OSHO EXPLAINS HOW BREATHING WITH AWARENESS OF THE NAVEL WILL DEVELOP OUR INNER SILENCE , STRENGHT AND COURAGE……
Life-energy is flowing from all directions but those whose navel centers are not open will be deprived of that flow. They will not even know about it. They will not even realize that this energy was there and could have affected them, that there was something hidden within them which could have been opened.
They will not even know this. This flowering of the navel, which has been called a lotus since ancient days, is called a lotus because it has the possibility of opening -- some life-energy may open it. One needs some preparation for this. For this our center should be available to the open sky and we should give our attention to it. Then life-energy which is available to us can reach the navel center and give it life. I told you a few things about this in the morning.
How will it be possible, how can it become possible, that the center of our life becomes a blossomed flower, so that whatever invisible energy streams are coming from all around can make connections with it? In what way will it happen? There are a few things I have remembered which I will talk to you about now, tonight, so that tomorrow we can talk about the second point.
The first point: your breathing.... The deeper it is, the more you can become capable of working on your navel and developing it. But we have no idea about it. We do not even know how much we are breathing or how little we are breathing -- or how much is necessary. The more we become worried, the more we become full of thoughts. You may be unaware that the more loaded the brain becomes, the less the flow of breathing is. It becomes obstructed.
Have you ever observed that breathing moves in one way when you are angry and in a different way when you are peaceful? Have you ever observed that if there is an intense sexual desire in the mind the breathing moves in a certain way, but if the mind is filled with beautiful feelings then the breathing moves in a different way? Have you ever observed that a sick person's breathing moves in a certain way and a healthy person's breathing moves in a different way? The flow of the breath changes moment to moment according to the state of your mind.
The contrary is also true. If the flow of your breath is absolutely harmonious, then it changes the state of your mind. Either you change the mind and the breath changes, or you change the breath and it affects the mind.
For the person who wants to develop and influence his life centers, the first thing is rhythmic breathing. While sitting, standing or moving, his breath should be so harmonious, so peaceful, so deep that he should be able to experience a different music, a different harmony of the breath day and night. If you are walking on the road, not doing any work, it will be very blissful if you breathe deeply, silently, slowly and harmoniously.
There will be two benefits. As long as breathing remains harmonious, your thinking will become less, there will be almost no thoughts.
How will it be possible, how can it become possible, that the center of our life becomes a blossomed flower, so that whatever invisible energy streams are coming from all around can make connections with it? In what way will it happen? There are a few things I have remembered which I will talk to you about now, tonight, so that tomorrow we can talk about the second point.
The first point: your breathing.... The deeper it is, the more you can become capable of working on your navel and developing it. But we have no idea about it. We do not even know how much we are breathing or how little we are breathing -- or how much is necessary. The more we become worried, the more we become full of thoughts. You may be unaware that the more loaded the brain becomes, the less the flow of breathing is. It becomes obstructed.
Have you ever observed that breathing moves in one way when you are angry and in a different way when you are peaceful? Have you ever observed that if there is an intense sexual desire in the mind the breathing moves in a certain way, but if the mind is filled with beautiful feelings then the breathing moves in a different way? Have you ever observed that a sick person's breathing moves in a certain way and a healthy person's breathing moves in a different way? The flow of the breath changes moment to moment according to the state of your mind.
The contrary is also true. If the flow of your breath is absolutely harmonious, then it changes the state of your mind. Either you change the mind and the breath changes, or you change the breath and it affects the mind.
For the person who wants to develop and influence his life centers, the first thing is rhythmic breathing. While sitting, standing or moving, his breath should be so harmonious, so peaceful, so deep that he should be able to experience a different music, a different harmony of the breath day and night. If you are walking on the road, not doing any work, it will be very blissful if you breathe deeply, silently, slowly and harmoniously.
There will be two benefits. As long as breathing remains harmonious, your thinking will become less, there will be almost no thoughts.
If the breathing is absolutely even, then the thoughts in the mind totally disappear. The breathing affects the thoughts in the mind very deeply and to a very great extent.
It costs nothing to breathe properly and you do not have to spend any extra time to breathe properly. Sitting in a train, walking on the road, sitting at home -- if the process of breathing deeply and peacefully continues then within a few days this process will become spontaneous. You will not even be aware of it. The breath will move deeply and slowly by itself.
The deeper and slower the flow of breath, the more your navel center will develop. Every time you breathe, the breath hits the navel center. If the breath goes in and out from above the navel center, then slowly the center becomes idle, it becomes weak. The breath does not hit it……..
In the person who totally accepts this insecurity about tomorrow, and waits for tomorrow, faces whatever tomorrow brings, a center starts developing which I call the navel center. Within him a power, an energy, a potency arises. Within him a base arises like a pillar of courage on which his life can grow.
So, on the physical level, breathing is needed and on the psychological level, courage is needed. These two things are basically necessary for the development of the navel center……….
( COMPLETE QUOTE , FOR A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF THE HARA CENTER AND HOW TO DEVELOP IT ):
“ My Beloved Ones,
This afternoon I would like to discuss a few more points relating to the real center of the body. A few questions have also been asked about it.
Neither the head nor the heart but the navel is the most important and basic center of man's life.
Man has developed according to his brain so the direction and the flow of his life have gone wrong. In the past five thousand years we have educated and developed only the brain, only the intellect. The results have been very harmful. The results are that almost every human being is on the verge of madness -- a little push and any person can become mad. The brain is almost on the verge of breakdown -- a little push and the brain can collapse.
It is also a surprising thing that in the last half century, within the last fifty years, almost all the greatest thinkers of the world have gone mad. In the West in the last half century there has not been a single thinker who did not experience some kind of madness. Great poets, great thinkers, great philosophers, great scientists have been found to be suffering from some kind of madness. And slowly, slowly, as more and more of humanity is becoming educated, the symptoms of madness are reaching the common people also.
If a new man is to be created, it is absolutely essential to change the center of man's life. If that center is closer to the navel instead of to the head, it will be closer to the life-energy.
Why do I say this? In this context, it is necessary to understand a few more things. The child which develops in the mother's womb, the foetus which develops, is connected to the mother through the navel. The life-energy of the mother flows into the child through the navel itself. The life-energy of the mother is a very unknown, a very mysterious flow of electricity which nourishes the whole being of the child through his navel.
Then the child separates from the mother. He is born. Immediately after his birth his navel has to be cut and the separation from his mother begins. It is absolutely necessary for the child to separate from the mother otherwise he cannot have any life of his own.
The child, who has grown in the mother and has been one with her body, has to separate from her at a certain point. This separation happens by cutting the connection which he had with her at the navel. When this connection is cut, the life-energy which he was getting from the navel stops totally. His whole being starts trembling. His whole being starts asking for that flow of life-energy which he was getting until yesterday but which today has suddenly stopped.
The pain that the child feels, his crying after his birth is not because of hunger, it is because of the pain of being separated and disconnected from the life-energy.
His connection with the whole life-energy has been broken; the source from which he attained life until yesterday has gone now. The child struggles for life -- and if the child does not cry, the doctors or the people who know, will say that something has gone wrong.
If the child does not cry, it means that he will not be able to survive. That he has not felt that he has been separated from the life-energy can mean only one thing: he is almost close to his death, he will not survive. That is why every effort is made to make the child cry. His crying is absolutely necessary because if he is to live he should know that he has been separated from the life-energy. If he does not know, he is in great danger.
Then the child tries again to connect his life-energy with something in a new way. His life energy again gets connected through the mother's milk. So a child's second connection is through the heart.
Together with his mother's heart, his own heart center also slowly starts developing and the navel center is forgotten.
The navel center has to be forgotten because it has been disconnected, it is no longer related to him. And now the energy which he was receiving through the navel, he starts receiving through the lips. He again gets united with the mother. Another circuit is created and through it he becomes connected.
You will be surprised to know that if a child does not get his nourishment through his mother's milk, if he is not fed with his mother's milk, then his life-energy remains weak forever.
He can be fed milk in other ways also, but if he does not regularly receive the warm touch of his mother's heart, then his life becomes frustrated forever and the possibility of his living long is reduced forever. Those children who are not fed on mother's milk can never attain to much bliss and silence in their lives.
The whole younger generation in the West, and gradually in India also, is becoming filled with great rebellion. The deepest reason for this, the root cause, is that Western children are not being fed on mother's milk. Their respect towards life and their relation to life is not full of love.
From their very childhood their life-energy has received many shocks and they have become unloving. In those shocks, in the separation from their mother, they have become separated from life itself -- because for a child there is primarily no other life than his mother.
All over the world, wherever women are becoming educated, they do not like to raise children close to them -- and the effect has been extremely harmful.
In tribal societies children are fed on mother's milk for a long time. The more a society becomes educated, the earlier the children are separated from their mother's milk. The sooner the children are separated from their mother's milk, the more difficulty they will have in experiencing peace in their own life. A deep restlessness will prevail in their life from the very beginning. On whom will they take revenge for this restlessness?
