Serendipity - God's Voice Or Universal Mind

I was at a friend’s home when smoke started emanating from a switch board. I quickly went to the MCB panel trying to figure out which circuit breaker to trip to cut off power supply to the the switch board. As I was trying each breaker, my friend kept telling me if the light in the room turned off. That was our verification process. I found a combination of two breakers which worked. And, the danger was averted!

But I wondered later how I could find the combination of those two breakers. Honestly, it was by accident. I was trying to trip one by one when I accidentally brought down two of them, and it worked. I checked again with each one separately and realised that the combination only would work.

Serendipitous indeed! Serendipity, what an interesting word!!

I encountered this term for the first time as a student, when I read a book, whose name I believe is “Science and Serendipity”. It blew my mind to know that a lot of important scientific discoveries happened through sheer chance.

But having experienced it first hand made me wonder what had caused it. Is it the hand of God? Or, is it the universe guiding my hand?

First, let me walk through the steps leading to this amazing occurrence: i) I was anxious to find the breaker to trip, and was completely focused on the job ii) I was trying out each one quickly iii) I was listening to the confirmation attentively, and the moment I heard that the light turned off, I stopped and looked.

That’s it. Focus, effort and alertness. These seem to explain all the stories I had read as well.

Of course, I still cannot explain the source of serendipity. And, of course, I do have a theory. Well, I have a theory for everything. Not “The Theory Of Everything”, though.

My theory is simple - the universe is a gigantic organism and my body and mind are a part of this creature. Just as reflexes work in our body, like closing eyes while sneezing, serendipity could be the universe’s reflexes at work. But usually we are not connected to the universal brain all the time and hence we miss most of these. But in a state of focus and desperation our minds can get connected to the universal mind, and the reflex cascades down to our body and mind in the form of an unexpected action and observation.

Whatever it is, serendipity is one thing that reminds us that there is more beyond this 3-dimensional sensory world that we are aware of right now. Thank God for that.