Chapter 2 Mystery of the Three Centers

Humans have developed according to their minds, so the direction and flow of their lives have gone astray. For the past five thousand years, we have only educated and developed the mind and intellect. The result has been extremely harmful. The result is that almost every human being is on the verge of madness—one more push, and anyone could go insane. The mind is almost on the verge of collapse: one more push, and the mind will break down.

Have you ever seriously considered whether any meaningful process in life is related to your thinking? In fact, all life processes are slowed down and disturbed by too much thinking. That's why every night you need to lose yourself in a deep sleep so that all your processes can function properly without hindrance, allowing you to feel refreshed again in the morning. A person who cannot lose themselves in deep sleep is at risk of surviving, because thinking constantly disrupts the fundamental processes of your life. So nature should immerse you in deep sleep for a moment; it will bring you to an unconscious state where all thinking ceases and the true center becomes active.

The child developing in the mother's womb is connected to the mother through the navel. The mother's life energy flows into the child through the navel itself. The mother's life energy is a very unknown, mysterious current that nourishes the entire child through the navel. Then the child separates from the mother and is born. After birth, the umbilical cord is immediately cut, and the separation between the child and the mother begins.

For a child, separation from the mother is absolutely necessary; otherwise, he cannot possess any life of his own. The child, who has grown within the mother and remained one with her body, must separate from her at a specific point. This separation occurs by severing the connection between him and his mother at the navel. When this connection is severed, the life energy received through the navel ceases entirely. His entire being begins to tremble. His entire being begins to demand the life energy that he had been receiving until yesterday, but which has suddenly stopped today.

The pain a child feels, and his crying after birth, is not because of hunger: it is the pain of being separated and severed from life energy. His connection to the overall life energy has been broken; the source of his life until yesterday is gone. This child struggles for life—and if this child didn't cry, the doctor or someone who knows would say something is wrong. If the child doesn't cry, it means he won't survive. That means he doesn't feel that he has been separated from life energy, which may only mean one thing: he is close to death and will not live. That is why we make every effort to make the child cry. His crying is absolutely necessary because if he is to live, he should know that he has been severed from life energy. If he doesn't know, he is in great danger .

And that is the moment when the child tries to reconnect with his life energy in a new way. That is through breast milk. So a child's second connection is a connection of the heart. With the mother's heart, his own heart center slowly begins to develop, and then the navel center is forgotten. The navel center must be forgotten because it has been severed; it is no longer connected to him. And the energy that was received through the navel, he is now beginning to receive through the mouth. He is once again united with his mother. Another flow is created, and through it he becomes connected again.

You might be surprised to learn that if a child doesn't receive nourishment from breast milk, if he/she isn't breastfed, his/her life energy will be perpetually weakened. He/she can be fed in other ways, but if he/she doesn't regularly receive the warm touch of his/her mother's heart, his/her life will be perpetually frustrated, and his/her chances of living long will be permanently reduced. Children who are not breastfed will absolutely not experience much joy and peace in their lives.

For a child, maintaining close physical contact with his mother's breast for a sufficient period is essential for his proper mental, physical, and psychological development. Otherwise, the center of his heart will not develop properly; it will remain immature, underdeveloped, and trapped. And when the center of the heart remains underdeveloped, then something impossible begins to happen: the work that the heart cannot do, the work that the navel cannot do, one tries to accomplish with the mind. This effort will only bring more trouble, because each center has its own function, and each center can only do its own work; they cannot do the work of other centers.

Neither the navel nor the brain can do the work of the heart. But when a child is separated from his mother, only one center remains, and all the burdens fall upon it—the center of the mind. Education, teaching, schools, and colleges are all arrangements made for the center of the mind. Therefore, only those whose minds are better developed are capable of progressing in life. A competition begins, and then they try to use their minds to do all the work of their lives.

A person can eat a meal, and eating is very good, but if someone thinks about eating 24 hours a day, then he's insane. Eating is absolutely right; it's very necessary. A person must eat, but if someone thinks about food 24 hours a day, then that person's center has been disturbed—he's using his mind to do the work of his stomach. But food can neither reach the mind, nor can the mind digest it. The mind can only think, only ponder. The more the mind thinks about food, the more the stomach's work is wasted; it will be disturbed. Sometimes you can try using thought to digest your food!

Normally you eat your food and don't think about it. The food goes into your stomach on its own, and then the stomach does the work of digesting it. It's an unconscious center. It does its work, and you don't have to think about it. But one day, become alert and start thinking: now the food is in the stomach, now the food is being digested, now this is happening, now that is happening… You will find that on that day, digesting your food has become impossible. The more you think, the more interference there is in the unconscious process of the stomach. Such events rarely happen with food—except for those obsessed with fasting.

If a person fasts without a reason, food will gradually enter their thoughts. They won't eat, they will fast—but they will think about food. This thinking is even more dangerous than eating. Eating, of course, is not dangerous. Food is essential for life, but thinking about food is a pathology. When a person starts thinking about food, all growth in their life will cease. They will become obsessed with these useless thoughts.

You have gradually relinquished the functions of three vital centers of life to your mind in this way. It's like trying to hear with your eyes or see with your ears. It's like trying to see or taste with your ears. You would say that person is crazy, because the eyes are for seeing, and the ears are for hearing. Ears cannot see, and eyes cannot hear. If you try to do things this way, the end result will be chaos.

