I Shall Cultivate A Passionate Carving For Knowledge

Let the passion of learning ever grow in me. Let me learn with a consuming passion. Ignorance darkens my understanding. Illumine my mind, Ahura Mazda, as the sun illumines the world. Enable my understanding to fathom the depths of knowledge.

There is heartache in my inner world when my reason leaves it hungry and thirsty. Let me read. Let me muse over the sayings and writings of the sages of old. Let me gather facts and gain knowledge. But let me do more. Let me think.

Let me not, in pursuit of knowledge, be a visionary or a dreamer. Let me not indulge in visions. Let me not be a sentimental, impractical idealist, lest I be led away into the wilderness of puerile superstition.

If the ideal is in truth the real, then, my Lord, keep me back from the visionary hallucination and lead to the truly real. Let not my mind make futile attempts to find out truth wholly by intuition and not by dialectics. Let me not labour to create mystical state by means of intense mental religious emotion to create an ecstatic state of mind. Let me beware of the charlatans and pseudo-apostles who, themselves victims of delusion or working deception, blindfold the ignorant and superstitious, the fickle and feebleminded.

Give me clarity of vision. Sharpen my wits. Let not my imagination hold its undivided sway. Let me sift the true from the false and work upon the facts that emerge. Teach me to separate critically wheat from chaff and find facts. Help me to see with my mind’s eye what my bodily eyes behold not. Give me power to visualize before my eyes what my mind thinks out. Let me not always fill my mind with the knowledge of others. Let me strive to know for myself. Let my learning pave the way to wisdom, O my All-knowing Lord.