Drafts for the second and third acts

JOHANNES:

Wherever I may turn,
This spirit being follows me everywhere.
I know it connects my soul to a higher being,
But I also know that only those who can summon and banish this creature,
Those who can summon and banish this being,
Those who can see rocks and forests, fields and meadows,
If they so desire, in silent beauty
And sublime grandeur.
I cannot, for when I draw close to nature,
Its spiritual creator stands before me.

MARIA:
Johannes, listen to the voice of your friend, Who has often been so much to you
In your spiritual flight.
The last remnant of self-will,
You must still conquer it within yourself.
Only through it do you feel the spiritual being
Forced to be connected to your own being.
You will feel free in these worlds,
When you have achieved the freedom of your own being.

JOHN:
John cannot do that, as he now
Sees himself before him in the world.
He is united with all that is high, which the spiritual world
Formed from it through struggle and victory.
But I always see Johannes in the midst of all this spirit
Working in another way.
Johannes, as he once was in his youth
Full of passionate feeling in pure humanity
Wanting to enjoy the world and develop earthly spiritual abilities
Through human powers.
I can always enter the spiritual worlds;
yet before my mind's eye
John, who once lived in me, also walks with me,
and, as if dead, yet effective as a soul,
must now follow me at every step.

MARIA:
Recognize, John, how the other
As an illusory figure before your spiritual gaze
Must disappear into nothingness,
If you are able to encounter him
With all the high powers you have attained
On your spiritual path.

JOHN:
The more I strive
defeat him, the more I must see him.
He looks at me with a fixed gaze
and demands that I redeem him
from that soul existence which I, through my spiritual path,
have given him in the land of souls.

MARIA:
Only victory can redeem him,
Which you can achieve over this deceptive form,
If you want to recognize it as part of your own being
And destroy it within yourself.

JOHN:
How can words come from Mary's mouth
That are otherwise only fitting for humans
To speak, who recognize the true spirit of being
Recognized only through thought.
The other John is a being
Who has detached himself from me in the realm of the soul.
I must redeem him, but not defeat him.
And to the sorrow of my soul, I feel
That no help in this work
Can ever come to me from Mary.

MARY:
How could Mary's help be lacking
In this deed, which means your victory.

JOHN:
I see how the other John
Behaves toward you in the spiritual realm and how
Mary behaves toward him.
You are hostile to each other and fight each other.

MARY:
These words sound so terribly serious.
They stir feelings deep within my soul,
Which show me the way to the strict guardian,
Only he alone can now explain to me
The mysterious riddles that occur
In these times between me and my soul friends.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD:
John, filled with spiritual insight,
Must find the way back to earthly work.
He had to pass me by, as the goal
He set himself in spiritual realms,
But even there, as he now seeks the earthly realm again
In human form,
He must cross my paths.
As he once was, before the urge to be spiritual
Could stir in his soul,
So must I now place him before him.
And until he can redeem
John, as he now feels himself, that other one,
Who still exists in the past,
He will miss the unity of man.
But I had to deny you the way
Back to the earthly realm, if you do not seek,
Before you want to work freely over there,
Full clarity in your spiritual being.
I now send you Benedictus,
He may show you from his spiritual treasure,
How you are to appear on earth,
If your work there is to be healing.

MARIA:
My spiritual guide finds me in great distress
I can only mourn Johannes' soul.
In his spiritually bright being, unity was lost
In the pursuit of earthly work.

BENEDICTUS:
Mary, it is now your duty
To create clear light within your soul
About yourself and your friend.
You know many things that give you answers
About how you relate to him from the outside
and how you related to him before.
But people who are united by karma
Each carry a part of the other's being
Within their own being;
Before you yourself can illuminate
John's part in you with clear light of knowledge,
You will rob him of the light
That can create the unity of his being.

MARY:
So should a person's soul being
Not be completely free from other people
In order to find the way to the highest goal?

BENEDICTUS:
John could well banish the dead illusion from himself,
Which darkens the true field of his spirit.
But then he would have to free himself completely from you
And he will not want to choose this path.
Therefore, create the spiritual world within yourself
Striving toward the full realm of light;
You will then find within your earthly shell
What enables you, together with Johannes,
To find the goal you are to serve.

