Fragmentary drafts for the first, second, fifth, seventh, eighth, and tenth images

HILARIUS GOTTGETREU: It was kind of you to grant the request I made of you. I have called you here to discuss an important matter with you. As you know, the man whose words have had such a clear impact on you is soon to visit our city. I would like to ask for your opinion and advice on how we should prepare to make this visit a success. I believe many of you agree with me that Johannes Thomasius has accomplished a deed that must have a tremendous impact on the spiritual progress of humanity. And if I may express my humble opinion, it is that Thomasius' achievement is the highest that can be accomplished by the human spirit in its earthly journey. I need not make a secret of the fact that my soul has been granted many insights into spiritual spheres through the grace of the rulers of the worlds. Yet I have always felt how necessary it is for humanity that the strictest scientific mind, as the present age loves it, should provide proof of the truths that the seer's eye can recognize, but cannot bring to recognition unless science stands by its side. Through Thomasius, this has been accomplished. The way he has proven spiritual teachings to the world is compelling for every person who wants to use reason and science.

DOCTOR STRADER: I must give my full agreement to these words. I have arrived at my opinion from different circumstances in life than Friend God-Faithful.

But Thomasius also appears to me as the creator of the highest spiritual goods. It is not a man of intellectual dreams who speaks to you in me. That is who I once was. For many years now, I have thoroughly tested my powers against the harsh resistance of matter. I know how the practice of life masters mere thinking, which seeks to penetrate the mysteries of the world through itself alone. But because I know this, I pass judgment on Thomasius' achievement. I know of nothing in the realm of the most rigorous science that would contradict the way Thomasius shows the human soul its true origin from everything we can know today.

JOHANNA LIEBESTARK: The soul that has experienced Thomasius' miracle must feel transformed. Learned and unlearned people alike thirsted for the words he found. Where before was there a bringer of such words of wisdom that spoke to the souls of eternal things, which are indispensable to the human heart, and yet sounded in such a way that contradiction must fall silent? Until now, simple minds that wanted to know about the goals of the world were deprived of all comfort when they had to constantly hear: what you believe cannot stand up to reason and science. That security can penetrate our souls: we owe it to the teaching that Thomasius has given to the world.

FERDINAND REINECKE: What I hear here boils down to welcoming Thomasius as a new Messiah and preparing a triumphal celebration for a Caesar of the spirit. To me, this seems like a relapse into old customs that are no longer appropriate in our times. We know today that what serves progress grows in people's minds, but we do not want a cult of personality.

HILARIUS: We are not talking about celebrations here. We have something else to do. We are contemporaries of the man who has done what will have an impact in the distant future. He has done what can be done by an individual to ensure that it finds its way effectively into people's souls, and this includes finding followers who will ensure that the intellectual heritage he has acquired is put to good use in the right way.

FRANZISKA GLAUBENSWEIS: It seems to me inappropriate that we waste time here with such talk. What Thomasius has done should cause souls to rejoice in their depths. If they did not do so, they would only show that dullness accompanies external progress and that all insight is helpless in the face of the comfortable mind that degrades man to an irrational creature.

STRADER: One should recognize from Professor Capesius's difficult fate what Thomasius has done. Unfortunately, salvation came too late for my old friend. He, who was a luminary of science and at the same time a seeker of the ways of the soul, could still see how people were seized by the pursuit of spiritual light; he himself was powerfully carried away by this pursuit, and already he stood on the threshold of the sphere of the spiritual world. He was granted wonderful insights. But his strength was too weak to reconcile these insights with the habits of his previous thinking. Overwhelmed by what he was allowed to see and at the same time paralyzed by his own powerlessness, he now broods over his existence, as if bound by his own soul forces, which on the one hand powerfully urge him into the spiritual realm and at the same time make him tremble when he has to take the decisive steps.

5th CITIZEN: Anyone who can look a little into the past and into the future can easily understand that people who are passionately dedicated to the welfare of humanity are able to see earlier than others what will really be significant in the future.

6th CITIZEN: The consequences of this new opinion for the human soul are completely uncertain and unpredictable. It is impossible not to listen to the feeling that always calls for caution in matters before breaking with all the good traditions of the past. There is certainly nothing good in knowledge seeking to take possession of things that should be preserved only by faith.