The revenge will be taken on the parents themselves. All over the world children are taking revenge on their parents. On whom else will they take revenge?
They do not know themselves what kind of reaction is happening within them, what kind of rebellion is arising within them, what kind of fire is arising within them. But unconsciously, deep within, they know that this rebellion is the result of being separated from their mother too soon. Their hearts know this, but their intellect doesn't. The result is that they will take revenge on their mothers and fathers; they will take revenge on everyone.
The child who is against his mother and father can never be in favour of God. There is no possibility that he can be in favour of God because the first feelings which arise in him towards God are those which arise towards his mother and father.
It is not without reason that all over the world God is called 'the Father'. It is not without reason that God is seen as an image of one's father. If the first experiences in a child's life are of trust, gratitude and reverence towards his mother and father, only then will the same experiences develop towards God, otherwise not.
As soon as he is born, a child is immediately separated from his mother. His second source of life-energy is related to the heart of his mother. But at a certain point a child will have to separate from his mother's milk too.
When does that right time come? It does not come as early as we think. Children should remain close to their mother's heart a little longer if their love and heart are to develop rightly throughout their life. They are forced to separate very early. A mother should not separate the child from her milk; she should allow him to separate on his own. At a certain point the child will separate on his own.
For the mother to force the separation is just like taking the baby out of the womb after four or five months instead of allowing him to come out after nine months. It is as dangerous for a mother to separate her child from her milk before he himself decides to give it up. This effort of the mother is dangerous and because of this effort the second center, the heart center, of the child does not develop rightly.
While we are talking about this I would like to tell you something more. You will be surprised to hear it. Why is it that all over the world, the part of the woman's body towards which men are attracted to most is the woman's breasts?
These are all children who were separated very early from their mother's milk. In their consciousness somewhere deep inside a desire has remained to be close to a woman's breasts. It has not been fulfilled -- there is no other reason, there is no other cause. In tribal societies, in primitive societies, where the children remain close to the mother's breasts long enough, men have no such attraction towards the breasts.
But why are our poems, our novels, our movies, our dramas, our pictures all centered around the breasts of women? They have all been created by men who, in their childhood, could not remain close to their mother's breast long enough. That desire is left unfulfilled and now it starts arising in new forms.
Now pornographic pictures are being created, pornographic books and pornographic songs are being written. Now men harass women on the streets, throw stones at them. We create all these stupidities and then later on we complain about them and try to get rid of them.
It is very necessary for the child to remain close to his mother's breasts long enough for his mental, his physical and his psychological growth to take place rightly.
Otherwise his heart center will not develop properly -- it remains immature, undeveloped, stuck. And when the heart center remains undeveloped then an impossible thing starts happening: the work which the heart could not complete, which the navel could not complete, the person tries to complete with his brain. This effort brings even more trouble, because each center has its own function and each center can only do its own work; it cannot do the work of other centers.
Neither the navel nor the brain can do the work of the heart. But as soon as the child is separated from the mother he has only one center left on which the whole burden falls -- this is the brain center.
Education, teaching, schools and colleges are all arranged for the brain center. Then only those people whose brain is more developed and capable make progress in life. A race begins and one attempts to do all the work of one's life with the brain.
The love of a person who loves through his brain will be false, because the brain has nothing to do with love.
Love can happen through the heart not through the brain, but the centers of our heart are not properly developed so we start using the brain. We even think about love. Love has nothing to do with thinking, but in us even love is expressed as thinking. That is why there is so much sexuality all over the world.
Sexuality has only one meaning: it means that the brain is being used to do the work of the sex center. When sex enters the mind the whole of life is destroyed -- and now all over the world sex has entered our minds.
The center of sex is the navel because the greatest energy of life is sex; birth comes through it, life comes through it, the growth of life comes through it. But our navel centers are undeveloped so we are using other centers for its functions.
There is sex in animals but not sexuality, so even the sex of animals is a beauty, a joy.
The sexuality of man is ugly because sex has become a thought process in his mind. He thinks even about sex.
A man can eat a meal, eating is very good -- but if a man thinks about food for twenty-four hours then the man is mad. Eating is absolutely right, it is very necessary, one has to eat, but if somebody thinks about food for twenty-four hours then the centers of this man have become disturbed. He is using his mind to do the work of his stomach.
The food cannot reach the mind, so the mind cannot digest it. The mind can only think, can only contemplate. The more the mind thinks about food, the more the work of the stomach will be wasted; it will become disturbed. Try some time to digest your food by thinking!
Usually you eat your food, and then you don't think about it. The food enters the stomach by itself and the stomach does the work of digesting it. It is an unconscious center, it does its job. You don't have to think about it. But some day be alert and think about it: now the food has reached the stomach, now it is getting digested, now this may be happening, now that may be happening.... You will find that digesting your food has become impossible that day. The more thinking enters, the more there will be a disturbance in the unconscious process of the stomach. Such incidents happen rarely with food -- except with those people who are obsessed with fasting.
If a person fasts without any reason, then gradually food enters his thoughts. He will not eat, he will fast; but he will be thinking about food. This thinking is even more dangerous than eating. Eating is certainly not dangerous. Food is very essential for life, but to think about food is a sickness. When a person starts thinking about food, all growth in his life will stop. He will be obsessed with these futile thoughts.
With sex this has happened. We have snatched it from its proper center and now we are thinking about it.
In this way we have gradually handed over the functions of the three important centers of our life to the brain.
It is just as if a man tries to listen with his eyes or see with his mouth. It is as if a man tries to see or taste with his ears. We will say that this man is mad because the eye is the mechanism for seeing and the ear is the mechanism for hearing. The ear cannot see, the eye cannot hear. If we try to do things in this way the final result will be chaos.
In the same way man has three centers. The center of life is the navel, the center of feeling is the heart and the center of thinking is the brain. Thinking is the outer most of these three centers. The next center, deeper, is of feeling and even deeper than that is the center of being.
You may think that if the heart stops then the life-energy will also stop. But now scientists have come to the conclusion that although the heart may have stopped beating, the person can continue to live if it can be started again within six minutes. After the connection with the heart has ended, the life center at the navel remains active for six more minutes. If within those six minutes the heart can be started again, or if a new heart can be transplanted, the man can live again and there is no need for the man to die. But if life has gone from the navel center then nothing will happen by changing a heart. The deepest and most basic center within us is the navel.
This morning I talked a little about this navel center.
The humanity we have created so far is upside-down. It is as if man is standing on his head, doing shirshasana. A person doing shirshasana is standing on his head with his feet in the air. If a man is doing shirshasana for twenty-four hours what will his condition be? You can understand! He will certainly become mad. He is already mad otherwise he would not have stood on his head for twenty-four hours, he has no reason to. But in our life we have reversed things -- we are all standing on our heads! We have made our head the basis of our life. Thinking and contemplating have become the basis of our life.
Authentic religion says that thinking and contemplating are not the basis of our life -- to become free from thinking and contemplating, to become thought-less, should be the basis.
But we live by thinking and contemplating, and we try to decide our way of our life by thinking and contemplating. Because of this, all our ways have gone astray. By thinking and contemplating nothing can be decided -- food is not digested by your thinking, blood does not flow in your veins by your thinking, your breath does not move by your thinking....
Have you ever thought that no significant process of life is related to your thinking? In fact, all the processes of life slow down and become disturbed by too much thinking. That is why every night you need to get lost in a deep sleep so that all your processes can function properly without you hindering them, and then in the morning you can feel fresh again.
The very survival of a person who cannot get lost in a deep sleep is at stake, because thinking continuously disturbs the basic processes of your life. So for a little while nature drowns you in a deep sleep, it takes you into a state of unconsciousness. All thinking stops and your real centers become active.
There is also a relationship between our real centers. For example, I can be related to you through your intellect. My thoughts may seem right to you, my thoughts may seem impressive to you -- then there will be an intellectual relationship between you and me. This is a minimum kind of relationship. The intellect does not form any deeper relationship.
Deeper kinds of relationships are those of the heart, of love. But the relationships of love do not happen through thinking. The relationships of love happen totally unknowingly, without your thinking. And even deeper are the relationships of life which operate through the navel, not through the heart. They are even more indescribable. It is difficult to even define what kind of relationships they are because we do not know at all.
I told you earlier that the life-force of a mother activates the navel of a child. A kind of electricity keeps moving between the mother's navel and the child's navel. Then throughout his life, whenever that child goes near any woman from whom the same kind of electricity as his mother's is flowing, he will unconsciously feel a certain relationship.
He will not understand at all what kind of relationship he has started to feel, or why. We have been calling this unknown relationship love. We are not able to recognize it hence we call it 'blind' -- love is blind, just as the ears can't see, the tongue can't smell and the eye can't taste. In this way love is blind, because it is arising from levels which are so deep that it becomes difficult for us to understand the reasons for it.
