How can I work as a therapist in an egoless way?

How can I work as a therapist in an egoless way? What should I do?

THERAPY IS BASICALLY A FUNCTION OF LOVE, and love flows only when there is no ego. You can help the other only to the extent that you are non-egoistic. The moment the ego enters, the other becomes defensive. The ego is aggressive; it creates an automatic urge in the other to be defensive. Love is non-aggressive. It helps the other to remain vulnerable, open, non-defensive. Hence, without love there is no therapy. Therapy is a function of love. So with ego, you can't help. You may even destroy the other. In the name of help you may hinder his growth. But Western psychology is caught up in a mess. The first thing Western psychology still thinks in terms of a healthy ego. And ego can never be healthy. It is a contradiction in terms. Ego as such is ill. Ego can never be healthy. Ego is always leading you towards…

Beloved Osho, is taking the role of a therapist dangerous to my own spiritual growth? Is it possible to help people and still let my own ego dissolve at the same time? I feel that a subtle fight goes on inside me between one part that is clear and another part that wants nothing to do with clarity. Under your guidance I have learned not to dominate others when I use my capacity to see, but am I still dominating myself?

But these people have not gone inside; they have looked from outside. And this is the problem: from the outside you can only see objects, and love is not an object, bliss is not an object, enlightenment is not an object, understanding is not an object, wisdom is not an object. All that is great in human existence and life is subjective, not objective. But from the outside you can see only objects. That gives a tremendous urgency to fill your hollow inside with any rubbish. There are people who are filling it with borrowed knowledge; there are people who are filling it with self-imposed torture -- they become saints. There are people who are beggars to become the prime minister, to become the president. Everywhere the hollow people are in tremendous need to dominate others. That gives them the feeling that they are not hollow. A sannyasin begins by…

Whenever we are pushing, trying to prove something, trying to get something, trying to fight for something, trying to struggle, whenever there is some kind of will, we are against tao. Tao is will-lessness: just going with the current wherever it is going, moving with the river.... [Osho suggests some groups to the new sannyasin who assisted therapy groups in the west. She says: I have this idea about therapy -- I don't want therapy... but I'll do them.] Mm mm, it is not therapy, because you are not a patient and it is not therapy. The word is ugly... but this is a necessary evil with language: whatsoever word we use it is never true to the fact. Now, therapy is ugly. It presupposes that somebody is abnormal, ill, diseased, that somebody is not in the right shape, that somebody is a case, somebody is mental or something.

Can one believe in tao, not interfering with other people's lives, accepting what is now, and by profession be a psychotherapist? What, or how, is a tao way of doing therapy?

It is from Poonam. It is of tremendous significance. The first thing: 'Can one believe in Tao...?' Tao does not depend on belief. You cannot believe in it. Tao knows no belief system. It does not say 'Believe.' That's what other religions do. Tao is the dropping of all belief systems. Then arises a totally new kind of trust -- trust in life. Belief means believing in concepts. Concepts are ABOUT life. Trust is not concerned with concepts. Trust is immediate, direct, in life; it is not about life. Belief is far away from life. The stronger the belief, the greater the barrier. Tao is neither a belief nor a disbelief but the dropping of all beliefs and disbeliefs. When you drop all beliefs and disbeliefs and you are immediate, in contact with life, a trust arises, a great 'yes' arises in your being. That 'yes' transforms, transforms totally. So…

In intensive psychotherapy the patient may either be talking or listening, that is, trying to hear from within. Only the latter is of value. A good therapist, especially if love exists, will hit on many ways of heightening this process of listening for the unexpected. Is this a form of meditation? In fact, might it be said that ideally, both therapist and patient are meditating together?

Everybody is born to remain healthy and happy. Everybody is seeking health and happiness, but somewhere something is missing and everybody becomes miserable. Misery should be an exception; it has become the rule. Happiness should be the rule; it has become an exception. I would like a world where buddhas are born, but nobody remembers them because they are the rule. Now Buddha is remembered, Christ is remembered, Lao Tzu is remembered, because they are exceptions. Otherwise, who would bother about them? If there were a buddha in every house, and if there were buddhas all over the marketplace and you could meet Lao Tzu anywhere, who would bother? Then that would be the simple rule. It should be so. Lao Tzu says,'When the world was really moral there was no possibility of becoming a saint.' When the world was really religious there was no need for religions. People were…