REINECKE: One should not want to set oneself up as the guide of the future. It is our business to enjoy the fruits that humanity's past endeavors have provided us with for the present. Things have always gone badly for those who, in secret brotherhoods of the mind, wanted to guide the destiny of humanity and bring the chosen few to special initiation. I have learned from many older writings about the enticements that such brotherhoods offered to people who were plagued by curiosity. They were accepted and given low degrees, in which they were led to believe that only in higher degrees could they grasp the meaning of all the strange formulas that they had received in the lower degrees as worthless symbolic nonsense. In the higher degrees, the deceived then learned that nothing of value had been handed down to them, and in the highest degrees, they finally realized that the spiritual leaders themselves knew nothing and were either deceiving themselves or others. It seems to me that I could become a strange benefactor of humanity through some of the things I know, by revealing the nature of the confreres, which is a mixture of folly and deception.

STRADER:
It is always the same spiritual sluggishness
And lack of discernment,
that oppose the most beautiful works of man.
The man has now learned
that through alliances that shut themselves off from the world,
much mischief and deceit has been wrought;
so he believes, without examination,
that he must mistrust what he encounters here.
I never belonged to the inner circle,
Which wants to unite us here for genuine progress;
But I thank it for the most significant turning point in my life.

STRADER:
It seems not entirely understandable what can move me
To speak with love of the mystical covenant
and to defend its actions,
even though I must be well aware
of what mechanics means as an understanding
of the interplay of forces in the universe as a whole.
I must confess that it is precisely that fundamental feeling
with which I feel connected to the forces
Which is my own work,
Has repeatedly compelled me to seek
The creative power of the spirit in the natural context.
One can look at the flower of a plant
That one holds in one's hands,
But one can only understand it
When one becomes aware of how, without roots,
Their essence is only appearance
And not its truth.
Thus all natural mechanics are only the appearance of truth
And the full truth can only be found in spiritual knowledge.
That is why souls must also become desolate,
Those who only want to grasp things
What proves to be mechanical about them.
I therefore consider a science to be void
That remains without ascending to spiritual knowledge.
But now a thinking of the spirit
Must soon lose its living essence
If it is unable to drink
From the fountain of life on the mystic path.
If I had not felt connected with my whole soul
To the essence of a mechanism of power
So often,
I might be able to think As that speaker who reproaches me demands.
What I have always felt in my work
Is a bond that unites my own soul
With mechanisms of power
Which sprang from this soul itself.
Those who see their own soul's life
Pouring into the play of forces
And know themselves as soul beings beside their work,
Can truly not think of the mechanism of nature
As soulless.
Behind all sensory existence, beings of wisdom and powers of will
stand alive before him.
But how little he understands of my soul,
who seeks it only in my mechanisms.
He knows how I think,
but he does not know what I experience.

THOMASIUS: In this realm, I encountered a true connoisseur of the laws of the world. What this connoisseur means to the world's judgment cannot be decided, but only he who has come to know him in his true essence can judge him. And he let me see that it would be most fortunate if my work had never been presented to the world. Everything that is in it, and everything that is now applauded by the world, cannot determine its value. For everything that science and thought can judge in such a work can prove to be both good and bad in its effect. And so a creation that is considered by reason to be the best can prove to be truly harmful when its effect unfolds in the course of the world. Ahriman showed me that no one should believe that a creation he has accomplished can ever be separated from him. It remains connected to him. And so it may appear as if I have accomplished something that is good and can now continue to have a good effect. But when this apparently happens in the earthly realm, I will have to work into my work from the spiritual realm, and lead people all the more surely into error because they can believe that they are following what is good. And this will have to happen because Ahriman, through the power he has over me, can guide me in such a way that the effects of my deeds in the future must fall to him. And so, through a work that seduces people with the appearance of truth, I will lead them all the more surely to evil. While I was at work, rushing from conclusion to conclusion in rapture and ecstasy, all the impulses that had long been latent in my soul were able to unfold fully. For since my mind was focused only on my thinking, everything that wildly strove for existence in my heart proliferated unguarded through my self. I believed myself to be in the highest realm of the spirit, and I was in the deepest instincts of the soul. Before I began my work, I had surrendered myself to Lucifer. He played with my thoughts with the most beautiful images, which, however, sprang only from the instinct to satisfy the pleasure of thinking. But while I was aware of this, he planted in the depths of my being the wild urges to which I am now addicted. Karma still allows me to speak about all this as I do. But times will come when these urges will darken my spirit, and I will inevitably succumb to them. And then I will greedily seize everything that follows from my work in the becoming of the world and turn it to the ruin of humanity. For I will have to love Ahriman, and it will have to fill me with joy when I can deliver the world into his hands through my deeds.