With some people we suddenly feel a strong repulsion, we feel we want to get away from them. We do not understand the reason for wanting to get away from them. Why do we want to get away from them? If your electricity and their electricity -- which is affected by the navel -- is opposite then without understanding it you will have to get away. It will seem to you as if something is forcing you to leave them.
But sometimes you suddenly feel pulled towards a person and you don't understand why. There seems to be no reason for it. Your electricity and his electricity are perceived to be closer, similar, of the same type, connected with each other. That is why you are having such an experience.
In a man's life there are three types of relationships. There are relationships of the intellect, which cannot be very deep. The relationship between a teacher and a student is this type of relationship.
There are relationships of love, which are deeper than the intellect. The relationships between a mother and child, between brothers, between husband and wife are these types of relationships. They arise from the heart.
Then there are even deeper relationships, which arise from the navel. I call the relationships which arise from the navel, friendships. They go deeper than love. Love can end; friendship never ends. We can hate tomorrow those whom we love today -- but the one who is a friend can never become an enemy. If he becomes an enemy then know that there was no friendship in the first place.
The relationships of friendship are of the navel -- they are relationships of deeper and unknown realms. That is why Buddha did not tell people to love each other. He called the relationship 'friendship'. He had a reason for this -- he said that there should be friends in your life. Somebody even asked Buddha, "Why do you not call it love?" Buddha replied, "Friendship is a much deeper thing than love. Love can end, friendship never ends."
Love binds, friendship gives freedom. Love can enslave somebody. It can possess, it can become a master. Friendship does not become someone's master, it does not hold anyone back, it does not imprison -- it frees. Love becomes a bondage because the lovers insist that the other should not not love anyone else but himself.
Friendship has no such insistence. One man can have thousands of friends, millions of friends, because friendship is a very vast, very deep experience. It arises from the deepest center of life. That is why friendship ultimately becomes the greatest way to take us towards the divine. One who is a friend to all will reach the divine sooner or later, because his relationships are happening with everyone's navel center. And some day or other he is bound to become related to the navel center of the universe.
One's relationships in life should not be merely intellectual, they should not be only heartful -- they should be deeper, they should be of the navel.
For example, nowhere in the world is it clear -- sooner or later it will become clear, sooner or later we will come to know -- that we are connected with very far away sources of life-energy which we cannot see. We know that the moon is very far away, yet it has some unknown influence on sea water. Sea water starts rising and falling with the moon. We know that the sun is very far away, but it is connected to life with some invisible threads. The sun rises in the morning and a revolution happens in life! All that was sleeping, all that was lying as if dead, all that was unconscious, starts becoming conscious. Something sleeping starts awakening, flowers start blossoming, birds start singing. An invisible flow from the sun leaves its influence on us.
There are some more invisible sources of life-energy which reach to us in this way -- they manage our life continuously. Not only the sun, not only the moon, not only the stars in the sky, but life itself has a flow of energy which is not seen by us anywhere and which continuously influences and manages our centers. The more receptive our center is, the more this energy can influence our life. The less receptive our center is, the less this energy will be able to influence it.
The sun rises, the flower blossoms. But if we raise a wall around the flower and the sunlight does not reach the flower then the flower will not blossom, it will wither away. Behind closed walls the flower will wither away. The sun cannot forcibly enter and open that flower. The flower has to be in the open, it has to be ready. The flower should give the sun the opportunity to come and open it.
The sun cannot go in search of one single flower -- looking to see which flower is hiding behind a wall so that it can reach it. The sun does not even know about the flowers. It is all an absolutely unconscious life process: the sun rises, the flowers blossom. If a flower is closed inside a wall, it will not blossom, it will wither away and die.
Life-energy is flowing from all directions but those whose navel centers are not open will be deprived of that flow.
They will not even know about it. They will not even realize that this energy was there and could have affected them, that there was something hidden within them which could have been opened. They will not even know this.
This flowering of the navel, which has been called a lotus since ancient days, is called a lotus because it has the possibility of opening -- some life-energy may open it. One needs some preparation for this. For this our center should be available to the open sky and we should give our attention to it. Then life-energy which is available to us can reach the navel center and give it life. I told you a few things about this in the morning.
How will it be possible, how can it become possible, that the center of our life becomes a blossomed flower, so that whatever invisible energy streams are coming from all around can make connections with it? In what way will it happen? There are a few things I have remembered which I will talk to you about now, tonight, so that tomorrow we can talk about the second point.
The first point: your breathing.... The deeper it is, the more you can become capable of working on your navel and developing it. But we have no idea about it. We do not even know how much we are breathing or how little we are breathing -- or how much is necessary. The more we become worried, the more we become full of thoughts. You may be unaware that the more loaded the brain becomes, the less the flow of breathing is. It becomes obstructed.
Have you ever observed that breathing moves in one way when you are angry and in a different way when you are peaceful? Have you ever observed that if there is an intense sexual desire in the mind the breathing moves in a certain way, but if the mind is filled with beautiful feelings then the breathing moves in a different way? Have you ever observed that a sick person's breathing moves in a certain way and a healthy person's breathing moves in a different way? The flow of the breath changes moment to moment according to the state of your mind.
The contrary is also true. If the flow of your breath is absolutely harmonious, then it changes the state of your mind. Either you change the mind and the breath changes, or you change the breath and it affects the mind.
For the person who wants to develop and influence his life centers, the first thing is rhythmic breathing. While sitting, standing or moving, his breath should be so harmonious, so peaceful, so deep that he should be able to experience a different music, a different harmony of the breath day and night. If you are walking on the road, not doing any work, it will be very blissful if you breathe deeply, silently, slowly and harmoniously.
There will be two benefits. As long as breathing remains harmonious, your thinking will become less, there will be almost no thoughts. If the breathing is absolutely even, then the thoughts in the mind totally disappear.
The breathing affects the thoughts in the mind very deeply and to a very great extent. It costs nothing to breathe properly and you do not have to spend any extra time to breathe properly. Sitting in a train, walking on the road, sitting at home -- if the process of breathing deeply and peacefully continues then within a few days this process will become spontaneous. You will not even be aware of it. The breath will move deeply and slowly by itself.
The deeper and slower the flow of breath, the more your navel center will develop. Every time you breathe, the breath hits the navel center. If the breath goes in and out from above the navel center, then slowly the center becomes idle, it becomes weak. The breath does not hit it.
In the old days people found some clues, a formula, for breathing. But man is so unintelligent that he starts repeating the formulas without seeing their meaning, without even understanding them. It is just like scientists finding a formula for water -- H20. They say that with the combination of both, hydrogen and oxygen, water is created. Two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen make the formula H2O. Now if a person starts repeating, "H2O, H2O", in the same way as people are repeating, "Rama, Rama, Aum, Aum", then we will say he is mad -- because what can happen by repeating a formula? The formula is only an indication about something. If you understand what it is about, then the formula is significant.
You can often hear people sitting and repeating the sound of Aum. They do not know that Aum is a formula like H2O.
There are three letters in Aum. They are 'A', 'U', 'M'. Perhaps you may not have noticed that if you close your mouth and say 'Aa' loudly inside then you will feel the sound of 'A' resounding in your head. 'A' is an indication of the head center. If you say 'U' inside then you will feel the sound of 'U' resounding within your heart. 'U' is an indication of the heart. And if you say 'M' inside, the third part of Aum, then you will feel it resounding near your navel. 'A', 'U' and 'M' are three sounds indicating sounds of the head, the heart and the navel. If you say 'M', you will feel the whole force of it on the navel. If you say 'U', you will feel the force going to the heart. If you say 'A' then 'A' will resound in the head and disappear.
This is a formula. One has to go from 'A' to 'U' and from 'U' to 'M'. Nothing will happen by just repeating Aum. So those processes, which take us in this direction -- from 'A' to 'U' and from 'U' to 'M' -- are the ones one must pay attention to. Deep breathing is the first process. The deeper the breath, the more harmonious, the more in tune it becomes, the more the life-energy within you will start arising, will start radiating from your navel.
Your navel will become an alive center. Within a few days you will start feeling that some energy is flowing out from your navel and you will also feel that some energy is coming in. You will find that a very living, a dynamic center, is starting to develop near your navel.
As soon as you feel this, many more experiences will start happening around this center.
Physiologically, breath is the first thing to develop the navel center. Psychologically, certain qualities are helpful to develop the navel. I told you in the morning about fearlessness. The more a man is fearful, the less he will be able to reach close to the navel center. The more a man is fearless, the more he will reach close to the navel.
So in educating children it is my essential understanding that one should never tell a child, even by mistake, that because it is dark outside he shouldn't go there. You do not know that you are harming his navel center forever.
Wherever there is darkness, tell the children to go there certainly; tell them that the darkness is calling them. If the river is flooded, then do not tell the children not to enter it -- because you do not know that the child who dares to enter a flooded river is developing his navel center.
