Serendipity

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) the renowned Englishman of let¬ters, once finding himself at a loss for an exact expression for the faculty of making happy or unexpected discoveries by accident, coined the word serendipity, deriving it from the title of a fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip” (in Sri Lanka). The word thereupon entered the English language and, since 1754, has become a habitually 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 penicillin, made in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish scientist who shared the Noble Prize in Medicine in 1945 with Ernst Chain and Howard Florey. But serendipity is not all that it takes to produce 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!” 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 as he is with the object of his research, develops such a close mental affinity for it, that he is inevitably able 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 in his subject, so can man discover the splendour of the godhead only if he engrosses himself totally in his Creator. Discovery of God comes from giving one’s mind to God. It is when one turns away from this material world in order to contemplate on divine processes of nature, that one is aware of the magnificence of the Supreme Reality.