The Planetary Placenta

It is fascinating to contemplate how physics and chemistry operate through the biology of our lives, from our very first breath to our last.

The human body is an intricately evolved biological system (beautifully described by Sage Pippalada in the Prasna Upanishad with as much precision as a modern medical text) that operates on the foundational principles of fluid dynamics,  thermodynamics, even quantum physics, before finally succumbing to chemical disintegration.

Consider the foetus in the mother’s womb. It grows suspended in a pool of amniotic fluid, its movements guided by fluid dynamics and circumscribed by the umbilical cord that tethers it to the mother’s system for oxygen. This fluid is far from static; during the final trimester of pregnancy, the entire volume, it is said,  is absorbed by the mother’s bloodstream and replaced with fresh fluid every 24 hours in a remarkable feat of prenatal physiological management.

At birth, a violent physical shift occurs. The foetus , now fully evolved into a tiny human being, is ejected from the fluid-filled placenta into a strange, dry new world to fend for itself.

The umbilical cord connecting the infant to the mother is snapped, but wonder of wonders, another unseen tether is put in place by nature, connecting the newborn to the Life Energy enveloping the Earth. Figuratively, the newborn moves from the placenta of the womb to a planetary placenta.

This connection sustains the newborn  throughout its life  through the process of inhalation and exhalation, continuing until the  final breath.

It could very well be said that  human and animal nostrils so evolved as to remain tethered, unseen,  to the atmospheric  Life Energy, just as the foetus is tethered to the mother by the umbilical cord..

The Prasna Upanishad, through the infinite wisdom of Sage Pippalada, provides a beautiful description of the internal architecture of the human body. The core of his teaching is that an individual does not exist in isolation; we are part of the Atman, or Universal Soul—which, in scientific parlance, manifests as the Life Energy in the atmospheric air.

Pippalada explains that when Prana (practically speaking, oxygen) enters the body, it divides into five vital currents, each governing a specific function: sensory faculties, excretion, metabolism, naadi network  and circulation. He describes the heart as a "lotus bud-shaped" organ connected to 101 main naadis (channels), which branch into thousands of sub-channels, leading to 72,000 nerve centers. Pippalada is astonishingly thorough in his anatomical insights.

How does Prana enter the body? The spark of life comes from atmospheric air rushing in to fill the newborn’s  tiny lungs, where millions of microscopic sacs, or alveoli, separate oxygen from carbon dioxide. The oxygen, Prana, is sent through the bloodstream to all the cells in the body.

While the physical movement of air through the nostrils belongs to the realm of physics, the subsequent gas exchange in the lungs and circulatory system belongs to chemistry.

The lotus-shaped organ Pippalada described acts as a pumping station, while the twin wings of the lungs serve as the processing unit. Both are entrusted with the vital task of extracting Prana from the atmosphere and transporting it through the bloodstream to fuel cellular energy and growth.

While the birth of a human is thus the direct handiwork of this atmospheric pool of Life Energy, death is its mirror image. Death ensues when Prana withdraws from the body.

We normally attribute death to heart failure, cerebral hemorrhage,  trauma etc. But these are merely the proximate causes of the ultimate cause of death: cellular oxygen starvation.

When the lungs fail, they lose the ability to process oxygen; when the heart stops, it can no longer transport it. The brain—the very organ that grants us our strong willpower—is the most vulnerable, as just a few minutes of oxygen deprivation will cause irreversible brain cell death.

Therefore, disease or accidents are not the direct executioners of life. Death follows the systemic deprivation of Prana felt by our trillions of cells. Once a cell is denied the oxygen that energizes it, it succumbs to the inevitable chemical process of disintegration and decomposition.

Whether the withdrawal of Prana is abrupt or gradual, once the cells cross the threshold of oxygen starvation, there is no turning back; they surrender entirely to chemical decomposition.

Where does the Prana withdrawn from the cells go?

Without a doubt, it returns to the celestial pool from which it came: the great atmospheric ocean of Life Energy enveloping Mother Earth. Waiting to give the spark of life  to humanity’s newer generations.