The navel center of a child who does not enter the river becomes weak and feeble. If children want to climb mountains then let them. If children want to climb trees, let them. Wherever they can experience adventure and fearlessness, let them go there.
Even if a few thousand children of a race die each year while climbing a mountain or entering a river or climbing a tree, it does not matter at all. Because if all the children of a whole race become filled with fear and become empty of fearlessness, then although the whole race may seem to be alive, it is actually dead.
In our country this misfortune has happened. We talk a lot about religion but we know nothing about courage.
We do not know that without courage there is no religion whatsoever because without courage the central element of life remains undeveloped.
One needs courage -- so much courage that one is able to stand and face death. Our race talks so much about religion but our fear of death has no limit!
Actually, the contrary should be the case -- people who know the soul, recognize the soul, should not be afraid of death at all because death does not exist. But we talk very much about the soul yet we are very afraid of death, limitlessly afraid.
Perhaps we talk about the soul because we are afraid of death! By talking about the soul we get some consolation that we will not die, that the soul is immortal. Perhaps we talk because of the fear -- the reality seems to be something like this. Fearlessness should develop. Immense fearlessness should develop. So, whenever there are opportunities in life to face danger, they should be welcomed.
Somebody once asked Nietzsche, "How can one develop one's personality?" He gave a very peculiar maxim, one which you could not have expected. He said, "Live dangerously! Live dangerously if you want to develop your personality."
But we think that the more we live in security the better we will be -- there is a bank balance, a house, policemen and military people are there, there is no fear.... We can have a quiet life in all this.
We do not realize that in making these arrangements and these comforts, we have almost become dead. There is no point in living anymore because the only meaning of life is to live dangerously. There is no other meaning to living. Corpses are absolutely secure because now they cannot even die. Now nobody can kill them. Their graves are absolutely safe.
[…..]
We think that the absence of fear is fearlessness; this is a mistake. Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. In the presence of fear, fearlessness is a totally different thing which happens within. It is not the absence of fear. Fearlessness is the total presence of fear, with the courage to face it. But this does not develop in our lives.
This is my suggestion to you -- by praying in the temples you will not reach closer to the divine. But when the adventures of life and fearlessness are inviting you, when dangers are calling you, if you go, you will certainly reach closer to the divine. In dangers, in insecurity, the center which is hidden within you, which is sleeping, awakens and becomes alert. In danger, in insecurity, the center feels a challenge -- and in this situation the center of the navel can develop.
In the old days sannyasins accepted this very insecurity. They left the home, but not because the home was wrong.... Later stupid people started thinking that sannyasins left the home because it was wrong, that they left their wives and children because they were a bondage. This idea is wrong.
The sannyasin wanted to drop security. He wanted to enter the state of insecurity, where there was no support, no friends, no acquaintances, no one to be called one's own. Wherever there might be sickness, death, dangers, no money -- he wanted to enter such a state of insecurity. So the one who chose insecurity was a sannyasin.
But later on sannyasins created a good security, better than the people living in the society. A person living in the society has to earn his living but a sannyasin does not. He is even more secure. He simply receives it. He gets clothes, he gets houses, he does not have to live without anything. The only difference is that he does not even have to earn it. The difficulty and insecurity of earning money is also finished. Someone else manages it for them, someone or other makes the arrangements for them. So a sannyasin became a person tied to a peg. That is why a sannyasin cannot be courageous. A sannyasin seems to be a person without any strength in this world. He cannot show even a little courage.
One sannyasin says, "I am a Jaina." One sannyasin says, "I am a Hindu." One sannyasin says, "I am a Mohammedan." Can a sannyasin be a Hindu, a Jaina or a Mohammedan? A sannyasin belongs to everybody. But there is a fear in saying, "I belong to everybody," because to say that may mean that the sannyasin belongs to no one. Then those who give him food, who make houses for him, may no longer be friendly to him.
They will say, "You do not belong to us. You belong to everybody, so you can go to everybody. We will make arrangements for you only if you are Jaina monk," or, "We will make arrangements for you if you are a Mohammedan monk. We are Mohammedans, so we will make arrangements only for Mohammedan monks."
So the monk says, "I am a Mohammedan," or he says, "I am a Hindu." This is a search for security. This is a search for a new house. They have left the old house, now they want a new house. So these days the situation is such that those who are clever, who want a good house, do not make a house at all -- they simply become sannyasins!
They say to others, "You are not wise. You make your own house, you commit sins and maybe you will go to hell." And they get these people to build a house for them, they live in it, they enjoy the thoughts of going to heaven, they earn virtue -- and they escape from all the troubles of life. So sannyasins have created a security of their own.
But basically the meaning of a sannyasin is a longing to live in danger. Basically it means that there is no shelter, no companion, no certainty about tomorrow.
Christ was walking past a garden. He said to his friends, "Do you see these flowers which have blossomed in the garden? They do not know whether the sun will rise tomorrow or not. They do not know whether they will get water or not, but today they have blossomed in their joy." Man alone makes arrangements today for tomorrow, and then he makes arrangements for the day after tomorrow. There are people who make arrangements for how their grave should be built. Those who think they are wise create the memorials for their dead bodies to be kept in before their death.
We all make arrangements and we completely forget that when a person makes arrangements for tomorrow, he kills this day while making those arrangements. Then tomorrow again he will make arrangements for the next day and he kills that day also. Every day he will make arrangements for the following day and goes on killing the present day.
And there is nothing else except the present day.
Tomorrow never comes. Whenever it comes, it is today. He kills today for tomorrow! This is the nature of a mind looking for security: it kills today for tomorrow. It sacrifices the present for the future. And the future never comes. Tomorrow never comes. In the end he finds that his whole life has slipped out of his hands.
The person who dares to live today and does not even bother about tomorrow, is living in danger -- because tomorrow there may be danger.
There is no certainty about anything. It is possible that the wife who is loving today may not be loving tomorrow. The husband who is loving today may not be loving tomorrow. There is no certainty about tomorrow. Today there is money, tomorrow there may be no money; today there are clothes, tomorrow there may be no clothes....
In the person who totally accepts this insecurity about tomorrow, and waits for tomorrow, faces whatever tomorrow brings, a center starts developing which I call the navel center. Within him a power, an energy, a potency arises. Within him a base arises like a pillar of courage on which his life can grow.
So, on the physical level, breathing is needed and on the psychological level, courage is needed.
These two things are basically necessary for the development of the navel center. If there is something else or if you have some questions in your mind relating to this, I will talk to you about it tonight. But first before this present session is over, I must tell you one more thing.
Seven or eight hundred years ago in Japan they tried to create a different type of person -- they called him a samurai. He was a monk and also a warrior. This is very strange -- because what is the relation between a monk and a warrior?
The temples in Japan are very strange. In these temples, where they teach meditation, they also teach jujitsu and judo and the arts of wrestling, swordsmanship and archery. If we were to go there and see, we would be surprised! What is the need to use a sword in a meditation temple? And teaching judo, jujitsu and wrestling -- what relation do they have with meditation? In front of meditation temples there are symbols of swords! It is a very strange affair.
But there was a reason. The meditators in Japan slowly came to realize that if there is no possibility in a seeker's life of developing courage and strength, then only the brain will exist in that seeker. His other deeper centers do not develop. He can only become a scholar, he cannot become a saint. He can become a so-called knowledgeable person. He can know the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, and the Upanishads, he can memorize them like a parrot, this is possible -- but he has no experience of life. So a meditator was taught how to use a sword and an arrow.
Recently one of my friends returned from Japan. Someone there gave him a statue. He was very much troubled by it. He could not understand what kind of statue it was. When he returned, he came to me with the statue and said, "Somebody has presented me with this statue, so I have brought it here, but I have been wondering again and again what kind of a statue it is. What is its meaning?" It was a statue of a samurai warrior. I told him, "You cannot understand because for thousands of years we have created a wrong understanding."
The statue is of a warrior with a naked sword in his hand. The side of the face on the same side as the hand with the sword, is shining with the reflection of the sword. His face on that side looks like the face of Arjuna may have done. In his other hand there is a lamp, and the light of the lamp is falling on the other side of his face. His face on that side looks like the face of Buddha may have done or of Mahavira or of Christ. There is a sword in one hand and a lamp in the other hand. We cannot understand it because there should be either a sword in the hand or a lamp. How can there be both things in the hands of one man?
So my friend was not able to understand anything. He said to me, "I am very much puzzled. What is it all about?"
I told him that the lamp can only exist in the hand of a person who also has a shining sword in his other hand.
With him it is not a question of using the sword; only weak people, fearful people, use the sword. A person whose whole life becomes like a sword, does not use it. There is no need for him to use it because his whole life is a sword. So do not think that if a person has a sword in his hands that he will use it, that he will hurt or kill somebody. A person only kills when he is afraid of being killed himself -- otherwise no one will kill. A violent person is really only a fearful person. In reality a sword can only be held in the hands of a non-violent person. In fact, when a person himself becomes a sword, only then can he be non-violent, otherwise not.
