Chapter 3 The Navel

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. This 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 from the mother begins. Separation from the mother is absolutely necessary for the child; 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 the mother at the navel. When this connection is severed, the life energy received through the navel completely ceases.

How can a person's life become centered within their existence? The navel, which we are discussing, is precisely this primal connection to life. Our most original experience of oneness with existence occurs here. It is not merely a physical scar; it is the source of our life energy, the center of our willpower. To awaken this center, we must treat it in the right way.

The first point is proper diet. Humans are the only creatures whose diets are unpredictable. The diets of other creatures are fixed. Their basic physiological needs and their nature determine what they should and shouldn't eat; how much they should and shouldn't eat; when they should eat and when they should stop. But humans are completely unpredictable; they are completely unfixed. Their nature tells them neither what they should eat, nor their awareness tells them how much they should eat, nor their understanding determines when they should stop eating. Because these human characteristics are unpredictable, human life has taken a very unpredictable path. But if even a little understanding were available, if humans began to live with even a little intelligence, a little thoughtfulness, if their eyes were only opened a little, then changing to a proper diet would not be difficult at all. It would be very easy; nothing could be easier. To understand proper diet, we can divide it into two parts.

First question: What should a person eat and what shouldn't they eat? The human body is made up of chemical substances. The entire process of the body is highly chemical. If alcohol is put into the body, the body will be chemically affected: it will become intoxicated and unconscious. No matter how healthy or calm a person may be, the chemical effects of intoxication will affect their body. No matter how holy a person may be, if they are given poison, they will die. Socrates died from poisoning, and Gandhi died from a bullet. A bullet doesn't discriminate between a saint and a sinner; poison doesn't discriminate between Socrates and an ordinary person. Harmful alcoholic beverages, poisons, and foods don't discriminate based on who you are. Their effects are direct—they enter the body's chemical processes and then begin to work. In this way, any food that causes addiction will begin to harm and disturb the mind. Any food that brings humans into various states of unconsciousness, excitement, extremes, and disturbances is harmful. And the deepest, ultimate harm occurs when those things begin to reach the navel.

You may not know that in naturopathy around the world, mud sachets, vegetarian diets, bland foods, soaked cloths, and baths are used to treat the body. However, naturopathy hasn't yet realized that the effects of soaked cloths, mud sachets, or baths on the body aren't just due to their special properties, but also because they affect the center of the navel. And at that point, the navel center influences other parts of the body. All these things—mud, water, baths—affect the dormant energy at the navel center, and when this energy rises, the person begins to become healthier. But naturopathy still hasn't fully grasped this. Naturopathy believes these beneficial effects come from the mud sachets, baths, or soaked cloths on the abdomen! They do have benefits, but the real benefit comes from the awakening of the dormant energy at the navel center.

If the navel center is mistreated, if the wrong diet or the wrong foods are consumed, then slowly the navel center will become dormant, and its energy will become weaker and weaker. Slowly, that center begins to sleep. Eventually, it almost falls asleep. At that point, we won't even recognize it as an energy center. Then we will only pay attention to two centers: one is the mind in which thoughts flow continuously, and the other is the heart in which emotions flow. We cannot access anything deeper than this. Therefore, the lighter the food, the less burden it creates on the body, and the more value and meaning it will have for the beginning of your inner journey.

The first thing to remember about proper eating is that it shouldn't create excitement, it shouldn't create addiction, and it shouldn't feel heavy. After eating correctly, you shouldn't feel heavy or groggy. But perhaps all of us feel heavy and groggy after meals—then we should know we're eating wrong.

A very great doctor, Kenneth Walker, wrote in his autobiography that, based on his life experience, whatever people eat, half of it fills their stomachs, and half fills the doctor's stomach. If they only ate half of what they normally eat, they would not get sick at all and would not need any doctors. Some people get sick because they don't get enough food, while others get sick because they eat too much. Some people die of hunger, while others die of overeating. And the number of people who die of overeating is always greater than the number who die of hunger. Very few people die of hunger. Even if a person wanted to starve himself, he could not die for at least three months. Anyone can live for three months without food. But if a person overeats for three months, then he has no chance of survival.

