---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Madman's Guide to Enlightenment"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "MADGUI"
dategiven: "08 June 1978 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #8"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "7806085"
shorttitle: "MADGUI08"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "The Madman's Guide to Enlightenment: Chapter #8"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->


Prem means love, padmaja means the lotus-born lotus-born love. And the lotus is one of the greatest symbols in the East: it is a representative of the beyond. It exists on the earth but it is not of the earth. The beauty of it, the grace of it is so tremendous, so incredible, that it cannot be of this world  -- it must be of the other. The lotus means the beyond. And everybody has to become a lotus -- a lotus of consciousness, a lotus of transcendence. Love is the fragrance of that blooming consciousness within you. Hence love is called 'lotus-born'.


What we ordinarily know as love is nothing but lust masquerading as love. It is a physical need. What we call love is sex, simple and pure, but we give it a poetic name because the fact seems to be so ugly that we want to hide it behind a beautiful name.


But there is something else called love which happens, which has nothing to do with sex. When a Buddha loves, when a Jesus loves, it is lotus-born. It is their outpouring, the sharing of their infinite bliss. They have bloomed, they have penetrated the beyond, they have known. Now, of its own accord, something starts flowing towards other people. When the lotus blooms, the fragrance is naturally there. It spreads to the winds far and wide, to all the corners of the world.
Love is the fragrance of the inner lotus.

[Osho gives a sannyasin 'energy darshan' and then says:]


Very good. The energy is perfect; that's how the energy should be. It is flowing, it is ready to dance, it is ready to celebrate, and only a celebrating energy can have contact with god because a celebrating energy goes on expanding.


Celebration means expansion. When somebody is celebrating, energy starts moving in ripples and can spread all over existence. An expanding energy can feel moons and stars and suns within itself, the whole universe within oneself.


That is the meaning of the upanishadic declaration: Aham brahmasmi, 'I am god.' It has nothing to do with the ego; it is not an ego declaration. In fact it is just the opposite -- a non-ego declaration. The 'I' has disappeared and the energy has become so vast that there is no way to see the universe separate from it. It has become universal, it has become cosmic. This is the right point, the place from where one should start the journey. So I am very happy. Go on expanding.


And don't allow anything that can become a hindrance. No relationship is valuable. A relationship is valuable only if it helps expansion. If it hinders, it has to be dropped. Nothing else is more valuable than an expanding consciousness, because that is god-consciousness. You have been doing well. You are no more obsessed with the relationship as you were when you left... and it is beautiful. When there is no obsession, relationships can bloom. But then they are no more pathological; they are moment to moment, they are just a kind of sharing. One does not become fixated upon one person; there is no need. God's beauty is all over, his magic is all over. All the forms are his, so in whatsoever form you love him, you love him. All love goes to him -- it is an offering to god.


But the mind wants to become attached, obsessed, fixated, limited, because the mind can control only limitations. It feels impotent in the face of the infinite. When it has to deal with the unlimited, it suddenly feels inadequate, shrinks back and denies the infinite. It says there is none, nothing like the infinite; the finite is all. The mind is always trying to narrow down. The narrower you are, the more powerful the mind feels. And when you start flowing all over the place, the mind is simply drowned.


So the mind will try to bring back old patterns. Don't allow it! Now you have the energy that can take you beyond the mind. Don't miss this opportunity!


[She tells Osho she has been having symptoms of heart attacks: I had an EEG because I collapsed in the restaurant and the doctor said that it wasn't an attack but that the heart was very irregular.]


The heart can sometimes be very irregular, but it is not a heart attack, not at all. It is just that the energy is moving in such spasms and the pattern is so new, mm? that the heart has to cope with it, the heart has to learn how to cope with it. The whole body will have to learn again. It is almost a new birth.


It is just as the child is born and he has to learn everything from scratch: how to breathe, how to cope with the world -- the light, the colour, the hardness of the world -- the unfamiliarity of everything, the coldness, hunger. The child has to face a thousand and one problems. The same thing happens when your energy changes. Again it is a new birth and the old patterns won't do. The body has become accustomed, the mind has become accustomed... and it is really difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. But slowly, slowly, it will settle -- nothing to be worried about!
			

> [!info]
> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>