Serendipity Synchronicity Intuition -my 10 day course

After a brief talk at M.I.T.-Instt of Design, for a mixed audience, I was pleased to hear from the good professors that I could make a proposal on Serendipity as a topic for a 10 day course as a part of 'Electives' they offer every year. Some 11 students joined up on the first day which was good according to the prof in charge, and I began with my first lecture on 14th Feb -Vaelntine's Day. Spent half a day there, lecturing, recapturing for late joiners, discussing, clarifying and amplifying thoughts. Exchanging anecdotes...



There's something very rejuvenating about dealing with boys and girls who are awkwardly teenagd at heart and physiologically young adults. There's something symbiotic because despite my profusion of wrinkled skin, I carry a young man's heart ( something the cardiologist at my yearly check up told me a few months ago -and a strong heart is a young heart in every sense).



So these were my 'Seven Day Soldiers' whom I handled as gawky young folks fascinated by the nearly magical phenomena of serendipity and synchronicity, and impatient to move ahead into terroritories of intuition and beyond towards sheer ESP... they were very keen, punctual and also very open to thinking up new vistas. Within days they were talking about these terms like veterans, and we all decided to start thinking about the deliverables. A few times I stayed back to talk to them, discuss with smaller groups and give the 'deliverables' some sort of shape.



The last 4 days were electric. They all agreed to make a short film, which may have been 3 minutes or less but I settled for 5 mins min. They didn't like my scipt, wherein I had visualized a young yoga-learning executive lady meeting an old yoga teacher on some railways station waiting for a train and through serendipity discovering their common roots. It was full of jargon and perhaps sounded too pedagogical (this they didn't say, but I felt so).



They wrote their own script and in 3 days flat produced, one of the finest films I have seen in my whole career. It may not be an award winning film but the fact that it took a team of 5-7 youngsters, busy with their own studies and what not, only 3 days to produce a wonderful film -touched me deeply. I think it is worth working upon to make a slightly longer version with sound / dialogue but then that is all open to debate.



I was thus very surprised on the final day when three presentations were made by my group of nearly 10 students... one extra long poster with fabulous graphics, the map of the world stretched out with references to serendipity, synchronicity and intuition...that was very ambitious and very clearly expressed too... then a sort of slide show tracing the history of the word Serendipity, with spoken commentary, focusing on one tale by Hazrat Amir Khusrau who wrote the book Three Princes of Serendip, and finally the film. The students who attended the show went wild, and that in itself was a great compliment to my hard work for ten days.



I look forward to more such openings. Two, unrelated students came and discussed at length

the very fascinating topics of 'Eureka' or 'Aha!' moments, and 'Originality' in the creative processes. That opens up entirely new domains....

More later but soon...

Max