SERENDIPITY
In the Physical and Spiritual World
HORACE WALPOLE (1717-1797), the renowned man of letters, who wore many feathers on his cap, once found himself at a loss for an exact expression for the faculty of making happy or unexpected discoveries by accident. He then coined the word ‘serendipity’, deriving it from the title of a Sri Lankan fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip”. The word thereupon entered the English language and, since 1754, has become a regularly used expression, since there do seem individuals who possess such a faculty and important discoveries have often been made in this way. One such discovery was of Penicillin, made in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish scientist who shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945 with Ernst Chain and Howard Florey.
But serendipity is not all that it takes to make a great discovery. Taunted by the remark that the discoveries made by scientists were not really their own achievements, but the result of chance, the distinguished Indian scientist, Sir C. V. Raman retorted, “That is true. But chance of this nature only happens to scientists!”
Just as the scientist can make his discoveries only if he immerses himself totally in his subject, so can man discover the awesome splendour of God only if he engrosses himself totally in his Creator
Discovery results primarily from a finely tuned concentration of the mind. The more keenly one’s attention is focussed on any given subject, the more alive one becomes to its hidden subtleties. In this way, the genuine scientist, involved day and night, with the object of research, develops such a close mental affinity for it, that he is able, inevitably, to progress from partial to absolute truths. What holds for scientific discovery is no less true of spiritual discovery, and, for man, the greatest discovery he can make is God. But just as the scientist can make his discoveries only if he immerses himself totally in his subject, so can man discover the awesome splendour of God only if he engrosses himself totally in his Creator.
Discovery of God comes from giving one’s entire mind to God. It is only when one turns resolutely away from this material world in order to contemplate the divine processes of nature that one becomes aware, in every fibre of one’s being, of the magnificence of the Supreme Reality.