You may not have observed this, but there is a very easy experiment to try. Put your hand on your pulse and count it. Then close your eyes, bring your attention to your pulse for five minutes, and then count. The pulse will now be beating faster because the attention for five minutes gives tension to it. So really, whenever a doctor counts your pulse it is never the real count – it is always more than it was before the doctor started counting it. Whenever the doctor has taken your hand in his hand you have become alert. And if the doctor is a lady doctor you will be more alert, and it will go faster. So whenever a lady doctor counts your pulse reduce it by ten. Then that will be exactly your pulse count – otherwise there will be ten more counts per minute.

Whenever you bring your consciousness to any part of the body, that part becomes tense. You become tense when someone observes you; the whole body becomes tense. When you are alone you are different. When someone enters the room you are not the same. The whole body is going at a faster rate. You have become tense. So don’t make much fuss about relaxation or you will be obsessed with it. For five minutes simply relax easily and forget. Your forgetting will be helpful and it will bring a deeper relaxation to the body.

…Gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace. 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 with your total attention, total awareness. Forget the whole body, remember just the heart area between the two armpits, the chest, and feel it filled with great peace. The moment the body is relaxed, peace automatically 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 it filled with peace, much peace will happen immediately.

There are areas in the body, particular centers, where particular feelings can be created consciously. Between the two armpits is the heart center, and the heart center is the source of all the peace that happens to you, whenever it happens. Whenever you are peaceful, the peace is coming from the heart. The heart radiates peace. That is why people all over the world, every race, without any distinction of cat, religion, country, cultured or uncultured, have felt this: that love arises from somewhere near the heart. No scientific explanation exists. 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. 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. You can search for love, then sometimes you will feel peace. But this path is dangerous, because the other person whom you love has become more important than you. And the other is the other, and you are becoming in a way dependent. 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. Whenever another enters there is bound to be some disturbance, because you can meet with the other only on your surface. The surface will be disturbed. Only sometimes when the two of you will be so deeply in love with no conflict, only then will you sometimes be relaxed and the heart will glow with peace.