MARY:
So advise me, wise power of the guide,
How I can strive for the full light.

BENEDICTUS:
With strong will you shall destroy
The memory of earthly life within you.
Up to the point where you this time
Created the earth as your dwelling place,
Strive to guide the flow of thoughts.
And then, in the night of your soul, repress
What you know of yourself in this life.
Drive all personal feelings into nothingness
And seek, even when you feel lost,
What finds you then may give you light.

MARIA:
So may my soul strive
To faithfully follow the guide's advice.

CAPESIUS:
In spirit I can now find myself.
I may think nature in its foundations
And I find souls everywhere,
Where once I could only seek thoughts.
Thought images once seemed great to me.
They gave me exaltation when I saw them
At work in the stream of human becoming.
But the spiritual beings that I now
Am to see in the source region of existence,
Seem to me to be meaningless,
And all meaning of existence loses its value
When I am supposed to think of the origin in this way.

LUCIFER:
Consider how completely foreign to your own nature
The content of thought presented itself to you,
Which you acquired in your fervent research.
And how akin to the core of your own being
The spirit world is, which now
Appears vividly before your mind's eye.

CAPESIUS:
But I can only feel oppressed in a world
That is supposed to exist and function
According to the goals of such beings as I can see them.
My own being loses all value to me,
When it proves itself to me as part of this world.

JOHANNES: What do you want, confusing spirit waves?

(Maria approaches).

Longing lives in my soul to see noble nature again as I saw it before such haunting came between me and it. There she was to me, the enigmatic goddess. I was allowed to ponder her silent nature and her depths. O mysterious landscape, what would you be to me if, as soon as I look at you, you did not conjure up a host of mysterious beings before the eye of my soul?

MARIA: Reflect, Johannes. It was your own soul that lured you away from that form of nature observation that remained silent to you when your enigmatic soul spoke to you.

JOHANNES: It was the arrogance reigning in the depths of my soul that lured me away from the silent gestures of worldly existence to listen to the language of the spirit. How often does a voice within me admonish me that I should have remained in the enjoyment of the gesture and rejected the enticing words that came from Benedictus.

MARY: Whether there was pride in your heart at that time is not good to ponder now. If this pride appeared to you as something that was within you, you would now have enough strength to cast it out of yourself.

But it is ingratitude, deep ingratitude, that now reigns within you against the wise guidance of fate, which brought you what your soul needed at the right hour.

JOHN: That is why I cannot fully believe in this necessity. Benedictus wants souls for his goals. He must want this. With him, this is good. Whether it is also good for all souls who, drawn by his wisdom, come into his realm: my soul is still too immature to recognize this.

MARY: In this time, you must no longer fall into such brooding. This kind of thinking has its place in the realm of the senses. Where you now stand, you should recognize that in Benedictus lives the spirit that can speak to you from millennia. He wants nothing for himself, he only shows you what you should want if you want to follow your own nature.

JOHN:
Mary, look, John is standing there after all,
Still young in years, he shows himself,
His soul is full of fresh life
And his limbs are powerful.
He approaches Mary.
A noble inclination blazes in his soul,
His heart is full of beautiful love.
Then Benedictus steps up beside them.
He appropriates the best powers of the self,
He endows John with high powers of wisdom.
He allows a higher being to arise in him,
The awakening of the soul
But this being tears like a flower from its root
Recognition in John of true human nature.
But this remains standing.
It cannot age;
It must hide itself,
Because it cannot destroy itself.

MARY: For this moment, his own self is extinguished. What he has experienced since those days when Benedictus first came to him, he has forgotten for himself. And other spirits look through him at his youth. He is not yet with the full power of his self in his acquired spiritual being. With a foreign consciousness, he sees only himself. I must call him to himself.

John's spiritual ingenuity
In the depths of the soul, rich in knowledge
Powerful in the forces of spiritual imagery.
O behold how they weave, shining in the vastness
And unite themselves poetically with your being,
So that the noble visionary power of his self
May know itself in the spiritual realm:
Recognize courageously how they strive
To create you in the higher sense.
Thus find yourself, comprehending yourself, in them.