1. Who, then, is the therapist, and who is the patient? 2In the end, everyone is both. 3He who needs healing must heal. 4Physician, heal thyself. 5Who else is there to heal? 6And who else is in need of healing? 7Each patient who comes to a therapist offers him a chance to heal himself. 8He is therefore his therapist. 9And every therapist must learn to heal from each patient who comes to him. 10He thus becomes his patient. 11God does not know of separation. 12What He knows is only that He has one Son. 13His knowledge is reflected in the ideal patient-therapist relationship. 14God comes to him who calls, and in Him he recognizes Himself.
2. Think carefully, teacher and therapist, for whom you pray, and who is in need of healing. 2For therapy is prayer, and healing is its aim and its result. 3What is prayer except the joining of minds in a relationship which Christ can enter? 4This is His home, into which psychotherapy invites Him. 5What is symptom cure, when another is always there to choose? 6But once Christ enters in, what choice is there except to have Him stay? 7There is no need for more than this, for it is everything. 8Healing is here, and happiness and peace. 9These are the “symptoms” of the ideal patient-therapist relationship, replacing those with which the patient came to ask for help.
3. The process that takes place in this relationship is actually one in which the therapist in his heart tells the patient that all his sins have been forgiven him, along with his own. 2What could be the difference between healing and forgiveness? 3Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. 4His vision heals perception and sickness disappears. 5Nor will it return again, once its cause has been removed. 6This, however, needs the help of a very advanced therapist, capable of joining with the patient in a holy relationship in which all sense of separation finally is overcome.
4. For this, one thing and one thing only is required: The therapist in no way confuses himself with God. 2All “unhealed healers” make this fundamental confusion in one form or another, because they must regard themselves as self-created rather than God-created. 3This confusion is rarely if ever in awareness, or the unhealed healer would instantly become a teacher of God, devoting his life to the function of true healing. 4Before he reached this point, he thought he was in charge of the therapeutic process and was therefore responsible for its outcome. 5His patient’s errors thus became his own failures, and guilt became the cover, dark and strong, for what should be the Holiness of Christ. 6Guilt is inevitable in those who use their judgment in making their decisions. 7Guilt is impossible in those through whom the Holy Spirit speaks.
5. The passing of guilt is the true aim of therapy and the obvious aim of forgiveness. 2In this their oneness can be clearly seen. 3Yet who could experience the end of guilt who feels responsible for his brother in the role of guide for him? 4Such a function presupposes a knowledge that no one here can have; a certainty of past, present and future, and of all the effects that may occur in them. 5Only from this omniscient point of view would such a role be possible. 6Yet no perception is omniscient, nor is the tiny self of one alone against the universe able to assume he has such wisdom except in madness. 7That many therapists are mad is obvious. 8No unhealed healer can be wholly sane.
6. Yet it is as insane not to accept a function God has given you as to invent one He has not. 2The advanced therapist in no way can ever doubt the power that is in him. 3Nor does he doubt its Source. 4He understands all power in earth and Heaven belongs to him because of who he is. 5And he is this because of his Creator, Whose Love is in him and Who cannot fail. 6Think what this means; he has the gifts of God Himself to give away. 7His patients are God’s saints, who call upon his sanctity to make it theirs. 8And as he gives it to them, they behold Christ’s shining face as it looks back at them.
7. The insane, thinking they are God, are not afraid to offer weakness to God’s Son. 2But what they see in him because of this they fear indeed. 3The unhealed healer cannot but be fearful of his patients, and suspect them of the treachery he sees in him. 4He tries to heal, and thus at times he may. 5But he will not succeed except to some extent and for a little while. 6He does not see the Christ in him who calls. 7What answer can he give to one who seems to be a stranger; alien to the truth and poor in wisdom, without the god who must be given him? 8Behold your God in him, for what you see will be your Answer.
8. Think what the joining of two brothers really means. 2And then forget the world and all its little triumphs and its dreams of death. 3The same are one, and nothing now can be remembered of the world of guilt. 4The room becomes a temple, and the street a stream of stars that brushes lightly past all sickly dreams. 5Healing is done, for what is perfect needs no healing, and what remains to be forgiven where there is no sin?
9. Be thankful, therapist, that you can see such things as this, if you but understand your proper role. 2But if you fail in this, you have denied that God created you, and so you will not know you are His Son. 3Who is your brother now? 4What saint can come to take you home with him? 5You lost the way. 6And can you now expect to see in him an answer that you have refused to give? 7Heal and be healed. 8There is no other choice of pathways that can ever lead to peace. 9O let your patient in, for he has come to you from God. 10Is not his holiness enough to wake your memory of Him?