Ninth Act, partial prose

STRADER: It was a deep pain, agonizingly squeezing my soul, that escaped me when I was pushed out of Ahriman's realm and came back to myself; and this pain brought back all the memories of what I had experienced in that terrible realm. And I had to ask myself why I stood before this world power, which settles accounts with human lives and human destinies in order to see how it should direct things so that they happen according to its will. Twelve people were observed, and it was examined how the goal that Ahriman himself had set for my achievement could be reached with them.

BENEDICTUS: Surely you know why the souls of the twelve people were to be shown to you by Ahriman?

STRADER: The pain revealed to me how I myself had been close to a spiritual brotherhood in past lives, and how these people, in their own way, had wanted to promote or hinder my work at that time. I felt that I would continue to have dealings with them for many lives to come.

BENEDICTUS: The world powers direct their actions according to the laws that bring measure and number into being. The signs of this activity are contained in what is revealed to the outer senses. Just as the wisdom of the world once placed the sun in space so that its light passes over the twelve houses of the starry sky to bring about the events that are to be, so Ahriman wanted to bind the power that is inherent in you, like a human soul sun, to the twelve souls that these people harbor within themselves. What he wanted to achieve was to have measure and order according to the model of sunlight to the houses of the starry sky.

STRADER: So I myself, when I now direct my efforts into other channels than those intended by Ahriman, will have to make use of this knowledge.

BENEDICTUS: You could only recognize this when the spiritual discipleship sent you to the right place in the universe at the right time. You had to learn from Ahriman in pain what would give you the strength to continue your work.

*

MARIA: Johannes, you have seen how knowledge that can be gained in the human body is only an insubstantial web of images that are quite distant from world events. Anyone who wants to devote themselves effectively to becoming human must go to the powers that guide the course of events and also the forces of the souls. There he sees what alone is essential, and knowledge will then be for him only what the memory of such experiences grants him; not what he spins as a dream of thought far removed from all being on earth.

THOMASIUS: How often have I sought to acquire self-knowledge in such a thinker's image. The moment in Ahriman's realm = he could give me what gives me the beginning of this knowledge. From now on, I will have to continue to develop this beginning. Thus, my path in life is clearly marked out for me. In the future, I will have to stand before the world as two people. Through your and Benedictus' help, my soul has been granted many things that must reach other people. I will not withhold them from them. I will let what has been entrusted to me work in the world. But nothing of my other human being may flow into this good.

I will work on myself as if in a second world. I will know how unworthy this other human being is, whom my guides have formed in me for the world.

MARIA: Whether you walk in truth or error, you can always keep your prospects open, allowing your soul to penetrate further, if you courageously bear the necessities that originate from the spirit realm.