24 Sep From the Science Lab to Path of Love

Dear friends,

A long time ago I was a scientist in the field of psychology. My research focused on the most effective way to work with people, and to resolve psychological issues in the fastest, most effective way.

As a researcher, my longing for answers was strong, and I looked in all possible directions for solutions, from psychology and alternative therapies to shamanism and spiritualism. What is healing? What is a life free from psychological pain? And how to reach that?

And then one day, almost 20 years ago, I came across a quote from the enlightened Indian master Osho and my life and profession changed forever.

Here is the quote that changed my life:  “…many people want to become therapists, they want to become healers, they want to become this and that…seeing that the therapists are important people, healers are important people, they are doing something extraordinary, everybody that comes here sooner or later starts thinking that he has to become a therapist or a healer. This is not creativity. This is just finding a way, a means, for the fulfillment of the ego. And if the ego is there, you cannot be a real therapist. Real therapists are rare. A real therapist is one who is ready to let God work through him – and that is the definition of a real healer. Therapy means healing. A healer is not a healer; a healer is just a passage for God’s healing forces to flow through. He cannot claim. So if you move towards healing with the idea that “I have to become a healer, then I will be somebody important, doing great miracles around,” you will never be a healer. How can you be a healer? Because the very condition of being a healer is dropping the ego. It is very rare to find a healer, very rare to find a therapist. I am training my therapists, my healers, here. The whole training is that they should disappear. They should not be there, they should become absent. And through the absence of the ego, some presence, some unknown presence, starts working through you. That brings miracles to life.”

After reading this quote, I started to go deeper in Osho’s work and his meditation methods. I began to do his suggested therapy processes, feeling an incredible benefit for myself. Moreover, as psychotherapist, my way of working with people was changing. I was becoming more effective. Not that I had new techniques for working with clients, but something in my relationship with them was different. When I brought these results into the lab, I wondered, what is the the difference? Could I prove that changing, that effectiveness? Yes, I could. I had seen the smiles on the faces of my clients and their increased well-being after sessions. It took me years to realize what was changing was my presence as a result of the processes and the meditation I was doing. More silence in my heart, less doing from the head, less functioning as “ego therapist”.

In this other quote Osho said beautifully:

“When the therapist and the patient are not two, when the therapist is not a therapist only and when the patient is not a patient anymore, but a deep ‘I–thou’ relationship arises, where the therapist is not trying to treat the person, when the patient is not looking at the therapist as separate from himself, in those rare moments therapy happens. When the therapist has forgotten his knowledge and the patient has forgotten his illness and there is a dialog, a dialog of two beings. In that moment between the two, healing happens. And if it happens the therapist will know always that he functioned only as a vehicle of a divine force, of a divine healing. He will be as much grateful for the experience as the patient, in fact he will gain as much out of it as the patient.”

Nowadays, I am a Path of Love Leader, doing what I have always done for almost all my life, working with people. I am often asked, “Why does Path of Love seem to be one of the most effective process that we had ever experienced?” And I smile inside, echoing the words of Osho about “ego therapist”, heart presence, and head dissolving.

Then I explain to them that in the Path of Love we have a way, as Facilitators, Assistants and Staff, to come together before the participant’s sessions. We sit, and we share with open hearts. We all have roles in the process, but in this morning sitting no one is different. We are all the same. We are all humans with our problems, weakness, pain, longing and desire. This is our simple Path of love secret. We sit there, looking into each others eyes, and feel our humanness. As participant you don’t see it, but you feel it. This heart opening, this head dissolving, this togetherness is the alchemical magic of this process. It makes all of us one. No more I “therapist” – thou “client”. Just one big pool of love.

Love,

Sambhavo