The Vision-Dawn⁶

O Vision-Dawn, you are beautiful, amazingly beautiful. You are pure, astonishingly pure. You are self-giving, sleeplessly self-giving. You are perfect, absolutely perfect.

Mine are the eyes that appreciate your beauty. Mine is the mind that admires your purity. Mine is the heart that adores your self-giving. Mine is the life that loves your perfection.

Because of you and your eternal kindness, ignorance-night cannot weaken my vision. Because of you and your infinite compassion, ignorance-night cannot threaten my mission. Because of you and your immortal love, ignorance-night does not dare to challenge my realisation.

Because I sincerely love you, nobody can lord it over my mind. Because I devotedly love you, nobody can enslave my heart. Because I unreservedly love you, nobody can imprison my life.

Each individual has countless problems. I am no exception. But to my extreme joy, O Vision-Dawn, when I encounter serious problems, you come to rescue me and whisper immediate solutions.

When doubt-clouds cover my mind, your rainbow-smile flies down to save me. When insecurity assails my entire being, you whisper, “I shall always be with you and for you — to save you, to illumine you, to perfect you and to fulfil you. I shall enter into you with a most powerful sunrise. Yours will be a security-heart. Yours will be a confidence-life.”

O Vision-Dawn, is there any seeker on earth who does not need you? But alas, there are very few seekers who soulfully aspire to receive you. Most of us want success-glory without the effort-pangs.

I wish to offer an amusing anecdote. Here at this august university Professor William Lyon Phelps once was correcting pre-Christmas examination papers. One unfortunate student had written: “God alone can answer this question. Merry Christmas!” The professor returned the paper with this fruitful message: “To God I give an A and to you I give an F. Happy New Year!”

The same truth applies to most of us. We want our life to be flooded with success-glory, but we do not want to pay the price. Personal effort is of paramount importance right from our journey’s start to our journey’s close. And since there is no end to our self-transcendence, personal effort is always needed. It is an eternal journey, and we are the pilgrims walking, marching and running along Eternity’s Road.

Again, there comes a time when we dive deep within and realise the supreme truth that inside our personal effort what looms large is God’s blessingful Grace. However, His Grace works invisibly. So in the beginning of our spiritual life, we find it almost impossible to see God’s unconditional Grace operating in and through our personal effort. But eventually we do see and feel this.

Again, there comes a time when we realise that success is not the goal; progress is our only goal. No powerful Grace, no fruitful progress. No fruitful progress, no abiding satisfaction. Grace, effort and progress together create a oneness-perfection and fulness-satisfaction.

Each individual soul is a choice instrument of God. Each individual soul has to accomplish something unique here on earth before it passes behind the curtain of Eternity. Each individual soul has a message, a special gift, to offer to Mother Earth. Each soul tries to leave here something divinely inspiring and supremely fulfilling. Before he breathed his last, Beethoven, the supreme composer, offered this immortal message: “I close my eyes with the blessed consciousness that I have left one shining track upon the earth.”

O Vision-Dawn, here we are all seekers, seekers of infinite Light and Truth. As Beethoven most generously enriched the world of music with his music of the Beyond, even so we seekers of the Infinite, with your boundless bounty, shall illumine the world of aspiration and quench humanity’s eternal God-thirst.