In the end of this volume, I am returning to the beginning, to my old, dear fable of "Sitara", I had started with. Not much time will pass, before this fable will be known as the truth, and even as the most tangible there is. It is the task of the present century, which has just started, to enable our untrained eyes to see the great, exalted symbolism of daily life and to bring us to the bliss giving and uplifting realisation that there are higher and more undeniable realities than those with which the workdays and weekdays keep us busy. The sketches I drew and published shall serve to prepare for this realisation. Therefore, they are written in a symbolic manner and only have to be interpreted allegorically, if they are to be understood. One would think that it is quite amazing that this seems to be so hard for the common reader. It should not be too much of a hard nut to crack, to figure out something when reading a parable. When I refer to Ardistan as the land of the ethically low and Jinnistan as the land of the high, nobly thinking people, it could not require an almost academic education to see what I mean when I describe a journey from Ardistan to Jinnistan. The reader simply has to transport himself in his imagination from his world of weekdays into my world of Sundays, and this, I would think, is surely not harder for him than to leave his workshop every Sunday, in order to go to church at the sound of the bells. Just as going to church this way frees a person from earthly pressures, I want to free the inner part of my readers from the external pressure by means of my tales. They shall hear bells ringing. They shall sense and experience how a prisoner feels who hears the locks clanging, because the day has come when he is being released. It is is just as easy to understand my books and to comprehend their contents, as it is easy to interpret this imprisonment allegorically. I want my readers to stop regarding life as a merely material existence. This view is a prison for them, beyond the walls of which they are unable to see, to behold the sunny, free, wide land. They are prisoners, but I want to free them. And in seeking to free them, I am freeing myself, because I am also not free, but rather imprisoned since a long, long time ago. At that time, when I was living in prison, I was free. There, I lived protected by the walls. There, everyone stepping into my cell came with good and honest intentions. There, nobody was allowed to touch me. There, nobody was allowed to disturb the development of my inner self. No villain had me in his power. Whatever I possessed and whatever I obtained was my sure and inalienable property, until I - - was released, not for a moment longer! For when I was released, I lost my freedom and my human rights. What others who only know how to talk in materialistic terms refer to as freedom has been a prison to me, a labour camp, a penitentiary, in which I have been languishing by