# Drafts II. First scene: Capesius — Benedictus

First CAPESIUS alone:  
(finishes reading a book):  
"The human spirit searches  
For the meaning and purpose of existence  
Wandering through worlds  
With the shadow images of his thoughts;  
He wants to squeeze from the depths of his soul  
The words that interpret for him  
His enigmatic life's work.  
It should lead him there,  
Where the senses experience nothing.  
With such a search,  
He can only scatter the power  
Of his own being into nothingness.  
At the end of this path  
He will think only in words  
The dream of life  
And with the thinker's dream  
Feel his own soul flow into nothingness  
Ghostly and fearful."  
Thus Benedictus' visionary spirit  
Expresses in eloquent words  
What must happen to every soul,  
That only thinking and feeling  
Wants to build on sensory truth.  
And I must clearly recognize,  
He faithfully traces the paths,  
That I must recognize as my own  
For my past life.  
O terrible fateful knowledge,  
That flows to me from these words.  
I feel it like the destruction  
Of the roots of my life.  
And if a god at this moment  
From wild world storms of chaos  
Destroyed the powers of my existence,  
It would not seem more terrifying to me  
Than the voice of fate in these words.  
That one can know nothing  
At the end of one's research,  
It demands nothing more than resignation  
To inexplicable spiritual powers. —  
And to find myself calmly in such a fate  
Despite all my high aspirations,  
It did not seem to me today  
To rob me completely of the joy of life.  
However, too much has been given to me  
By the light of Benedictus' spirit,  
To doubt the power of knowledge  
And enjoy the dream of life in peace.  
I must not surrender in doubt,  
If I do not want to destroy the plan  
That the powers of the spirit laboriously devised,  
When they gave me human existence.  
How wrong are those who think  
That man strives for the treasures of knowledge  
Only out of his own urge.  
They have no idea of the true course of the world,  
Which demands of the human soul  
That it kindle the light within itself,  
To banish the darkness of the world.  
And unknown to them is  
That the destruction of the world must follow  
From the darkness of the soul.  
To destroy oneself unknowingly —  
To sink as an individual being  
Into the insubstantial nothingness  
Would be the will of fate,  
I dare it undaunted.  
But I must feel it with a shudder,  
The entrusted treasure of the world's will,  
Must perish with my own fall,  
The soul that cannot know.  
I must not find peace  
In vain doubt,  
And not in the belief  
That I am denied the certainty of knowledge.  
O terrible powerlessness in my soul,  
I feel bound to you,  
O dreadful chains,  
I must not want to break you.  
And yet it is only this powerlessness  
That now completely fills my being.  
For already the next step  
In Benedictus' treasures of wisdom  
Lets me clearly see  
How dull my thinking becomes  
When it wants to understand true words of the spirit.  
"Let there be calm in the depths of the soul  
The power of shadowed thoughts  
And erase from the light of the senses.  
Let it dampen, as in the bosom of sleep,  
The feeling of temporal life.  
And may it mature in the depths of the heart,  
A will that feels the seed power of the spirit  
Within itself as its own being.  
You then look down from the heights of the spirit,  
Knowing the earthly being.  
You feel yourself in spiritual worlds.  
World thoughts live in your thinking  
World forces weave in your feeling  
World beings work in your will.  
And from worlds afar sounds  
The riddle word of fate:  
Recognize the goal of life.  
And seeing yourself in your true essence,  
Pour out the answer into the vastness of the world  
Your own heart speaking powerfully:  
I myself, I am the meaning of the world  
A divine plan lives within me  
Understanding the deep meaning of such words  
I fulfill the command of the spirit  
O human, recognize yourself.“

(At the last words, Cap. has a vision of terrible thunder; you can see that he is devastated.)

”Desire such knowledge's light,  
Only when you are ready  
To change your mind,  
And banish vain delusions  
From your heart and mind.  
For if you remain as you are,  
Knowledge will destroy you  
And your spiritual gifts  
Will be consecrated by the lords of deepest darkness  
As creative powers." —

Where did these words come from?  
I know I did not speak them,  
I am aware of that.  
But there is no one with me  
From whom they could have come.

It was as if they rose up  
From the depths of my being.  
Am I still alone?  
Are spirits from another world speaking,  
Who need my soul as their tool?

(There is a knock and someone enters):

BENEDICTUS:  
I know I am not unwelcome  
In your home at this time.  
What I learn from you  
I must clearly feel  
As a call to come to you.

CAPESIUS:  
And even though I myself hardly  
Dared to call upon you,  
I feel something dark within me,  
That your coming is the greatest happiness  
Strongly desired by you at this hour.  
In this hour of grave destiny,  
You enter this chamber,  
Which for many a year  
Kept locked away  
My ardent striving, my diligent research,  
In which I first entrusted to my soul  
What I was tasked with passing on  
To my dear students.  
In this jumble of books, you see  
Much that, over long periods of time,  
Became the nourishment of my soul  
And, transforming itself into my own thoughts,  
Brought my soul so much joy.  
Since you entered my circles,  
Many works have been eagerly accepted and thought through In my collection,  
Which I had previously strictly denied entry,  
Because only empty words  
Seemed to me to be their content.  
The spiritual teachings of ancient times  
And what the present  
Gives us in this way,  
I have long regarded with little esteem.  
But since the seed powers of your speech  
Have been allowed to work in my soul,  
It has now been years,  
I have been wearing down my mind and heart  
With that kind of knowledge,  
To which your words are dedicated.  
It would be impossible for me  
To describe to you the struggles  
And all the heavy suffering,  
That the turn of my life  
Has brought me into your paths.  
And all my previous striving seems dwarfed to me,  
That drove me before,  
And only with a shudder  
Am I able to call the memory  
Alive before my soul —  
How the nature and essence of your knowledge  
Placed me before the powers of fate,  
How it called me to heights  
Where my senses faded  
And buried me in depths  
Where I felt myself shattered.  
So I stand before you  
Not as a young man  
Who boldly, in the hope of life,  
Freshly treads the paths of research,  
No, at the end of life,  
I must begin anew,  
Since all my research  
Has been transformed into insubstantial shadows  
In the fire bath of your spirit.  
You see my hair bleached  
Not only by age,  
I am heavily burdened by that worry,  
Which can flow terribly into a heart,  
That must not be deprived of spiritual revelation  
And yet can hardly imagine  
How the gates of true light  
Will ever open to it.