The lamp of peace only benefits a man in whose being a sword of courage has been born, in whose being a sword of energy, of strength, has been born.
So on one hand the personality should be filled with total strength, and on the other hand with total peace -- only then can an integrated personality, a total being, arise.
Up to now there have been two kinds of situations in the world. Either people have kept lamps in their hands and have become absolutely weak -- if somebody blows out their lamp, they cannot even stop him or ask why he is blowing out the lamp. They will think that if this fellow goes away then they will light the lamp again, and if he does not go away then they will remain in darkness -- anyway there is no problem so why take the trouble to resist? So on one hand, in one situation, there are people who have the lamp in their hands but have no strength to protect it....
India has become one of those weak countries. It has become a weak country because we did not develop the real centers of our life-energy. We simply stayed with the brain and memorized the Gita, and the Upanishads, and the sayings of Mahavira, and went on commenting upon them. The master and disciple went on sitting and talking about thousands of useless things which have no concern with life. Our whole country, our whole race, has become weak, without any strength. It has become impotent.
.... and on the other hand there are people who simply stopped caring about the lamp and took up the sword and started using it. Then, because they do not have a lamp, they cannot see who they are killing in the darkness.
They don't know whether they are killing their own people or others. So they just go on killing and if someone starts talking about lighting the lamp, they say, "Stop talking nonsense. During the time we are lighting the lamp, we could be using the sword. Also one more sword could be made with the metal with which we will make the lamp, so why waste all that oil, all that metal? Life is all about using the sword." The people in the West are using their swords in darkness; the people in the East are sitting there with a lamp but without a sword. And both are crying. The whole world is crying. A right man has not been created. The right man is a living sword and also a lamp of peace. I only call somebody a religious man if both of these things have arisen in him.”
OSHO
The Inner Journey . Chapter 2 - From the Head to the Heart, from the Heart to the Navel (3 February 1968 om in Ajol Meditation Camp ). Hindi translation of Antar Yatra.
The deeper and slower the flow of breath, the more your navel center will develop. Every time you breathe, the breath hits the navel center. If the breath goes in and out from above the navel center, then slowly the center becomes idle, it becomes weak. The breath does not hit it……..
In the person who totally accepts this insecurity about tomorrow, and waits for tomorrow, faces whatever tomorrow brings, a center starts developing which I call the navel center. Within him a power, an energy, a potency arises. Within him a base arises like a pillar of courage on which his life can grow.
So, on the physical level, breathing is needed and on the psychological level, courage is needed. These two things are basically necessary for the development of the navel center……….
( COMPLETE QUOTE , FOR A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF THE HARA CENTER AND HOW TO DEVELOP IT ):
“ My Beloved Ones,
This afternoon I would like to discuss a few more points relating to the real center of the body. A few questions have also been asked about it.
Neither the head nor the heart but the navel is the most important and basic center of man's life.
Man has developed according to his brain so the direction and the flow of his life have gone wrong. In the past five thousand years we have educated and developed only the brain, only the intellect. The results have been very harmful. The results are that almost every human being is on the verge of madness -- a little push and any person can become mad. The brain is almost on the verge of breakdown -- a little push and the brain can collapse.
It is also a surprising thing that in the last half century, within the last fifty years, almost all the greatest thinkers of the world have gone mad. In the West in the last half century there has not been a single thinker who did not experience some kind of madness. Great poets, great thinkers, great philosophers, great scientists have been found to be suffering from some kind of madness. And slowly, slowly, as more and more of humanity is becoming educated, the symptoms of madness are reaching the common people also.
If a new man is to be created, it is absolutely essential to change the center of man's life. If that center is closer to the navel instead of to the head, it will be closer to the life-energy.
Why do I say this? In this context, it is necessary to understand a few more things. The child which develops in the mother's womb, the foetus which develops, is connected to the mother through the navel. The life-energy of the mother flows into the child through the navel itself. The life-energy of the mother is a very unknown, a very mysterious flow of electricity which nourishes the whole being of the child through his navel.
Then the child separates from the mother. He is born. Immediately after his birth his navel has to be cut and the separation from his mother begins. It is absolutely necessary for the child to separate from the mother otherwise he cannot have any life of his own.
The child, who has grown in the mother and has been one with her body, has to separate from her at a certain point. This separation happens by cutting the connection which he had with her at the navel. When this connection is cut, the life-energy which he was getting from the navel stops totally. His whole being starts trembling. His whole being starts asking for that flow of life-energy which he was getting until yesterday but which today has suddenly stopped.
The pain that the child feels, his crying after his birth is not because of hunger, it is because of the pain of being separated and disconnected from the life-energy.
His connection with the whole life-energy has been broken; the source from which he attained life until yesterday has gone now. The child struggles for life -- and if the child does not cry, the doctors or the people who know, will say that something has gone wrong.
If the child does not cry, it means that he will not be able to survive. That he has not felt that he has been separated from the life-energy can mean only one thing: he is almost close to his death, he will not survive. That is why every effort is made to make the child cry. His crying is absolutely necessary because if he is to live he should know that he has been separated from the life-energy. If he does not know, he is in great danger.
Then the child tries again to connect his life-energy with something in a new way. His life energy again gets connected through the mother's milk. So a child's second connection is through the heart.
Together with his mother's heart, his own heart center also slowly starts developing and the navel center is forgotten.
The navel center has to be forgotten because it has been disconnected, it is no longer related to him. And now the energy which he was receiving through the navel, he starts receiving through the lips. He again gets united with the mother. Another circuit is created and through it he becomes connected.
You will be surprised to know that if a child does not get his nourishment through his mother's milk, if he is not fed with his mother's milk, then his life-energy remains weak forever.
He can be fed milk in other ways also, but if he does not regularly receive the warm touch of his mother's heart, then his life becomes frustrated forever and the possibility of his living long is reduced forever. Those children who are not fed on mother's milk can never attain to much bliss and silence in their lives.
The whole younger generation in the West, and gradually in India also, is becoming filled with great rebellion. The deepest reason for this, the root cause, is that Western children are not being fed on mother's milk. Their respect towards life and their relation to life is not full of love.
From their very childhood their life-energy has received many shocks and they have become unloving. In those shocks, in the separation from their mother, they have become separated from life itself -- because for a child there is primarily no other life than his mother.
All over the world, wherever women are becoming educated, they do not like to raise children close to them -- and the effect has been extremely harmful.
In tribal societies children are fed on mother's milk for a long time. The more a society becomes educated, the earlier the children are separated from their mother's milk. The sooner the children are separated from their mother's milk, the more difficulty they will have in experiencing peace in their own life. A deep restlessness will prevail in their life from the very beginning. On whom will they take revenge for this restlessness?
The revenge will be taken on the parents themselves. All over the world children are taking revenge on their parents. On whom else will they take revenge?
They do not know themselves what kind of reaction is happening within them, what kind of rebellion is arising within them, what kind of fire is arising within them. But unconsciously, deep within, they know that this rebellion is the result of being separated from their mother too soon. Their hearts know this, but their intellect doesn't. The result is that they will take revenge on their mothers and fathers; they will take revenge on everyone.
The child who is against his mother and father can never be in favour of God. There is no possibility that he can be in favour of God because the first feelings which arise in him towards God are those which arise towards his mother and father.
It is not without reason that all over the world God is called 'the Father'. It is not without reason that God is seen as an image of one's father. If the first experiences in a child's life are of trust, gratitude and reverence towards his mother and father, only then will the same experiences develop towards God, otherwise not.
As soon as he is born, a child is immediately separated from his mother. His second source of life-energy is related to the heart of his mother. But at a certain point a child will have to separate from his mother's milk too.
When does that right time come? It does not come as early as we think. Children should remain close to their mother's heart a little longer if their love and heart are to develop rightly throughout their life. They are forced to separate very early. A mother should not separate the child from her milk; she should allow him to separate on his own. At a certain point the child will separate on his own.
For the mother to force the separation is just like taking the baby out of the womb after four or five months instead of allowing him to come out after nine months. It is as dangerous for a mother to separate her child from her milk before he himself decides to give it up. This effort of the mother is dangerous and because of this effort the second center, the heart center, of the child does not develop rightly.
While we are talking about this I would like to tell you something more. You will be surprised to hear it. Why is it that all over the world, the part of the woman's body towards which men are attracted to most is the woman's breasts?
These are all children who were separated very early from their mother's milk. In their consciousness somewhere deep inside a desire has remained to be close to a woman's breasts. It has not been fulfilled -- there is no other reason, there is no other cause. In tribal societies, in primitive societies, where the children remain close to the mother's breasts long enough, men have no such attraction towards the breasts.
