When Sarita led a 16-day tour through Ladakh, one evening she guided the participants through this meditation devoted to inner peace
In any easy position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace.”
– Sutra from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
The Sutra in Practice
1) You begin by finding a truly easy position, sitting, lying, or however your body can rest without strain. Once comfortable, scan through yourself from the legs upward, noticing any areas of tension.
Osho says: “When you feel that the body has got 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. That’s why I say don’t make much fuss about it. Relax it and forget it. Forgetting is relaxation. Whenever you remember too much, that very remembering brings a tension to the body.”
2) If you find tension, make it stronger for a moment, tighten the muscles, bring it to a peak, then let it go completely. This sharp contrast makes release easier to feel. The face often holds most of our tension, so it helps to deliberately scrunch every facial muscle before letting them fall open.
As Osho shares: “So just close your eyes and feel all over the body. Start from the legs, feel whether there is some tension or not. If you feel there is some tension, do one thing: make it more tense. If you feel there is some tension in the right leg, then make that tension as intense as possible. Bring it to a peak, then suddenly relax so that you can feel how the relaxation settles there. Then go all over the body just looking everywhere for some tension. Wherever you feel the tension make it more intense, because it is easy to relax when it is intense. In just a mid-state it is very difficult because you cannot feel it.”
3) Once the body is at ease, forget it. The act of constant monitoring creates tension. In forgetting the body, the mind can drop its grip.Place your hands at the hollow area between your armpits, Now, bring awareness directly to the space between your armpits, the heart area, and feel it filled with great peace. Notice how the peace is already there, and your awareness is simply touching it. The heart is the natural source of peace; any time you have felt genuine peace in life, it has radiated from here.
Osho shares: “Become aware of the area between the armpits and feel that it is filled with great peace. Just feel peace there and you will feel it is filled. It is always filled but you have never been alert about it. This is only to increase your alertness, to bring you nearer home. And when you feel this peace you are farther away from the surface. Not that things will not be happening there – but when you try this experiment and when you are filled with peace you will feel a distance; the noise is coming from the street but there is a great distance now, a great space.
“It happens, but it brings no disturbance; rather, it brings you a deeper silence. This is the miracle. The children will be playing, someone will be listening to the radio, someone will be quarrelling, and the whole world will be going around, but you feel that a great distance has come between you and everything. That distance comes because you have retreated from the periphery. Things are happening on the periphery and they will appear to you as if they are happening to someone else. You are not involved. Nothing touches you so you are not involved, you have transcended. This is transcendence.”
4) As you stay in this awareness, the usual noise of life doesn’t vanish, but it moves farther away. Sounds, traffic, voices, the activity of others, may still be present, but they no longer touch you in the same way. It’s as if you have stepped back from the surface of life into a deeper, quieter space. From this centre, love and peace become inseparable. But unlike ordinary love, which is tangled with need, this love is unpossessive and steady. You are no longer seeking love to find peace; instead, your peace overflows into love.
Osho shares: “So love can only give you glimpses of peace but nothing really established, rooted. No eternal peace is possible through it, only glimpses. And between two glimpses there will be deep valleys of conflict, violence, hatred, and anger.
“The other way is to find peace not through love, but directly. If you can find peace directly – and this is the method for it – 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 centred around one. It will not be dependent and it will not make any one dependent on you. Your love will become just a lovingness, 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 comes as a shadow of your inner peace. The whole thing has become reversed.”
When peace arises first, love becomes a gift instead of a bargain. And paradoxically, the more you give from this place, the more you feel it within yourself, like drawing water from an inexhaustible spring.
5) The longer you remain in the heart, the more the world begins to seem dreamlike, distant in a way that prevents it from piercing you. The body may still register events, touch, sound, even pain, but the core of your being stays untouched.
And because peace has a physical presence, others can feel it. People are drawn to it instinctively, just as you might seek the cool shade of a tree on a hot day. Around a heart at rest, trust and openness grow naturally. And as this peace deepens, it begins to ripple outward. Inner peace naturally becomes outer peace, and through practices like this meditation, you become an instrument for peace in the world.
Osho says: “When you are filled with peace everyone will behave differently toward you. They will be more loving and more kind, less resistant, more open, closer. A magnet is there. Peace is the magnet. When you are peaceful people come nearer to you; when you are disturbed everyone is repelled. And 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 a vibration around you. Circles of peace move around you and whosoever comes near wants to be nearer to you, like you want to move under the shadow of a tree and to relax there.”
As we practised on that mountaintop in Ladakh, the stillness was palpable. Even with the hum of visitors and the sound of wind on prayer flags, everyone in the group felt that subtle distance from the noise. When we finally opened our eyes, the landscape seemed to meet us differently – seen through the eyes of a quiet, steady heart.
This is one of the 112 powerful Sutras of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra.
If one sutra, practised once, could open so much, imagine what a journey through dozens of them will reveal.
There will be a Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Retreat at Osho Nisarga in Dharamshala, India (24 October – 2 November 2025) facilitated by Sarita, where the participants can explore one third of these sutras in depth, living them in practice. (oshonisarga.com)
Source of the quotes
- Osho, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2, Ch 31 – The Book of Secrets, Ch 71
Related excerpt
- Become Aware of the Area Between the Armpits – “In any position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace. Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near.”
Photograph by Rahi
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