Related drafts for the first, second, and third scenes

FERDINAND REINECKE: They want to give us a message that could be significant for us and also for those who called us. So it said in the letter they sent us. I have long been aware of the intentions of the spiritual alliance, which has hitherto kept itself strictly separate from us profane humans, and now considers the time ripe to come together with us. Until now, we were considered too immature to learn even the slightest thing about what it considers its secrets. They are supposed to solve the great riddles that torment the human heart and soul, and also to intervene in human history as the true impulses of progress. I am one of those who have always been averse to all mysterious striving in such matters. I adhere to sound reason, which is accessible to all people without a distinguished esoteric affiliation, and which, in constant progress, provides answers to the questions of existence and shows the goals of human striving. Until now, that spiritual brotherhood regarded people of this kind as mere instinctive beings who had to be unconsciously guided by the high insights of the initiates. It now seems to want to depart from its strict secrecy and seclusion. However, for special reasons, we will not be allowed to penetrate further than what they call the vestibule. I have appeared only so that no one can say that I am stubbornly resisting the hand offered to me. I do not have much confidence in what is to happen.