Man has ever striven to lift the black, mysterious veil that hangs between mortality and immortality. Instinctively or intuitively he realizes that earth-life, his first conscious existence in his upward career in the great cycle of necessity, is only a preparation for some higher, infinitely grander plane of life and he cannot, will not, stifle his longings to learn of that higher plane. As this knowledge is not "forbidden fruit," provided he comply with the conditions necessary to obtain it, it sometimes happens that some spirit that has "climbed far up the heights of life" in the spirit world returns. Such a spirit was Ahrinziman, whose life is told by himself in this book. Its hero was a Persian prince and, for a brief period, ruler of his nation. Then, 2,300 years ago, he fell by the swords of the soldiers of another claimant of the throne. From his father, Artaxerxes Longimanus, he had inherited the kingly stature, the imperious, powerful will and, alas, the royal vices and passions. From his mother, a Greek slave, he inherited rare spiritual gifts, especially clairvoyance and the power of leaving his body and journeying into the astral world. From her he also inherited a germ of true nobility of character the sprang into life, blossomed and bore rich fruit centuries after he awoke to life on the astral plane. His life, as he recounts its chapters, shows as vividly as words can show, how we live not for time but eternity. How if our deeds have been evil, if we have lived only for selfish purposes, if we have strove only for uur own happiness regardless of others, if we have wrecked the lives and happiness of others in order to bring a few brief moments of imagined jov to our own, we have but accumulated a debt that we must pay to the uttermost farthing before one gleam of sunshine can reach us in the life beyond.