There have always been some people whose ideas seem strange to us. There was once an emperor named Nero. He had two doctors whose job was simply to make him vomit after each meal, so he could enjoy eating and drinking at least fifteen to twenty times a day. He would eat a meal, then take medicine to make himself vomit so he could enjoy food again. But what we are doing isn't much different. Because Nero was an emperor, he could have doctors in his palace. We are not emperors, but we have doctors near our homes. Nero made himself vomit daily; we make ourselves vomit every few months. We eat the wrong diet and accumulate all sorts of things. Then the doctor gives us a cleansing, and then we start eating the wrong food again. Nero was a wise man—he arranged a daily cleansing. We only do it after two or three months. If we were emperors, we would do the same thing, but we are helpless—we don't have the equipment, so we can't do it. We laugh at Nero, but in one particular way, we are not different from him.

Our flawed attitudes toward food are becoming dangerous. They are proving to be very costly. They have led us to a point where we can only try to survive. Our food doesn't seem to create health in our bodies; it seems to create disease. It's astonishing when our food starts making us sick. It's like the sun rising in the morning and creating darkness—equally surprising and strange. But all the doctors in the world would agree that the majority of human diseases are caused by a bad diet.

The second thing about food is that your mental state while eating is far more important than what you eat. Whether you eat with envy, joy, or anxiety, food will have different effects on you. If you eat in a state of worry, even the best food can have a toxic effect. But if you eat with joy, it's possible that even poison might not have a full effect on you—that's quite possible. Therefore, your mental state while eating is very important.

So what about you? — You live in worry 24 hours a day. How the food you eat is digested, how existence processes it with your intervention, is a miracle! You have no expectation of digesting it. How it is digested is entirely a miracle. And how you remain alive is also a miracle! Your state of mind should be one of gratitude and joy. But in our homes, the dining table is in its darkest state. The wife waits all day for her husband to come home for dinner, and the emotional malice she has accumulated over 24 hours erupts when her husband eats. She doesn't know she is doing the work of an enemy. She doesn't know she is providing poison to her husband's plate. And the husband, after a long day at work, is also filled with fear and worry—he tries to get the food into his stomach and leave. He doesn't know that this act of quickly ending and escaping from it should be an act of prayer. It is not an act that should be done hastily. It should be done in the same way that someone enters a temple, someone kneels in prayer, someone sits and plays their instrument, or someone sings a song for their lover. This act is more important: he is giving food to his body. It should be done in a state of great joy . It should be an act of love and prayer.

The happier and more joyful a person is when eating, and the more relaxed and carefree they are, the more their food will begin to become the right food. A violent diet doesn't just mean eating non-vegetarian food. Eating with anger is also a violent diet. Both are violent. When one eats in anger, suffering, and worry, one is also eating with violence. He doesn't understand that just as he is violent when eating the flesh of something, he is also violent when his own flesh is burning internally with anger and worry; therefore, violence is present. And the food he is eating cannot be non-violent.

Another part of proper eating is that you should eat in a very calm and joyful state. If you are not in this state, it is best to wait until you are and refrain from eating for the time being. Only when the mind is fully prepared should you eat. How long does it take for the mind to be prepared? If you are mindful enough to wait, the mind can only be disturbed for a day at most. But you never listen to it; you have made eating a completely mechanical process. You pour food into your body and leave the table—it is no longer a mental process, and that is dangerous.

The second point is: proper work. That's no longer a fundamental part of your life. Physical work has become a shameful act.

One day that will be possible, because there are so many meaningful things in life, but now you're gradually letting your servants do them! And you haven't even noticed what you've lost by losing these meaningful things. All the power of life, all the vitality, has been lost, because the human body and human existence were created for a certain amount of work—and now all that work is idle. Correct work, too, is a fundamental part of the awakening of human consciousness and energy.

Life and work are synonyms. Life and work have the same meaning. But slowly, we've begun to call those who don't have to use their bodies happy, and those who must do physical work unhappy. And on the one hand, things have become this way because many people have given up work, so some people have to do too much work. Too much work kills, too little work kills too. Therefore, I say the right kind of labor, the proper distribution of physical work. Everyone should do some physical work. The more intensely, joyfully, and gratefully a person enters into the work part of their life, the more they will find their life energy beginning to flow from the brain towards the navel. For work, neither the brain nor the heart is needed. The energy of labor originates directly from the navel; that is its source.

Along with a proper diet, a little physical labor is absolutely necessary. But that doesn't mean it should be for the benefit of others—that if you serve the poor, the poor will benefit; if you go to the countryside to farm, the farmers will benefit; if you do some kind of labor, you are doing a great social service. These are all false notions. It's for yourself, not for others. It has nothing to do with benefiting anyone else. Someone might benefit from it, but initially, it's for your own good.

