Question: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. There are oral traditions about a great flood twelve thousand years ago that wiped out civilizations across the world. These traditions also speak of seven sages, described as heavily bearded men, who brought knowledge back to humanity afterward. Could you speak about that?

Not One Flood, But Many

Sadhguru: What you are referring to may have been a flood that happened four thousand years ago or however many years ago, in a certain part of the world. There has never been a flood across the entire world; there have only been great floods in different parts of the world. In those days, people thought the place where they lived was the whole world.

You are talking about Noah and all that. On an ark, he took two grasshoppers, two earthworms, a man and a woman, probably sheep, goats, camels, and whatever else was needed for their life and work. They did not even have elephants in that part of the world. If they had taken a tiger, by the time the flood was over, it would have eaten everything. Even if they had taken a bird, it would have eaten the grasshopper and the worm—both male and female.

These are symbolic stories. Do not take them literally, as though someone took one male and one female of every species into a boat and saved the world. Maybe they saved the animals necessary for their survival, and over time that became exaggerated into “they saved the whole world.”

We wrote history in a real sense because it is not just a collection of facts—it is about subjective human experience.

There is another story. Pennsylvania is known for floods. A man survived one such flood. Being American, he wrote a book about it, and he sold millions of copies. He became a very rich man, a flood millionaire. Then one day he died—not in a flood. In heaven, new arrivals were asked to introduce themselves. He announced he was going to speak about the Pennsylvania flood. The person next to him warned him, “Noah is in the audience.”

Noah’s flood was also like that—a flood in one particular region. Maybe the Red Sea region flooded. We do not know. But in this part of the world, four thousand years ago, civilization was flourishing. No flood happened here.

Beyond Dates and Dynasties

This whole idea that one flood destroyed the world and civilization was saved by a few people is not how things happened. Civilizations have flourished for a very long time, particularly in this part of the world. We have recorded history going back over 15,000 years. There is archaeological evidence suggesting very ancient cave art in this region, with some estimates going back 45,000 years.

The problem is that we did not believe in taking charge of the narrative. Through folklore, grandmothers told grandchildren what happened. We did not think it was important to record history through dates and factual documentation.

A Culture of Knowing

Our way of recording history was different. History means “his-story.” We wrote history through the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. These are living stories that remain relevant whether today or a thousand years from now. We wrote history in a real sense because it is not just a collection of facts—it is about subjective human experience. We did not believe in writing anything that in some way does not transform a human being.

Today, if you read a high school history textbook, it says this battle happened in this year, this king died in that year, another ruler governed in some other year. What do you do with that? Whether someone lived or died a thousand years ago, what does it mean to us now? But when we speak about Rama or Krishna, they are living characters with relevance to human life even today. Every kind of extreme human situation is explored there, and how they dealt with it still matters now.

In this civilization, there is no concept of doomsday.

Four thousand years ago, a great deal was happening here in science, art, music, mathematics, and astronomy. But we did not take charge of the narrative. Today, in Australia, there is a statue of Sushruta in a medical school. He lived over 2,500 years ago and was the greatest surgeon of his time. Fine surgical instruments were developed. They performed plastic surgery, brain surgery, neurosurgery, and spine surgery. Do you think one man alone suddenly developed all this knowledge? Because the Sushruta Samhita survived, we know about him. There must have been many other surgeons and a broader scientific atmosphere in society.

Texts like the Surya Siddhanta calculated the distance between the Earth and the Moon, the distance between the Earth and the Sun, the diameter of the Sun, the diameter of the Earth, and the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy thousands of years ago. One person could not have discovered all this in isolation. The atmosphere itself must have been scientific and capable. Only a few of these texts survived because invaders burned many libraries.

No Doomsday, No Savior

This notion that one person will save the world from doomsday is a very Western idea. In this civilization, there is no concept of doomsday. There is no belief that one day a fireball or a flood will suddenly destroy everyone. We know floods happen, disasters happen, some generations flourish, and some do not. We have seen enough life to understand that.

Hollywood movies often show the whole world burning down and one Mr. America coming up and saving the whole world. It is a childish imagination that has spread through literature, movies, and popular culture. Here, we see life in its reality. In the same atmosphere, some people can live beautifully while others suffer immensely.

We know this as our Karma—whether life becomes beautiful or ugly is our making.