Spiritual experiences of APJ ABDUL KALAM in his own words Church Experience: In 1962, Dr Homi Bhabha and Prof Vikram Sarabhai were looking for a site to establish space research station in the equatorial region. These two great scientists visited number of places. The scientific community for space research selected Thumba in Kerala as it was near the magnetic equator within the flow of electrojet and was ideally suited for ionospheric research in upper atmosphere, apart from study of atmospheric structure. When Prof Vikram Sarabhai visited Thumba, the locality had many villages and thousands of fishing communities were living in that area. It also had an ancient St Mary Magdalene Church at Pallithura and a Bishops House. Prof Vikram Sarabhai met many politicians and bureaucrats to get the place to set up an establishment for space science research work. He could not succeed because of the nature of the place. He was asked to see the Bishop of Thiruvananthapuram. At that time, Rev Father Peter Bernard Pereira was the Bishop. It was a Saturday when Prof Vikram Sarabhai met the Bishop. The Bishop smiled and asked him to meet him the next day. In the Sunday morning Service, the Bishop told the congregation, My children, I have a famous scientist with me who wants our church and the place I live for the work of space science research. Dear children, science seek the truth that enriches human life. The higher level of religion is spirituality. The spiritual preachers like me, seek the help of the Almighty to bring peace to human minds. In short, what Vikram is doing and what I am doing are the same - both science and spirituality seek the Almightys blessings for human prosperity in mind and body. Vikram Sarabhai promises within six months, our abode and church will be newly built and given to us. Children, can we give them Gods abode, my abode and your abode for a scientific mission? There was a pin-drop silence for a while followed by a hearty Amen from the congregation, which made the whole church reverberate. Subsequently, the big event took place in 1962. Rev Father Peter Bernard Pereira, the Bishop of Thiruvananthapuram, took the noble decision to dedicate the church in recognition of the national goal for the establishment of the Indian Space Research Organisation at Pallithura, Thumba. We made that church as our design centre, started rocket assembly; design of filament winding machine for FRP product and the Bishops house was our design centre. Later, the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) led to the establishment of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and multiple space centres throughout the country. When I think of that event, I can see how enlightened spiritual and scientific leaders; all converge towards giving reverence to the meaning of human life. New church and new schools were established in record time. Of course the birth of TERLS and then VSSC gave the country the capability to design, develop and produce huge world class rocket system and subsequently, India built the capability of launching geo-synchronous, sun-synchronous and meteorology spacecraft, communication satellite, remote sensing satellite thereby provided fast communication, weather forecasting and also the ability to locate water resources for the country. Today, neither Prof Vikram Sarabhai nor Rev Father Peter Bernard Pereira are with us but the fragrance of their nobility with unity of minds is still with us and will continue for generations.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:36:58 +0000
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