Hmmm

The striving you refer to is the obsessed attempt to learn all things (religious and spiritual) to the exclusion of all else, including God.

No. The striving to be a master mathematician is merely allegorical and represents whatever striving you'd like it to represent, including striving to know God. The more important aspects of the story are the "master", which represents God, and the classroom, which represents a part of this thing we call "Life" -- the part where God throws something at me to learn.

The story has nothing to do with "the exclusion of all else, including God", for example; such an assertion is, I believe, representative of you attempting to understand my story in the context of Christianity, which assumes that the only path to God is the Christian one. You cannot understand my argument in the context of Christianity, any more than you can define Red in terms of Blue and Green.