But why are our poems, our novels, our movies, our dramas, our pictures all centered around the breasts of women? They have all been created by men who, in their childhood, could not remain close to their mother's breast long enough. That desire is left unfulfilled and now it starts arising in new forms.
Now pornographic pictures are being created, pornographic books and pornographic songs are being written. Now men harass women on the streets, throw stones at them. We create all these stupidities and then later on we complain about them and try to get rid of them.
It is very necessary for the child to remain close to his mother's breasts long enough for his mental, his physical and his psychological growth to take place rightly.
Otherwise his heart center will not develop properly -- it remains immature, undeveloped, stuck. And when the heart center remains undeveloped then an impossible thing starts happening: the work which the heart could not complete, which the navel could not complete, the person tries to complete with his brain. This effort brings even more trouble, because each center has its own function and each center can only do its own work; it cannot do the work of other centers.
Neither the navel nor the brain can do the work of the heart. But as soon as the child is separated from the mother he has only one center left on which the whole burden falls -- this is the brain center.
Education, teaching, schools and colleges are all arranged for the brain center. Then only those people whose brain is more developed and capable make progress in life. A race begins and one attempts to do all the work of one's life with the brain.
The love of a person who loves through his brain will be false, because the brain has nothing to do with love.
Love can happen through the heart not through the brain, but the centers of our heart are not properly developed so we start using the brain. We even think about love. Love has nothing to do with thinking, but in us even love is expressed as thinking. That is why there is so much sexuality all over the world.
Sexuality has only one meaning: it means that the brain is being used to do the work of the sex center. When sex enters the mind the whole of life is destroyed -- and now all over the world sex has entered our minds.
The center of sex is the navel because the greatest energy of life is sex; birth comes through it, life comes through it, the growth of life comes through it. But our navel centers are undeveloped so we are using other centers for its functions.
There is sex in animals but not sexuality, so even the sex of animals is a beauty, a joy.
The sexuality of man is ugly because sex has become a thought process in his mind. He thinks even about sex.
A man can eat a meal, eating is very good -- but if a man thinks about food for twenty-four hours then the man is mad. Eating is absolutely right, it is very necessary, one has to eat, but if somebody thinks about food for twenty-four hours then the centers of this man have become disturbed. He is using his mind to do the work of his stomach.
The food cannot reach the mind, so the mind cannot digest it. The mind can only think, can only contemplate. The more the mind thinks about food, the more the work of the stomach will be wasted; it will become disturbed. Try some time to digest your food by thinking!
Usually you eat your food, and then you don't think about it. The food enters the stomach by itself and the stomach does the work of digesting it. It is an unconscious center, it does its job. You don't have to think about it. But some day be alert and think about it: now the food has reached the stomach, now it is getting digested, now this may be happening, now that may be happening.... You will find that digesting your food has become impossible that day. The more thinking enters, the more there will be a disturbance in the unconscious process of the stomach. Such incidents happen rarely with food -- except with those people who are obsessed with fasting.
If a person fasts without any reason, then gradually food enters his thoughts. He will not eat, he will fast; but he will be thinking about food. This thinking is even more dangerous than eating. Eating is certainly not dangerous. Food is very essential for life, but to think about food is a sickness. When a person starts thinking about food, all growth in his life will stop. He will be obsessed with these futile thoughts.
With sex this has happened. We have snatched it from its proper center and now we are thinking about it.
In this way we have gradually handed over the functions of the three important centers of our life to the brain.
It is just as if a man tries to listen with his eyes or see with his mouth. It is as if a man tries to see or taste with his ears. We will say that this man is mad because the eye is the mechanism for seeing and the ear is the mechanism for hearing. The ear cannot see, the eye cannot hear. If we try to do things in this way the final result will be chaos.
In the same way man has three centers. The center of life is the navel, the center of feeling is the heart and the center of thinking is the brain. Thinking is the outer most of these three centers. The next center, deeper, is of feeling and even deeper than that is the center of being.
You may think that if the heart stops then the life-energy will also stop. But now scientists have come to the conclusion that although the heart may have stopped beating, the person can continue to live if it can be started again within six minutes. After the connection with the heart has ended, the life center at the navel remains active for six more minutes. If within those six minutes the heart can be started again, or if a new heart can be transplanted, the man can live again and there is no need for the man to die. But if life has gone from the navel center then nothing will happen by changing a heart. The deepest and most basic center within us is the navel.
This morning I talked a little about this navel center.
The humanity we have created so far is upside-down. It is as if man is standing on his head, doing shirshasana. A person doing shirshasana is standing on his head with his feet in the air. If a man is doing shirshasana for twenty-four hours what will his condition be? You can understand! He will certainly become mad. He is already mad otherwise he would not have stood on his head for twenty-four hours, he has no reason to. But in our life we have reversed things -- we are all standing on our heads! We have made our head the basis of our life. Thinking and contemplating have become the basis of our life.
Authentic religion says that thinking and contemplating are not the basis of our life -- to become free from thinking and contemplating, to become thought-less, should be the basis.
But we live by thinking and contemplating, and we try to decide our way of our life by thinking and contemplating. Because of this, all our ways have gone astray. By thinking and contemplating nothing can be decided -- food is not digested by your thinking, blood does not flow in your veins by your thinking, your breath does not move by your thinking....
Have you ever thought that no significant process of life is related to your thinking? In fact, all the processes of life slow down and become disturbed by too much thinking. That is why every night you need to get lost in a deep sleep so that all your processes can function properly without you hindering them, and then in the morning you can feel fresh again.
The very survival of a person who cannot get lost in a deep sleep is at stake, because thinking continuously disturbs the basic processes of your life. So for a little while nature drowns you in a deep sleep, it takes you into a state of unconsciousness. All thinking stops and your real centers become active.
There is also a relationship between our real centers. For example, I can be related to you through your intellect. My thoughts may seem right to you, my thoughts may seem impressive to you -- then there will be an intellectual relationship between you and me. This is a minimum kind of relationship. The intellect does not form any deeper relationship.
Deeper kinds of relationships are those of the heart, of love. But the relationships of love do not happen through thinking. The relationships of love happen totally unknowingly, without your thinking. And even deeper are the relationships of life which operate through the navel, not through the heart. They are even more indescribable. It is difficult to even define what kind of relationships they are because we do not know at all.
I told you earlier that the life-force of a mother activates the navel of a child. A kind of electricity keeps moving between the mother's navel and the child's navel. Then throughout his life, whenever that child goes near any woman from whom the same kind of electricity as his mother's is flowing, he will unconsciously feel a certain relationship.
He will not understand at all what kind of relationship he has started to feel, or why. We have been calling this unknown relationship love. We are not able to recognize it hence we call it 'blind' -- love is blind, just as the ears can't see, the tongue can't smell and the eye can't taste. In this way love is blind, because it is arising from levels which are so deep that it becomes difficult for us to understand the reasons for it.
With some people we suddenly feel a strong repulsion, we feel we want to get away from them. We do not understand the reason for wanting to get away from them. Why do we want to get away from them? If your electricity and their electricity -- which is affected by the navel -- is opposite then without understanding it you will have to get away. It will seem to you as if something is forcing you to leave them.
But sometimes you suddenly feel pulled towards a person and you don't understand why. There seems to be no reason for it. Your electricity and his electricity are perceived to be closer, similar, of the same type, connected with each other. That is why you are having such an experience.
In a man's life there are three types of relationships. There are relationships of the intellect, which cannot be very deep. The relationship between a teacher and a student is this type of relationship.
There are relationships of love, which are deeper than the intellect. The relationships between a mother and child, between brothers, between husband and wife are these types of relationships. They arise from the heart.
Then there are even deeper relationships, which arise from the navel. I call the relationships which arise from the navel, friendships. They go deeper than love. Love can end; friendship never ends. We can hate tomorrow those whom we love today -- but the one who is a friend can never become an enemy. If he becomes an enemy then know that there was no friendship in the first place.
The relationships of friendship are of the navel -- they are relationships of deeper and unknown realms. That is why Buddha did not tell people to love each other. He called the relationship 'friendship'. He had a reason for this -- he said that there should be friends in your life. Somebody even asked Buddha, "Why do you not call it love?" Buddha replied, "Friendship is a much deeper thing than love. Love can end, friendship never ends."
Love binds, friendship gives freedom. Love can enslave somebody. It can possess, it can become a master. Friendship does not become someone's master, it does not hold anyone back, it does not imprison -- it frees. Love becomes a bondage because the lovers insist that the other should not not love anyone else but himself.
Friendship has no such insistence. One man can have thousands of friends, millions of friends, because friendship is a very vast, very deep experience. It arises from the deepest center of life. That is why friendship ultimately becomes the greatest way to take us towards the divine. One who is a friend to all will reach the divine sooner or later, because his relationships are happening with everyone's navel center. And some day or other he is bound to become related to the navel center of the universe.
