Shiva said: In any easy position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace.

A very simple method but it works miraculously - try it. And anyone can try it, there is no danger. In an easy position: the first thing is to be in a relaxed position - easy, whatsoever is easy for you. So don't try some particular position or asana. Buddha sits in a particular posture. It is easy for him. It can also become easy for you if you practice it for a time, but in the very beginning it will not be easy for you. And there is no need to practice it: start from any posture that comes easy to you right now. Don't struggle with posture. You can sit in an easy chair and relax. The only thing is your body must be in a relaxed state.
 
Just close your eyes and feel all over the body. Stan from the legs feeling whether there is some tension. If you feel somewhere there is some tension, do one thing: make it more tense. If you feel that in the leg, in the right leg, there is tension, then make that tension as intense as possible. Bring it to a peak and then suddenly relax so that you can feel how relaxation settles there. Then go all over the body just finding if there is some tension somewhere. Wherever you feel the tension make it more, because it is easy to relax it when it is intense. In just a mid-state it is very difficult because you cannot feel it. It is easy to move from one extreme to another, very easy, because the very extreme creates the situation to move to the other. So if you feel some tension in the face then strain all the face muscles as much as possible, create tension and bring it to a peak. Bring it to a point where you feel that now no more is possible - then suddenly relax. So see that all parts of the body, all the limbs, are relaxed.

Be particular about the face muscles, because they carry ninety percent of the tensions - the rest of the body carries only ten percent - because all your tensions are in the mind and the face becomes the storage. So strain your face as much as possible, don't be shy about it. Intensely make it in anguish, anxiety - and then suddenly relax. Do it for five minutes so you can feel now the whole body, every limb, is relaxed.

You can do it lying on the bed, you can do it sitting also - howsoever you feel is easy for you. The second thing: when you feel that the body has come to an easy posture, don't make much fuss about it. Just feel that the body is relaxed, then forget the body - because really, remembering the body is a sort of tension. So that's why I say don't make much fuss about it. Relax it and forget it. Forgetting is relaxation, because whenever you remember too much, that very remembering brings a tension to the body. Then close your eyes and just feel the area between the two armpits: the heart area, your chest. First feel it, just between the two armpits, bring your total attention, total awareness. Forget the whole body, just the heart area between the two armpits, your chest, and feel it filled with great peace.

The moment the body is relaxed, automatically peace happens in your heart. The heart becomes silent, relaxed, harmonious. And when you forget the whole body and bring your attention just to the chest and consciously feel that it is filled with peace, much peace will happen immediately. There are two areas in the body, particular centers where particular feelings can be created consciously. Between the two armpits is the center of the heart, and the heart center is the source of all peace that happens to you, whenever it happens. Whenever you are peaceful, the peace is coming from the heart. The heart radiates peace. That's why people from all over the world, without any distinction of caste, religion, country, cultured or uncultured, every race, have felt this: that love arises somewhere from the heart. No scientific explanation exists.
 
So whenever you think of love you think of the heart. Really, whenever you are in love you are relaxed, and because you are relaxed you are filled with a certain peace. And that peace arises from the heart. So peace and love have become joined, associated. Whenever you are in love you are peaceful; whenever you are not in love you are disturbed. Because of peace the heart has become associated with love. So you can do two things. Either you can search for love, then sometimes you will feel peace. But the path is dangerous, because the other person whom you love has become more important than you. The other is the other, and you are becoming dependent in a way. So love will give you peace sometimes but not always. There will be many disturbances, many moments of anguish and anxiety, because the other has entered and whenever the other enters there is bound to be some disturbance because you can meet with the other only on your surface, and the surface will be disturbed. Only sometimes - when the two of you will be so deeply in love with no conflict - only sometimes you will be relaxed and the heart will glow with peace.

So love can give you only glimpses of peace but never really any establishment, any rootedness in peace.

