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Rudolf Steiner – The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone 1906

 Man can arrive at perception of the second world, the astral world, only if he undergoes the discipline of so-called ‘great stillness’.  He must become still, utterly still within himself.  The great peace must precede the awakening in the astral world.  This deep stillness becomes more and more pronounced when man approaches the third state of consciousness, the state in which he begins to have sensations of dreamless sleep.  The colours of the astral world become increasingly transparent, and the light becomes ever clearer and at the same time spiritualised.  Man has the sensation that he himself lives in this colour and this light, as if they do not surround him but rather he himself is colour and light.  He feels himself astrally within this astral world and he feels afloat in a great deep peace.  Gradually, this deep stillness begins to resound spiritually; softly at first, then louder and louder.  The world of colours and light is permeated with resounding tones.  In this third state of consciousness that man now approaches, the colourful world of the  astral realm in which he dwelt up to now becomes suffused with sound.