One's relationships in life should not be merely intellectual, they should not be only heartful -- they should be deeper, they should be of the navel.
For example, nowhere in the world is it clear -- sooner or later it will become clear, sooner or later we will come to know -- that we are connected with very far away sources of life-energy which we cannot see. We know that the moon is very far away, yet it has some unknown influence on sea water. Sea water starts rising and falling with the moon. We know that the sun is very far away, but it is connected to life with some invisible threads. The sun rises in the morning and a revolution happens in life! All that was sleeping, all that was lying as if dead, all that was unconscious, starts becoming conscious. Something sleeping starts awakening, flowers start blossoming, birds start singing. An invisible flow from the sun leaves its influence on us.
There are some more invisible sources of life-energy which reach to us in this way -- they manage our life continuously. Not only the sun, not only the moon, not only the stars in the sky, but life itself has a flow of energy which is not seen by us anywhere and which continuously influences and manages our centers. The more receptive our center is, the more this energy can influence our life. The less receptive our center is, the less this energy will be able to influence it.
The sun rises, the flower blossoms. But if we raise a wall around the flower and the sunlight does not reach the flower then the flower will not blossom, it will wither away. Behind closed walls the flower will wither away. The sun cannot forcibly enter and open that flower. The flower has to be in the open, it has to be ready. The flower should give the sun the opportunity to come and open it.
The sun cannot go in search of one single flower -- looking to see which flower is hiding behind a wall so that it can reach it. The sun does not even know about the flowers. It is all an absolutely unconscious life process: the sun rises, the flowers blossom. If a flower is closed inside a wall, it will not blossom, it will wither away and die.
Life-energy is flowing from all directions but those whose navel centers are not open will be deprived of that flow.
They will not even know about it. They will not even realize that this energy was there and could have affected them, that there was something hidden within them which could have been opened. They will not even know this.
This flowering of the navel, which has been called a lotus since ancient days, is called a lotus because it has the possibility of opening -- some life-energy may open it. One needs some preparation for this. For this our center should be available to the open sky and we should give our attention to it. Then life-energy which is available to us can reach the navel center and give it life. I told you a few things about this in the morning.
How will it be possible, how can it become possible, that the center of our life becomes a blossomed flower, so that whatever invisible energy streams are coming from all around can make connections with it? In what way will it happen? There are a few things I have remembered which I will talk to you about now, tonight, so that tomorrow we can talk about the second point.
The first point: your breathing.... The deeper it is, the more you can become capable of working on your navel and developing it. But we have no idea about it. We do not even know how much we are breathing or how little we are breathing -- or how much is necessary. The more we become worried, the more we become full of thoughts. You may be unaware that the more loaded the brain becomes, the less the flow of breathing is. It becomes obstructed.
Have you ever observed that breathing moves in one way when you are angry and in a different way when you are peaceful? Have you ever observed that if there is an intense sexual desire in the mind the breathing moves in a certain way, but if the mind is filled with beautiful feelings then the breathing moves in a different way? Have you ever observed that a sick person's breathing moves in a certain way and a healthy person's breathing moves in a different way? The flow of the breath changes moment to moment according to the state of your mind.
The contrary is also true. If the flow of your breath is absolutely harmonious, then it changes the state of your mind. Either you change the mind and the breath changes, or you change the breath and it affects the mind.
For the person who wants to develop and influence his life centers, the first thing is rhythmic breathing. While sitting, standing or moving, his breath should be so harmonious, so peaceful, so deep that he should be able to experience a different music, a different harmony of the breath day and night. If you are walking on the road, not doing any work, it will be very blissful if you breathe deeply, silently, slowly and harmoniously.
There will be two benefits. As long as breathing remains harmonious, your thinking will become less, there will be almost no thoughts. If the breathing is absolutely even, then the thoughts in the mind totally disappear.
The breathing affects the thoughts in the mind very deeply and to a very great extent. It costs nothing to breathe properly and you do not have to spend any extra time to breathe properly. Sitting in a train, walking on the road, sitting at home -- if the process of breathing deeply and peacefully continues then within a few days this process will become spontaneous. You will not even be aware of it. The breath will move deeply and slowly by itself.
The deeper and slower the flow of breath, the more your navel center will develop. Every time you breathe, the breath hits the navel center. If the breath goes in and out from above the navel center, then slowly the center becomes idle, it becomes weak. The breath does not hit it.
In the old days people found some clues, a formula, for breathing. But man is so unintelligent that he starts repeating the formulas without seeing their meaning, without even understanding them. It is just like scientists finding a formula for water -- H20. They say that with the combination of both, hydrogen and oxygen, water is created. Two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen make the formula H2O. Now if a person starts repeating, "H2O, H2O", in the same way as people are repeating, "Rama, Rama, Aum, Aum", then we will say he is mad -- because what can happen by repeating a formula? The formula is only an indication about something. If you understand what it is about, then the formula is significant.
You can often hear people sitting and repeating the sound of Aum. They do not know that Aum is a formula like H2O.
There are three letters in Aum. They are 'A', 'U', 'M'. Perhaps you may not have noticed that if you close your mouth and say 'Aa' loudly inside then you will feel the sound of 'A' resounding in your head. 'A' is an indication of the head center. If you say 'U' inside then you will feel the sound of 'U' resounding within your heart. 'U' is an indication of the heart. And if you say 'M' inside, the third part of Aum, then you will feel it resounding near your navel. 'A', 'U' and 'M' are three sounds indicating sounds of the head, the heart and the navel. If you say 'M', you will feel the whole force of it on the navel. If you say 'U', you will feel the force going to the heart. If you say 'A' then 'A' will resound in the head and disappear.
This is a formula. One has to go from 'A' to 'U' and from 'U' to 'M'. Nothing will happen by just repeating Aum. So those processes, which take us in this direction -- from 'A' to 'U' and from 'U' to 'M' -- are the ones one must pay attention to. Deep breathing is the first process. The deeper the breath, the more harmonious, the more in tune it becomes, the more the life-energy within you will start arising, will start radiating from your navel.
Your navel will become an alive center. Within a few days you will start feeling that some energy is flowing out from your navel and you will also feel that some energy is coming in. You will find that a very living, a dynamic center, is starting to develop near your navel.
As soon as you feel this, many more experiences will start happening around this center.
Physiologically, breath is the first thing to develop the navel center. Psychologically, certain qualities are helpful to develop the navel. I told you in the morning about fearlessness. The more a man is fearful, the less he will be able to reach close to the navel center. The more a man is fearless, the more he will reach close to the navel.
So in educating children it is my essential understanding that one should never tell a child, even by mistake, that because it is dark outside he shouldn't go there. You do not know that you are harming his navel center forever.
Wherever there is darkness, tell the children to go there certainly; tell them that the darkness is calling them. If the river is flooded, then do not tell the children not to enter it -- because you do not know that the child who dares to enter a flooded river is developing his navel center.
The navel center of a child who does not enter the river becomes weak and feeble. If children want to climb mountains then let them. If children want to climb trees, let them. Wherever they can experience adventure and fearlessness, let them go there.
Even if a few thousand children of a race die each year while climbing a mountain or entering a river or climbing a tree, it does not matter at all. Because if all the children of a whole race become filled with fear and become empty of fearlessness, then although the whole race may seem to be alive, it is actually dead.
In our country this misfortune has happened. We talk a lot about religion but we know nothing about courage.
We do not know that without courage there is no religion whatsoever because without courage the central element of life remains undeveloped.
One needs courage -- so much courage that one is able to stand and face death. Our race talks so much about religion but our fear of death has no limit!
Actually, the contrary should be the case -- people who know the soul, recognize the soul, should not be afraid of death at all because death does not exist. But we talk very much about the soul yet we are very afraid of death, limitlessly afraid.
Perhaps we talk about the soul because we are afraid of death! By talking about the soul we get some consolation that we will not die, that the soul is immortal. Perhaps we talk because of the fear -- the reality seems to be something like this. Fearlessness should develop. Immense fearlessness should develop. So, whenever there are opportunities in life to face danger, they should be welcomed.
Somebody once asked Nietzsche, "How can one develop one's personality?" He gave a very peculiar maxim, one which you could not have expected. He said, "Live dangerously! Live dangerously if you want to develop your personality."
But we think that the more we live in security the better we will be -- there is a bank balance, a house, policemen and military people are there, there is no fear.... We can have a quiet life in all this.
We do not realize that in making these arrangements and these comforts, we have almost become dead. There is no point in living anymore because the only meaning of life is to live dangerously. There is no other meaning to living. Corpses are absolutely secure because now they cannot even die. Now nobody can kill them. Their graves are absolutely safe.
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We think that the absence of fear is fearlessness; this is a mistake. Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. In the presence of fear, fearlessness is a totally different thing which happens within. It is not the absence of fear. Fearlessness is the total presence of fear, with the courage to face it. But this does not develop in our lives.