The interior of a room in Balde's cottage

MRS. BALDE: One is faced with riddles that can instill fear. How many wonderful things we heard from Capesius. How beautiful it was when he took his soul's revival with him from this simple house. But then he outgrew us. It was no longer possible to follow the flight of his spirit. And now that spirit has completely run away with him.

Felix Balde arrives with Capesius

FELIX BALDE: Wasn't it wonderful to breathe in the scent of the pine forest?

CAPESIUS:
Floods of souls and the scent of nature
The mixture is a sea to drown in.

FELIX BALDE:
It lives in his soul images
A whole world that surrounds him
Like mist; he lives lost in it
But in his images
His own soul is not there.
So his world of images separates him
From everything that other people See with their eyes;
And he hardly feels himself.
You can tell this from his speech
And also from the fact that he has no understanding
Of what others say.

MRS. BALDE:
We can speak to him
And our words become for him
Very strange revelations.
One does not recognize oneself
In what one becomes through one's soul.

CAPESIUS:
I recognize you well, you are
A part of me; you are my life,
You preserve my thoughts.
Oh, you must not leave me.
If I lose you, I will die.
Come with me; I want to think about something.
But I cannot do it if I lose you.

FELIX BALDE: For this life,
this soul will never find its body.

MARIA: Whenever he may find it,
He is a helper in our struggle.

Felix Balde explains why Capesius is gloomy: this had to happen because he already stands in that world of the future and is reserved for it, in contrast to which Thomasius's world is still error. If Capesius were now close to full life, the spirit of Thomasius would be tempting for him; the guardian of the threshold protects him from a temptation that he cannot yet resist.

THOMASIUS: Why does my soul's gaze now place me before this man; does fate want to test me, to see if I still have the power of admiration and am therefore not too corrupt in mind. The feeling of admiration does not develop so quickly — — — — — —

Oh, I have already been allowed to admire him — That alone cannot be the intention. I must have encountered this man once before in a past life, perhaps even many times, and what connects me to him must have something to do with this decisive moment. Do I owe him the strength that makes my entry easier? Can admiration — oh, if only I could meet him as he is now, whether he is embodied or not.

MARIA: And are you sure, Johannes, that this man has remained at his peak until now, that he could not have fallen deeply again? There are many people on earth who once stood high and now seem to have lost what once moved their souls. Perhaps he wanders around the world, shaken by passions. And you would have more reason to mourn his fall than to admire his former greatness.

THOMASIUS: Maria, why are you saying this now? Are there different trains of thought here than in other distant places?

GUARDIAN: Johannes, what now stands before your soul is part of your trial. At this moment, all the feelings and desires that lurk within you are striving to come out. You must see what you are capable of; know what you are like, whereas until now you only knew your surface. You must know how you love the soul that once inhabited this body. You must recognize what kind of love you are capable of.

LUCIFER: Immerse yourself in the deepest reasons of your being. Recognize what has most strongly touched your soul.

THOMASIUS: Yes, I know that the soul that shows itself to me here, I will find again beyond the threshold. It shows itself to me here because I am learning the reasons why I am allowed to love it. Yes, this soul is the one I love most. I loved her in times long past. I am bound to her like no other. So I will find her again, and the fact that she shows herself to me in this form shall be proof to me that I am worthy to enter. It is Theodora. And no evil power has planted this love in me. It is the old instinct toward a revered master that I have felt again in Theodora.

GUARDIAN: Then take my guardian word for your bold venture. Your soul shows you which soul you love most. Test whether you may love her. —

MARIA — THOMASIUS = he realizes that an image of the course of the world has been created in his soul, which comes from the soul; this cannot correspond to reality —

STRADER: These people, who are well known to me in life, what are they doing in this place?

AHRIMAN: They are the same people who were often close to you in life and who were either friendly or unkind to you. They were close to you when you were close to your spiritual brothers in a long-ago earthly life.

Benedictus
Hilarius, Trautmann, Torquatus
Thomasius — Strader — Capesius

BENEDICTUS: The people entrusted to my guidance, and also those who are connected to them by fate, have learned a great deal by passing through worlds that were previously unknown to them and into which they were thrust by what I had to give them as training. But the guidance of the worlds has provided me with new insights.