself over to the cinematic experience. If you wish to understand psychedelic experience in human terms, you can shine a light on molecular actions and reactions in the gray matter, or you can take a psychedelic. What McKenna calls “the early approach” to studying psychedelics—having intelligent, curious, observant people take a psychedelic and then write about their experiences—has given us much of the fruitful descriptive material that is available to contemporary researchers and readers, which is one reason why many of the best descriptions of music experience on psychedelics come from “early” (1960s and 1970s—and even nineteenth-century) accounts.
Tuning In’s humanistic and experiential orientation notwithstanding, the themes and conclusions you’ll find there are supported by empiric studies on the subject. An important 2020 article from the Journal of Music Therapy (O’Callaghan, et al., 2020) surveyed a broad range of peer-reviewed scientific literature (“qualitative and quantitative journal articles in four major databases”) dealing with music-centered psychedelic therapy. These were their principal “findings”:
Music was widely considered integral for meaningful emotional and imagery experiences and self-exploration during psychedelic therapy. . . . Music could convey love, carry listeners to other realms, be something to “hold,” inspire, and elicit a deep sense of embodied transformation. Therapeutic influence was especially evident in music’s dichotomous elicitations: Music could simultaneously anchor and propel. Participant openness to music and provision of participant-centered music were associated with optimal immediate and longer-term outcomes.
The article further notes: “Many studies reported scarce details about the music used and incidental findings of music experienced.” Fortunately, the trip reports and commentaries in Tuning In include numerous references to and descriptions of “music experienced.” In the same article, under the heading “Exclusion Criteria”—that is, sources of information not consulted for the study—the authors mention having avoided references to a variety of non-empirical sources, including: “psychedelic use in nonclinical settings (e.g., recreational psychedelic use [and] ethnographic fieldwork examining psychedelic rituals)”; “studies examining therapists’ perception of participants’ music experiences”; as well as letters, commentaries, and conference proceedings. Not being bound by such exclusion criteria, Tuning In encompasses all those sources of relevant testimony and more.
To provide a fuller sense of Tuning In: Experiencing Music in Psychedelic States, here is a brief outline of chapters:
In the Preface, “Autobiographical Reflections on Psychedelics,” I describe my own initiation into psychedelia as a teenager during the flowering of the 60s counterculture, with some reflections on the music of that era. In the Introduction, “Music and Psychedelics: A Sacred Synergy,” I lay the theoretical groundwork for the book, describing the essential “shared ontology” between psychedelics and music: how both experiences are subjective, non-quantifiable, non-conceptual, ineffable, and productive of deep emotional responses.
Chapter 1, “What is a ‘Psychedelic Experience’,” provides an overview of this complex, multifaceted phenomenon.
Chapter 2, “Expressing the Inexpressible: Music as Mysticism” looks at some perennial ideas about the inherent metaphysical and spiritual properties of music, such as found in Romanticism and other forms of aesthetic, religious and philosophical thought, and how those ideas are reflected in the writings of contemporary psychedelic thinkers.
Chapter 3, “Beginner’s Mind and ‘Letting Go’” discusses the concepts of de-familiarization and of “letting-go” as simultaneously features of and pre-conditions for productive psychedelic experiences, as well as for hearing music in a state of unconditional receptivity.
Chapter 4, “Timelessness, Hypersensitivity, and ‘Becoming’ the Music” dives into some core features of musical perception under psychedelics.
Chapter 5, “Music, Emotion, and Aesthetic Ecstasy,” explores the powerful emotional effects of the synergy between music and psychedelics.
Chapter 6, “Music, Creator of Worlds” explores the phenomenon of aural-to-visual synesthesia and the extraordinary eidetic visions experienced.
Chapter 7, “Music from ‘Nowhere’: Hallucinating Music” describes a fascinating paranormal aspect of psychedelic experience: that of elaborate music heard in the absence of a physical cause.
Chapter 8, “Music in Psychedelic Psychotherapy,” provides a rich, detailed historical and thematic introduction/overview of that critical subject that will be of particular interest and pragmatic value to those engaged in various forms of psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Chapter 9, “It’s Subjective: Choosing Music,” discusses the inherent subjectivity of musical perception and its implications for choosing music for psychedelic use.
Chapter 10 reflects on the continuing relevance of the classical genre in contemporary psychedelic practice, while Chapters 11 and 12 explore, respectively, the genres of ambient and “world music” and their particular value to psychedelic experience.
Chapter 13, “Sound Alternatives to Music: The Music of Nature and ‘White Noise’,” explores those two sources of sonic delight in psychedelic states. An Epilogue discusses various issues including the use of music in “integrating” psychedelic experiences, the evolving role of collective, societal consciousness in influencing individual “set” (including the role of “Psychedelic Science” and the “Psychedelic Renaissance” in shaping psychedelic mindsets), and the saving grace of “music in a dark time” such as ours.
Finally, two appendices survey the many psychedelic-purposed playlists I’ve created on Spotify over the years and provide a concise compendium of music drawn from those varied sources. In that regard, here is a direct link to my user page on Spotify, where access to forty different playlists is provided, covering many genres of music (with a current combined following of over 15,000):
https://open.spotify.com/user/stevengelberg?si=4adb41b657854284
References
Becker, J. (2004). Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing. Indiana
University Press, 28.
Huxley, A. (1994 [1931]). “The Rest Is Silence,” in Music at Night and Other
Essays. Flamings/HarperCollins, 12.
McKenna, T. (1991). The Archaic Revival. Harper San Francisco, 68, 69.
O’Callaghan, C., et al. (2020). “Experience of Music Used with Psychedelic
Therapy: A Rapid Review and Implications,” Journal of Music Therapy, vol. 57,
no. 3: 283.
Richards, W. (2016). Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences.
Columbia University Press, 155, 156-57.
Steven J. Gelberg
Steven J. Gelberg is an independent scholar and the author of India in a Mind’s Eye and Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna: Five Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna Movement in the West.