When Churchill retired, a friend of mine visited him. In his later years, Churchill was digging in his garden and planting some plants. My friend asked him some questions about politics. Churchill said, "Forget about it! It's over now. Now if you want to ask me anything, you can ask me two things. You can ask me about the Bible, because I read it at home, and you can ask me about gardening, because I'm doing this right here in the garden. I have no interest in politics now. That time is over. Now I just work and pray."

When my friend returned, he said to me, “I don’t know what kind of person Churchill was. I thought he would give me some answers. But he said he was just doing his work and praying.”

I told him, "Saying work and praying is repetition. Work and prayer mean the same thing; they are synonyms. The day when work becomes prayer, and prayer becomes work, is the day when the right work will be done."

A little work is absolutely necessary, but we don't pay any attention to it. Even traditional Indian monks don't focus on work; they suppress it. There's nothing wrong with them doing it. They simply move in another direction. The rich stop physical work because they have the money and they can pay others to do it, while monks stop working because they have nothing left to do in this world. They don't have to create anything or make money, so why should they work? As a result, both respected social classes have distanced themselves from work. So those who keep the work in their hands slowly become less respected.

For a seeker of the Way, physical work has great significance and use—not because you create something from it, but because the more you engage in a particular kind of work, the more your consciousness begins to center. It begins to move downwards from the head. It is not necessary for work to be productive. It can also be unproductive; it can be a simple movement. But certain physical labor is absolutely necessary for physical agility, complete mental alertness, and total awakening of being. This is the second part.

Each person should determine, based on their own body, how much physical work they need to do to live a healthier and fresher life. The more fresh air in the body, the more joyful each breath, and the more vitality one has to explore inward. Simmone Weir, a French philosopher, wrote about something truly remarkable in her autobiography. She said, "Until I was thirty, I was always sick. I was unhealthy, and I had all sorts of headaches. But around forty, I realized that until I was thirty, I had been a materialist. As I became more spiritual, I became healthy. It was only later that I realized my illness and unhealthiness were related to my materialism."

A sick and unhealthy person cannot be grateful for existence. There can be no gratitude for existence within them; only anger. For such a person, when filled with anger towards existence, it is impossible to accept anything from existence. They will only reject it. If a person does not achieve a healthy balance through proper work and exercise, then naturally, they will feel some negativity, resistance, and anger towards life.

The third point is about proper sleep. Eating has been disrupted, physical activity has been disrupted—and sleep has been completely murdered! Throughout the development of human civilization, sleep has been the most severely damaged organ. From the day humans discovered artificial light, their sleep became extremely disturbed. And as more and more gadgets came into their possession, they began to feel that sleep was unnecessary, that too much time was wasted on it: our sleep time is completely wasted. So the less sleep they could get, the better. For humans, the things that contribute to deeper life processes through sleep simply don't happen. Some people believe that time spent sleeping is wasted, so they sleep as little as possible; they reduce their sleep volume as quickly as possible. This is one type of person who wants to reduce the amount of sleep they need. Another type of person has always been those monks and hermits who feel that this form of sleep, this unconsciousness, is the opposite of a state of self-understanding or self-awakening. So for them, sleep is bad, and the less they sleep, the better. For these monks, there was another problem: they had accumulated too much repression in their unconscious, and during sleep, all of this unconsciousness began to surface and enter their dreams. Thus, a fear of sleep arose, because everything ignored during the day would begin to surface in their sleep at night. The women they had left and fled from them into the forest would begin to appear in their dreams. The monks would begin to see them in their dreams. The money and power the monks had fled would begin to follow them in their dreams. So they felt that sleep was a very dangerous thing—outside their control—so they slept as little as possible. These monks created a feeling throughout the world that sleep was something very unspiritual. This is an extremely foolish concept.

These two groups, and their ideas, have destroyed humanity's ability to sleep, and with this murder of sleep, the deepest core of all human life has been shaken, disturbed, and uprooted. We haven't even noticed that the root cause of all these diseases and disorders that have entered human life is sleep deprivation.

Those who cannot sleep properly cannot live properly. Sleep is not a waste of time. Eight hours of sleep are not wasted; on the contrary, it is because of these eight hours that you can remain awake for sixteen hours. Otherwise, you would not be able to stay awake. During these eight hours, life energy is accumulated, your life is filled with vitality again, the center of your brain and heart quiets down, and your life operates from the center of your navel. During eight hours of sleep, you are once again one with nature and existence—that is why you become full of vitality.