# Act not included in the drama

AHRIMAN: I sense young power. Where spiritual gain hardens into memory and refuses to follow its bearer, there my prey is prepared for me. Had he been satisfied with his gain, he would have been lost to me. But now new hope glows within me. I will snatch from him what has become his treasure of pain. Then Lucifer will conquer man, and I will appropriate his development to myself.

MARIA: Oh, how terrible — this danger is approaching. Is there still so much of the base in Johannes that Ahriman can approach him from this side? Now I see him before me as I must see him in order to fight him properly. O my soul, release all your powers from their depths. Benedictus will be at my side; I must snatch Johannes from the power of Ahriman. I recognize my destiny. His hour has come.

(Capesius and Benedictus enter)

CAPESIUS: I thank you for guiding me into the spiritual worlds. When they enter the mind, man becomes a true human being. But now fate decrees that I must prove my high insight in the work assigned to me by Hilarius's foresight. How shall I find my way back into the world of everyday life? I once carried out an activity in this world, but I did everything guided by unknown powers, like a blind man. Now I know these powers. I know how they work in their worlds. But I do not know how their powers extend into this world of everyday life. My previous knowledge of this world is now worthless to me; I see everything as new and unknown. I was able to educate people before because I could not see into the depths of human nature; now I will be placed before people, and from every soul a new mystery will sound to me from worlds that I know exist, but whose powers must throw me off balance.

BENEDICTUS: Self-will still lives too strongly in you. You must recognize how your own being lives in everything that is entrusted to your care. Your own consciousness must submerge itself in the foreign being, and the foreign being will reveal itself to you, just as the joys and sorrows of your own being reveal themselves in the consciousness of the soul. And devotion to the foreign being will reveal the right deeds to your soul in full enlightenment.

CAPESIUS: You clearly express what gnaws at my soul. I feel how my own being expands. When I look at these mountains, at this waterfall, I feel how my own being submerges into everything; but when I pay attention to what the world reveals to me in this submersion, everything seems narrow, almost ridiculous. A world I cannot believe in. The plan of the world seemed great to me when I was allowed to anticipate it in my thoughts; now that I am supposed to recognize it, it seems small and confused to me.

BENEDICTUS: First, with bold courage, seize the world in the places where you have been placed: it will lead you from narrowness into vastness.

CAPESIUS: Truly, had I not learned to attach importance to your words from all that I was allowed to experience, they would not seem great to me now that I consider the contradiction between what I longed for and what I attained.

(Benedictus exits with Capesius. Mary reappears from the background. Lucifer approaches):

LUCIFER: Capesius' mind is confined to his own soul. I will try my art on him.

(Capesius reappears):

CAPESIUS: (initially to himself): Is the world in which spirits reign only there for Holme? I once saw rocks and delighted in their mighty forms: now they reveal themselves to me as memories of the world spirits; but what pitiful thoughts these world spirits had, if this is what remains of them, what I am now allowed to think. The passions of the world spirits are said to flow in this water. How lofty all this seemed to me, when I found only natural laws in them and their beauty spoke only to my feelings ...

LUCIFER: You lack only boldness. As long as you lose yourself and wait for revelation, this world will remain silent to you. Recognize how the powers lie within you that must make it speak. Expect nothing from others; enliven with your powers what you can see around you. Feel happy that they reveal nothing to you: thus you can lend them everything that is within you.

(Lucifer disappears).

CAPESIUS:  
(stands deep in thought):  
Therein lies salvation.  
Empty the world, that I may fill it.

(leaves thoughtfully).

MARIA: The world becomes a battlefield for me. In Johannes, Ahriman fights against me; in Capesius, Lucifer confronts me. I see what he is preparing. Capesius is to be caught in the net of his own world. And to those who are thus caught, Lucifer can give his world.

(Mary steps back into the background):

(Enter: Hilarius with Strader, German, and Romanus).

HILARIUS: My friend is a good calculator. He has clearly proven to me that my father's inheritance and what we have added to it will not be enough to accomplish all that you have planned; but we will never be able to bring the matter to fruition.

(Ahriman appears in a secluded spot with a satisfied, mocking smile).

STRADER: Time will tell.

ROMANUS: You must not think in this way. Time brings counsel, if you first counsel it yourself. You cannot hope that the world will have the slightest interest in a cause that is against its opinion. Why do we have the temple, which is supposed to slowly prepare the world for better times to come, if you want to transform the whole world into a temple today?

GERMAN: He remains the old procrastinator. If Hilarius follows his advice, the most beautiful work will be ruined. We just have to make a start; everything that follows will bring out the goodness of the cause. We need trust; cool reason and all calculation have a deadening effect when spiritual creations are to arise.

(Hilarius and the others exit).

(Mary reappears from the background. Ahriman enters):

AHRIMAN: If all people were Germans, the world would have been mine long ago. I don't need to count him in my calculations. All the more reason to pay attention to the others. I must increase the resistance that Strader encounters.

(exits).