There are always debates about how the world will end; will it be a flood or fire or a bomb or just Indian politics? In the yogic lore, they say the human body has already reached the last point of evolution. Shiva, the Adiyogi, very casually said, “The evolutionary process of the human body is over, unless some significant changes happen in the solar system.”
It is uncanny that today’s neuroscientists are saying there is no way a human being can get any more brainy than the way he is right now. He can only get to use his brain better, but he cannot grow it further. If you increase the number of neurons, the communication between them will not be coherent. If you increase the size of the neurons, it will not be sustainable because the brain is a very high energy-consuming part of the body. The amount of wiring that would go into it would consume too much energy.
The only way a human being can get more intelligent is by creating more coherence. If that is achieved, one will seem to be more intelligent, but actually it is only better utilisation; no enhancement of brain has really happened. About three years ago, IIT-Delhi made a survey of people who have been practicing Shambhavi Mahamudra for over three months and they said, “The coherence between the right and the left brain is phenomenally improved in three months of practice.”
This body is just a product that has been crafted out of the solar potter’s wheel, and your body has to be in sync with the solar system to function at its optimum. Every practice that is taught in yoga always takes into consideration the cycles of the sun and moon, and variations that occur because it is in collaboration with the sun, the moon and the planet, that this body is created. All life upon this planet is solar-powered, and we are here now only because our mothers’ bodies were in sync with the lunar cycles; and there is a very direct connection between the way the planet spins and what happens in the human system on many different levels.
For example, the earth’s equator is divided into 360 degrees, and each degree is further divided into 60 minutes. One minute represents one nautical mile, so the circumference of the earth at the equator is 21,600 nautical miles—and that’s how many breaths you take per day. If you are healthy and well, you breathe 15 times per minute, which means that in 24 hours, it would be 21,600 breaths.
Similarly, there are 114 major chakras in the system. Of these, two are outside the physical body. Of the remaining 112, only 108 can actually be worked upon, the remaining four just flower as a consequence. The number 108 has manifested in the human system because it is a significant number in the making of the solar system. The diameter of the sun and the distance between the earth and the sun is 108 times. The diameter of the moon and the distance between the earth and the moon is 108 times. The diameter of the earth and the diameter of the sun is 108 times. And hence, 108 is significant in various spiritual practices.
Do you know that the moon is moving about 38 millimetres away from the planet every year? We calculate that in approximately 28,000 years, the impact of the moon on the human system will be considerably reduced, where slowly, the human woman will lose the physiological cycles and the ability to reproduce. The human race will quietly peter out. This doomsday is for humans only. Don’t you think you are the end of the world.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org