BENEDICTUS:  
You have not lost your way,  
If only you can see clearly  
That none of the steps  
You have taken so far  
Lead you away from the path of the spirit,  
As soon as you see it in the right light.  
You were on the right track, and what you lack  
Is not the direction of the path,  
But only knowledge of what has already been accomplished.

CAPESIUS:  
So you must also take away that support  
From which I could believe  
It would remain as my last.  
Thoughts were the content of my life,  
They gave me the strength  
To break with everything  
What I thought I knew.  
And to abandon vain research,  
To chart a new course for myself,  
Often seemed like a consolation to me.  
Now I must accept as true  
What I wanted to reject,  
And my thinking, in which I sought refuge  
In the shipwreck of my life,  
Must be worthless to me.  
In the shipwreck of my life.

BENEDICTUS:  
What you have accomplished so far,  
It flowed from the power of the will of the world  
And can only become delusion,  
When the light of false thinking  
Before your errant gaze  
Transforms it into its opposite image.  
What you have lived, use it  
In a new form for your salvation.  
What you have thought and think today,  
Transform it through that light,  
Which flows to you from spiritual revelation.  


CAPESIUS:  
I can feel it fully,  
How true the words are  
That sound so terrifying to me.  
And often I have said to myself,  
Life cannot be wrong.  
Seek the source of error only within yourself.  
So I tried  
To transform my own thinking,  
And I wanted to direct all my thoughts  
In the direction you have pointed out.  
But this is precisely what is denied me.  
It is as if the resistance of my own brain  
Robbed me of all thought,  
When it wants to conform to your way.  
The truth of your revelation,  
I can feel it completely.  
But I cannot succeed in thinking it.  
When I try, my power of thought dies  
And I feel only the leaden weight  
Of the tool of thought,  
Which proves hostile to me.

BENEDICTUS:  
You speak the solution to the riddle  
And want to reject the wisdom of your own words  
In a vain delusion.  
Recognize what you yourself have spoken,  
Seize that light,  
Which shines brightly in your speech,  
And one of the veils must fall,  
Which hides the knowledge of the spirit from you.  
You stand before the gate of all revelation  
And want to deny the essence of this gate.  
The true self speaks within you  
And the appearance of your own being,  
It defends itself against your true self.

CAPESIUS:  
If truth is hidden in your words,  
Then in this moment  
You have robbed me of myself.  
For I can save nothing  
Of all that I may call mine,  
Through my past life,  
When the true being of my essence  
Gives me the gift of light,  
And the illusory being of my soul  
Sees its own light only as darkness.  
So it seems to be the truth,  
What has imposed itself on me as an opinion  
As an opinion imposed on me.  
Whoever seeks secret reasons in the world  
Untimely leads the powers of the soul,  
Will feel torn apart  
The bonds that bound him to being.  
Oh, how horribly I realized  
How I was torn away  
From what bound me throughout my life  
And worldly things.  
I accepted it,  
Because I had to feel  
How new threads can bind me to higher realms  
Only when loosened,  
What only delusion and error have begotten.  
But I hope through myself  
To invent the bonds of new life.  
0, how cruel is your teaching.  
It takes away everything else  
And also the last refuge of striving,  
It takes away the human being itself.  
If not I myself,  
If what is foreign to me  
Rests in me as another being,  
Should bring me salvation,  
Then the bridge falters,  
Which should lead me out of this worldly delusion  
Into another realm of truth.

BENEDICTUS:  
You imagine yourself rejected  
By your lofty spiritual goal  
And yet you are so close to it.  
You feel how the heaviest burden  
Of your own being's tool.  
You feel lonely and alien  
In world events, in the realm of truth,  
And your wings seem lame to you,  
Which should carry you to other worlds.  
You only need that faith,  
Which you can give yourself,  
Faith in the power of the soul,  
Which seeks the stones for a new existence  
From shattered life force,  
And which wants to see in solitude  
The light that shines from darkness.  
You will seek, because you must.  
Instead of another greeting, let me part from you today with these words.  
The spiritual powers that I am privileged to serve,  
The spiritual powers I am privileged to serve,  
You sense them near you,  
Even if you want to deny it.  
First image Fifth image

CAPESIUS:  
He leaves and leaves me alone in my misery  
And my powerlessness.  
Oh, if I did not already know  
That people of his kind  
Speak more through deeds  
Than through meaningful words,  
I could not understand his behavior.  
But as it is, it is clear to me  
How I am to interpret his departure.