Meditation Room

Benedictus, John, Mary, the Child.

MARY:
I bring you the Child,
He needs a word
From your mouths.

BENEDICTUS:
My child, from now on
You shall come to me every evening
And receive from me
The word that will
Lead you to rest.
Will you?

MARIA:
It was the child's destiny
Even in its early years
So strangely interwoven with mine
Into one.
You showed me the way,
That I should lead him
From that day on,
When his mother
Left him as a foundling at my door.
And miraculously
Proved themselves in him
The rules you gave
In the spirit of your wisdom.
I know that if it were not through me
That these rules were carried out,
None of the powers
That lie dormant in the child
Would lack the opportunity to fully awaken.
But here, too, it is clear
That blessings turn into misfortune
If I want to bestow them.
You know how difficult
It was for me to win
The child's affection. He grew up in my care,
And nothing more than habit
Sterilized his heart,
Finding in me
The means for his growth
In body and soul. Then came the time,
When more and more
The love for his caregiver
Awakened in him.
And in this case too,
It became clear
That good forces are reversed
When I am the bearer. In the sunshine of love,
Which the boy gave me,
What had already blossomed
In dutiful guidance died away.
I seem more and more
A mystery to myself.
The solution must come from you,
For how can I bear any longer
That I destroy my friend's powers
Through my presence
And also rob the boy
Of the blessing of the most beautiful gifts,
Because he lovingly
Accepts them from me.

BENEDICTUS:
A knot has formed here
From threads that mysteriously
Create karma in the becoming of worlds.
High spirits guide
In realms of light
The goals of all being.
They can forge
The goals of the worlds only
If humans sacrifice to them
Their happiness and suffering,
Experienced in earthly realms.

[This fragment ends here. The following words from a notebook from 1910 can be considered a continuation of the story.]

You do not suffer
To fulfill your own destiny.
What takes place in your soul
Is not merely the effect of your own life.
You are chosen to serve
the plan of the World.
The threads would break,
In which the inhabitants of the spiritual worlds
Weave the fate of the world,
If from time to time
The fate of a human soul
Could not be woven into the fabric. Such souls carry, united in the focal point,
The karma of humanity.
What they experience is needed by the heavenly beings.
Without such an impact,
the progress of humanity would come to a standstill.
To live a life for the spirit
is the lot of such people.
And whoever judges their earthly existence
by ordinary human standards
Has only placed a mirage before their eyes.
You have lived lives that were your own;
In them your destiny was fulfilled
According to the weight of your own deeds.
You will live again,
That will show you the way.
But this does not belong to you alone.
It does not belong to human beings alone;
It belongs to the becoming of the world.
And what can be seen of you in the earthly world
Is not reality as it is for other people.
It is only a symbol of your higher calling.
When I first saw you,
When I saw you for the first time,
You did not appear to me as a human being.
You belonged to the spirit worlds
Like other spirits.
And you do not have a body
In which to live out What is in your spirit.
Your body is only a vessel
So that you can draw
From the powers of the earth,
What is necessary for the heavens.
And it became my calling
To convey to the gods
What you have created in your human existence.
How could humans bear
What is only of a divine nature.
Your goodness is handed over,
That works in you in spirit,
The senses; people appropriate it,
And there it can change into the worst —

MARIA:
May I still trust the gods?
They show me, where I sow good,
Evil fruit as my own product.
And my deeds are before me
Like children turned into criminals,
Whom one mother wanted to give to the world,
To do the best for her race.
Shame must overcome me,
When I see myself in my deeds,
And fear must creep into my soul.
I see how the best
Becomes the worst,
Penetrates [it] from my soul
Into the other soul.
And I must feel
How the lifeblood in me
Becomes destructive poison in the other. —