In the same way, humans have three centers. The center of life is the navel, the center of sensation is the heart, and the center of thought is the mind. Thinking is the most prominent of these three centers. The next center, deeper still, is the center of sensation, and then even deeper still is the center of existence.

You might think that if the heart stops beating, then life energy stops too. But scientists have now concluded that even if the heart has stopped beating, a person can continue to live if it restarts within six minutes. After the connection with the heart ends, the life center in the navel remains active for six minutes. If the heart can restart within those six minutes, or a new heart can be transplanted, the person can continue to live and won't die. However, if life has already disappeared from the navel center, then placing a new heart there won't make a difference. The deepest and most fundamental center in our body is the navel. So I already talked a little about the navel center this morning.

Why am I bringing this up? It's necessary to understand a few more things within this context.

There are three types of relationships in human life. There are relationships of knowledge, which are incredibly profound. The relationship between teacher and student is an example of this. There are relationships of love, which are even deeper than knowledge. These are the relationships between mother and child, between brothers, and between husband and wife: they arise from the heart. Then there are even deeper relationships, arising from the navel. I call this navel-rising relationship "friendship." They are deeper than love. Love can end; friendship never ends. We may hate the person we love today tomorrow—but a friend can never become an enemy. If they become an enemy, then you know there was no friendship in the first place. Friendships are navel-rising relationships—they belong to a deeper and unknown realm.

That's why the Buddha didn't tell people to love one another. He talked about friendship. He did this for a reason—he said you should have friends in your life. Someone asked the Buddha, "Why don't you call it love?"

The Buddha replied, "Friendship is far deeper than love. Love may end, but friendship never ends."

Love can bind, friendship can set you free. Love can enslave someone. It can possess, it can become a master. Friendship doesn't become someone's master, it doesn't detain anyone. It's not imprisonment, it sets you free. Love becomes a bondage because lovers insist that the other shouldn't love anyone but them.

Friendship doesn't have this kind of persistence. A person can have thousands of friends, millions of friends, because friendship is a very vast and very profound experience. It arises from the deepest center of life. That's why friendship ultimately becomes the greatest way to lead you to the sacred. A person who is a friend to all will sooner or later attain the sacred, because his relationship with each person occurs at the navel center. And one day, he is destined to become connected with the navel center of the universe.

A person's relationships in life should not be merely intellectual, nor should they be merely emotional—they should be deeper, they should belong to the navel.

For example, it is not yet clear in the world—but sooner or later it will become clear, sooner or later we will know—that we are connected to a very distant source of life energy that we cannot see. We know the moon is very far away, yet it also has some unknown influence on the ocean; the ocean rises and sets with the moon. We know the sun is very far away, but it is connected to life through some unseen thread; the sun rises in the morning, and a revolution occurs in life! All that is sleeping, all that lies as if dead, all that is unconscious, begins to become conscious. Things that are sleeping begin to awaken, flowers begin to bloom, birds begin to sing. An unseen flow from the sun leaves its influence on us.

There are many more unseen sources of life energy that reach us in this way; they continually govern our lives . It's not just the sun, not just the moon, not just the stars, but life itself possesses an energy flow that is unseen anywhere else and continually influences and governs us—those centers. The more receptive our centers are, the more this energy can influence our lives. The less receptive our centers are, the less this energy can influence them.

The sun rises, the flowers bloom—but if we build a wall around the flower, preventing the sunlight from reaching it, the flower won't bloom; it will wither. The flower will wither behind the enclosed wall. The sun cannot force its way in and open the flower. The flower must be willing; it must be prepared. The flower must have given the sunlight the opportunity to enter and open it.

The sun cannot seek out a flower, to see which flower is hidden behind a wall before it can reach it. The sun doesn't even know what a flower is. It's all an absolutely unconscious life process: the sun rises, the flower blooms. If a flower is confined behind a wall, it will not bloom; it will wither and die.

Life energy is flowing in from every direction, but those whose navel centers are not open are stealing that flow. They don't even know it. They won't even understand that this life energy exists and may have already influenced them, that something hidden within them may have been opened. They won't even know this. This navel opening has been called the lotus since ancient times; it is called the lotus because of its potential to open—some life energy may open it. One needs to prepare for this. For this, our centers should be open to the sky and attentive to it. Then the life energy we can receive can reach the navel center and give it life. This morning, I already told you some things about it.

But there's a reason for that: Japanese meditators gradually came to understand that if courage and strength don't develop in the seeker's life, then only the mind exists within that seeker: his other, deeper centers won't develop. He can only become a scholar; he can't become a saint. He can become a so-called knowledgeable person. He can know the Kippur, the Quran, the Bible, and the Upanishads; he can memorize them like a parrot—that's possible—but he has no life experience. So a meditator is taught how to use swords and bows and arrows.

Recently, a friend of mine returned from Japan. Someone there gave him a statue, which greatly troubled him; he couldn't understand what kind of statue it was. When he came back, he brought the statue to me and said, "Someone gave me this statue as a gift, so I brought it here because I've always wanted to know what kind of statue it is and what its meaning is." It was a statue of a samurai.