This is my suggestion to you -- by praying in the temples you will not reach closer to the divine. But when the adventures of life and fearlessness are inviting you, when dangers are calling you, if you go, you will certainly reach closer to the divine. In dangers, in insecurity, the center which is hidden within you, which is sleeping, awakens and becomes alert. In danger, in insecurity, the center feels a challenge -- and in this situation the center of the navel can develop.
In the old days sannyasins accepted this very insecurity. They left the home, but not because the home was wrong.... Later stupid people started thinking that sannyasins left the home because it was wrong, that they left their wives and children because they were a bondage. This idea is wrong.
The sannyasin wanted to drop security. He wanted to enter the state of insecurity, where there was no support, no friends, no acquaintances, no one to be called one's own. Wherever there might be sickness, death, dangers, no money -- he wanted to enter such a state of insecurity. So the one who chose insecurity was a sannyasin.
But later on sannyasins created a good security, better than the people living in the society. A person living in the society has to earn his living but a sannyasin does not. He is even more secure. He simply receives it. He gets clothes, he gets houses, he does not have to live without anything. The only difference is that he does not even have to earn it. The difficulty and insecurity of earning money is also finished. Someone else manages it for them, someone or other makes the arrangements for them. So a sannyasin became a person tied to a peg. That is why a sannyasin cannot be courageous. A sannyasin seems to be a person without any strength in this world. He cannot show even a little courage.
One sannyasin says, "I am a Jaina." One sannyasin says, "I am a Hindu." One sannyasin says, "I am a Mohammedan." Can a sannyasin be a Hindu, a Jaina or a Mohammedan? A sannyasin belongs to everybody. But there is a fear in saying, "I belong to everybody," because to say that may mean that the sannyasin belongs to no one. Then those who give him food, who make houses for him, may no longer be friendly to him.
They will say, "You do not belong to us. You belong to everybody, so you can go to everybody. We will make arrangements for you only if you are Jaina monk," or, "We will make arrangements for you if you are a Mohammedan monk. We are Mohammedans, so we will make arrangements only for Mohammedan monks."
So the monk says, "I am a Mohammedan," or he says, "I am a Hindu." This is a search for security. This is a search for a new house. They have left the old house, now they want a new house. So these days the situation is such that those who are clever, who want a good house, do not make a house at all -- they simply become sannyasins!
They say to others, "You are not wise. You make your own house, you commit sins and maybe you will go to hell." And they get these people to build a house for them, they live in it, they enjoy the thoughts of going to heaven, they earn virtue -- and they escape from all the troubles of life. So sannyasins have created a security of their own.
But basically the meaning of a sannyasin is a longing to live in danger. Basically it means that there is no shelter, no companion, no certainty about tomorrow.
Christ was walking past a garden. He said to his friends, "Do you see these flowers which have blossomed in the garden? They do not know whether the sun will rise tomorrow or not. They do not know whether they will get water or not, but today they have blossomed in their joy." Man alone makes arrangements today for tomorrow, and then he makes arrangements for the day after tomorrow. There are people who make arrangements for how their grave should be built. Those who think they are wise create the memorials for their dead bodies to be kept in before their death.
We all make arrangements and we completely forget that when a person makes arrangements for tomorrow, he kills this day while making those arrangements. Then tomorrow again he will make arrangements for the next day and he kills that day also. Every day he will make arrangements for the following day and goes on killing the present day.
And there is nothing else except the present day.
Tomorrow never comes. Whenever it comes, it is today. He kills today for tomorrow! This is the nature of a mind looking for security: it kills today for tomorrow. It sacrifices the present for the future. And the future never comes. Tomorrow never comes. In the end he finds that his whole life has slipped out of his hands.
The person who dares to live today and does not even bother about tomorrow, is living in danger -- because tomorrow there may be danger.
There is no certainty about anything. It is possible that the wife who is loving today may not be loving tomorrow. The husband who is loving today may not be loving tomorrow. There is no certainty about tomorrow. Today there is money, tomorrow there may be no money; today there are clothes, tomorrow there may be no clothes....
In the person who totally accepts this insecurity about tomorrow, and waits for tomorrow, faces whatever tomorrow brings, a center starts developing which I call the navel center. Within him a power, an energy, a potency arises. Within him a base arises like a pillar of courage on which his life can grow.
So, on the physical level, breathing is needed and on the psychological level, courage is needed.
These two things are basically necessary for the development of the navel center. If there is something else or if you have some questions in your mind relating to this, I will talk to you about it tonight. But first before this present session is over, I must tell you one more thing.
Seven or eight hundred years ago in Japan they tried to create a different type of person -- they called him a samurai. He was a monk and also a warrior. This is very strange -- because what is the relation between a monk and a warrior?
The temples in Japan are very strange. In these temples, where they teach meditation, they also teach jujitsu and judo and the arts of wrestling, swordsmanship and archery. If we were to go there and see, we would be surprised! What is the need to use a sword in a meditation temple? And teaching judo, jujitsu and wrestling -- what relation do they have with meditation? In front of meditation temples there are symbols of swords! It is a very strange affair.
But there was a reason. The meditators in Japan slowly came to realize that if there is no possibility in a seeker's life of developing courage and strength, then only the brain will exist in that seeker. His other deeper centers do not develop. He can only become a scholar, he cannot become a saint. He can become a so-called knowledgeable person. He can know the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, and the Upanishads, he can memorize them like a parrot, this is possible -- but he has no experience of life. So a meditator was taught how to use a sword and an arrow.
Recently one of my friends returned from Japan. Someone there gave him a statue. He was very much troubled by it. He could not understand what kind of statue it was. When he returned, he came to me with the statue and said, "Somebody has presented me with this statue, so I have brought it here, but I have been wondering again and again what kind of a statue it is. What is its meaning?" It was a statue of a samurai warrior. I told him, "You cannot understand because for thousands of years we have created a wrong understanding."
The statue is of a warrior with a naked sword in his hand. The side of the face on the same side as the hand with the sword, is shining with the reflection of the sword. His face on that side looks like the face of Arjuna may have done. In his other hand there is a lamp, and the light of the lamp is falling on the other side of his face. His face on that side looks like the face of Buddha may have done or of Mahavira or of Christ. There is a sword in one hand and a lamp in the other hand. We cannot understand it because there should be either a sword in the hand or a lamp. How can there be both things in the hands of one man?
So my friend was not able to understand anything. He said to me, "I am very much puzzled. What is it all about?"
I told him that the lamp can only exist in the hand of a person who also has a shining sword in his other hand.
With him it is not a question of using the sword; only weak people, fearful people, use the sword. A person whose whole life becomes like a sword, does not use it. There is no need for him to use it because his whole life is a sword. So do not think that if a person has a sword in his hands that he will use it, that he will hurt or kill somebody. A person only kills when he is afraid of being killed himself -- otherwise no one will kill. A violent person is really only a fearful person. In reality a sword can only be held in the hands of a non-violent person. In fact, when a person himself becomes a sword, only then can he be non-violent, otherwise not.
The lamp of peace only benefits a man in whose being a sword of courage has been born, in whose being a sword of energy, of strength, has been born.
So on one hand the personality should be filled with total strength, and on the other hand with total peace -- only then can an integrated personality, a total being, arise.
Up to now there have been two kinds of situations in the world. Either people have kept lamps in their hands and have become absolutely weak -- if somebody blows out their lamp, they cannot even stop him or ask why he is blowing out the lamp. They will think that if this fellow goes away then they will light the lamp again, and if he does not go away then they will remain in darkness -- anyway there is no problem so why take the trouble to resist? So on one hand, in one situation, there are people who have the lamp in their hands but have no strength to protect it....
India has become one of those weak countries. It has become a weak country because we did not develop the real centers of our life-energy. We simply stayed with the brain and memorized the Gita, and the Upanishads, and the sayings of Mahavira, and went on commenting upon them. The master and disciple went on sitting and talking about thousands of useless things which have no concern with life. Our whole country, our whole race, has become weak, without any strength. It has become impotent.
.... and on the other hand there are people who simply stopped caring about the lamp and took up the sword and started using it. Then, because they do not have a lamp, they cannot see who they are killing in the darkness.
They don't know whether they are killing their own people or others. So they just go on killing and if someone starts talking about lighting the lamp, they say, "Stop talking nonsense. During the time we are lighting the lamp, we could be using the sword. Also one more sword could be made with the metal with which we will make the lamp, so why waste all that oil, all that metal? Life is all about using the sword." The people in the West are using their swords in darkness; the people in the East are sitting there with a lamp but without a sword. And both are crying. The whole world is crying. A right man has not been created. The right man is a living sword and also a lamp of peace. I only call somebody a religious man if both of these things have arisen in him.”
OSHO
The Inner Journey . Chapter 2 - From the Head to the Heart, from the Heart to the Navel (3 February 1968 om in Ajol Meditation Camp ). Hindi translation of Antar Yatra.
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