No eternal peace is possible through it, only glimpses. And between two glimpses there will be deep valleys of conflict, violence, hatred, anger. The other way is not to find peace through love, but to find peace directly. If you can find peace directly - and this is the method - your life will become filled with love. But now the quality of love will be different. It will not be possessive; it will not be centered on one. It will not be dependent and it will not make anyone dependent on you. Your love will become just a loving-ness, a compassion, a deep empathy. And now no one, not even a lover, can disturb you, because your peace is already rooted and your love is coming as a shadow of your inner peace. The whole thing has become reversed: so Buddha is also loving but his love is not an anguish. If you love you will suffer, if you don't love you will suffer. If you don't love you will suffer the absence; if you love you will suffer the presence of love. You are on the surface and whatsoever you do can give you only momentary satisfactions, and then again, the dark valley.

The heart is naturally the source of peace, so you are not creating anything. You are simply coming to a source which is always there. And this imagination will help you become aware that the heart is filled with peace, not that this imagination will create the peace. This is the difference between the tantra attitude and Western hypnosis: hypnotists think that by imagination you are creating it; tantra thinks that you are not creating it - by imagination you are simply becoming attuned to something that is already there. Whatsoever you can create by imagination cannot be permanent. If it is not a reality then it is false, unreal, and you are creating a hallucination.

Try this: whenever you are able to feel the peace between the two armpits filling you, pervading your own heart center, the world will look illusory. This is a sign that you have entered meditation - when the world feels, appears to be illusory. Don't think that the world is illusory; there is no need to think - you will feel it. It will suddenly occur to your mind: "What has happened to the world?" The world has suddenly gone dreamy, a dreamlike existence. It is there, without any substance, just like a film on the screen. It looks so real; it can even be three-dimensional - it just looks like a projected thing. Not that the world is a projected thing, not that it is really unreal - no. The world is real but you create distance, and the distance becomes greater and greater.
 
And you can understand whether the distance is becoming greater and greater or not, by knowing how you are feeling about the world. So that is the criterion. This is not a truth - that the world is unreal - this is a meditative criterion. If the world has become unreal, you have become centered into the being. Now the surface and you are so far away that you can look at the surface as something objective, something other than you. You are not identified.

This technique is very easy and will not take much time if you try it. Even sometimes it happens with this technique that in the very first effort you will feel the beauty and the miracle of it. So try it. But if you are not feeling it in the very first effort, don't be disappointed. Wait, and go on doing it. And it is so easy you can do it any time. Just lying on your bed at night you can do it; just in the morning when you feel that you are now awake you can do it. Do it first and then get up, even ten minutes will be enough, or ten minutes at night just before falling asleep. Make the world unreal, and your sleep will be so deep...you may not have slept like that before. If the world becomes unreal just before falling asleep, dreams will be fewer because if the world has become a dream, dreams cannot continue. And if the world is unreal, you are totally relaxed, otherwise the reality of the world goes on impinging on you, hammering on you.

As far as I know -1 have suggested this technique to many people who suffer from insomnia - it helps deeply. If the world is unreal, tensions dissolve. And if you can move from the periphery, you have already moved to a deep state of sleep - before sleep comes you are already deep into it. And then in the morning it is beautiful because you are so fresh, so young, the whole energy vibrating and just coming from the center back to the periphery.

The moment you become alert that now sleep is finished, don't open your eyes first. First do this: the body is relaxed after the whole night, feeling fresh and alive so do this experiment for ten minutes, then open the eyes. Relax. You are already relaxed; it will not take much time. Just relax. Bring your consciousness to the heart just between the two armpits: feel it filled with deep peace. For ten minutes remain in that peace, and then open the eyes. And the world will look totally different because that peace will be radiated from your eyes also. And the whole day you will feel different - not only will you feel different, you will feel people are behaving differently with you.

To every relationship you contribute something. If your contribution is not there, people behave differently because they feel you are a different person. They may not be aware of it. But when you are filled with peace everyone will behave differently with you. They will be more loving and more kind, less resistant, more open, closer. The magnet is there. The peace is the magnet. When you are peaceful people come nearer to you; when you are disturbed everyone is repelled. This is so physical a phenomenon that you can observe it easily. Whenever you are peaceful you will feel everyone wants to be closer to you because that peace radiates, it becomes vibrations around you. Circles of peace move around you and whosoever comes near feels to be nearer to you - just like the shadow of a tree and you feel to move under the shadow and relax there.