There are seven chakras in the human body. In Zen they are called the seven lions.
The first chakra is the sex center; the second chakra, which is just below the navel, is called in Japanese, hara.
The sex center has all the life energy gathered in it. For ordinary human beings, all the energy is gathered at the lowest center.
The third center is the navel, and the fourth center is the heart. The fifth center is the throat, and the sixth center is the third eye, just between your two eyebrows. The seventh center is just on top of your head.
Once you understand that these centers are significant, that the sex center is the lowest point in your life, and the seventh … If the energy moves from the first to the second, from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth — every center has its own expression, and your life goes on changing.
For example, if the energy moves from the sex center to the second center, the hara, you suddenly become aware of death. People are not aware, they think it always happens to somebody else; obviously, you always see somebody else dying, you have never seen yourself dying. Perhaps you are an exception. It happens to somebody else, always — although the poet says, "Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."
In Christian villages, the church bell tolls to inform all the farmers in the orchards, in the fields, to come to the village, somebody has died. It refers to that. "Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it always tolls for thee."
When your energy is at the hara center — the hara center is the death center — you suddenly become aware that just as millions of people have been dying since centuries, "I cannot be an exception. I will have to die, if not today, then tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But someday, that which is born always dies. I am born, I am going to die."
Birth is the beginning of death. Birth contains death in itself. Birth is the seed, and death is the flower. It takes seventy years from the cradle to the grave; it is a seventy-year-old tree. But your death is growing side by side with your life.
Once you are at the sex center, your whole concentration is on the other sex — if other men are not available, then other animals — female animals, in the beginning.
If female animals are not available, then male animals.
Heterosexuality is between man and woman, a natural phenomenon.
Homosexuality is between man and man, lesbianism is between woman and woman — unnatural, perversions. And bestiality is between man and animals, or woman and animals.
It is surprising how man can get perverted.
And this bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism, has brought the most dangerous disease in the world — — AIDS.
But if you are not a pervert, as your energy moves to the second center, the hara, you become absolutely uninterested in sex. It is not celibacy, you have not taken any vow, your energy has simply moved higher. Its concern becomes death. In sex the concern was birth, because through sex is all reproduction.
Moving from sex you have moved from birth to death, a small distance. Suddenly you become aware that "Death is coming and I am concerned only with trivia — money, power, prestige, respectability. All this will be gone when death comes. I am unnecessarily making the effort of creating a signature on the sands. A little breeze of wind, a little tidal wave, and the signature will be finished."
Death comes as a tidal wave, and all your personality, all your respectability, prestige, are erased. One becomes aware that, "I have to find something which is beyond death."
Once the energy moves to the hara, the concern for the search for something immortal in you becomes very predominant, and when the energy moves to the third center, your concern is no more intellectual. You don't simply philosophize, you don't read the books which say, "Life is eternal"; you don't believe. At the third center — the navel — your interest becomes experiential.
It is not a coincidence that people talk about meditators as "navel gazers." That is meaningful. You are gazing at the navel, not from the outside; that won't help. You have to close your eyes and go to the navel. That's what I am calling the center of your being. It is just behind the navel. That's why the navel joins you with the mother, because your being is just behind the navel. If you were not nourished by the mother, through the navel, you would not have survived nine months in the womb.
Once your energy rises to the navel — and it goes on happening, in all the meditations your energy is going up — your concern becomes meditation. You want to know on your own, not through the scriptures, what is the truth, whether there is life beyond death or not.
As you move above to the fourth center, that is the heart, your whole life becomes a sharing of love. The third center has created the abundance of love. By reaching to the third center in meditation, you have become so overflowing with love, with compassion, and you want to share. It happens at the fourth center — the heart.
That's why even in the ordinary world people think love comes out of the heart. For them it is just hearsay, they have heard it. They don't know it because they have never reached to their heart. But the meditator finally reaches to the heart.
As he has reached to the center of his being — the third center — suddenly an explosion of love and compassion and joy and blissfulness and benediction has arisen in him with such a force that it hits his heart and opens the heart. The heart is just in the middle of all your seven centers — three centers below, three centers above. You have come exactly to the middle.
That's why the person of the heart is very balanced, utterly balanced. He has a tremendous grace, a beauty that seems to be not of this world. His eyes are showering love, his hands are showering love, even if he does nothing. Even his presence is radiating love. It is a vibration, multidimensional. All around him a love energy goes on flowing. Those who are receptive, their hearts will start ringing a bell. For the first time they will hear a new music, a new harmony, a new synchronicity.
The fifth center is the throat. The throat is the center of expression. When you are too full of experience, you share love at the fourth center, and you share your experience through language, through devices, from the fifth center.
The sixth center is just between the two eyebrows, inside. In India we have called it the third eye. It gives you a tremendous clarity, a vision of the whole existence as it is. And when you open your eyes … it affects even your ordinary world. Trees are greener, roses are rosier, everything around you of which you were never aware becomes more graceful. Everything around you becomes more beautiful. Even wildflowers look so beautiful; they have their own individuality, they cannot be compared to roses, they cannot be compared to lotuses. There is no comparison at all.
Once you have reached to the sixth — the third eye — everything in your life becomes crystal clear. No questions, no answers — you know it. No belief, no disbelief — you know it.
And the seventh center is when you become enlightened: the center of samadhi, the center of ultimate awakening, the center where you become a buddha.
OSHO
