Three forms of professional assistance are common – Consultation, Counselling and Compassion. Each of these may be explained as follows:
CONSULTATION is the most common form of professional assistance. People seek consultations when involved in high-risk  ventures such as buying or selling property, filing or defending lawsuits, in preparation of statements of finance and account, starting a new business, verification of antecedents of others, matrimony, etc. The salient feature of this type of assistance is that here the client is already aware of what to do or expect and looks for additional advices to complete his/her task.

Consultants work for money and money alone; they are not concerned with any personal feelings of their clients. Some consultants provide complete turnkey solutions to the clients.

COUNSELLING is gaining in popularity these days. Students seek admission counselling for higher education, unemployed seek career counselling for placement; couples seek marriage counselling to save their marriages; distressed persons seek counselling to overcome their personal problems and so on. Counselling differs from consultations as the client is unaware how to proceed further in overcoming his/her problem. Counselling is a very delicate exercise. The seeker confides totally in the counselor, sometimes at the risk of sharing very personal and intimate information, and the counselor keeps the client’s confidence. The counselor may have to conduct some psychological tests or play games with the clients to assess their mind and interests before providing the counsel. However, their role is limited to advising the clients and not extending any physical support. Counselling is provided mostly in institutional setups maintained by NGOs or government organizations. Lately, some counselors have begun to open shops too. 

COMPASSION: This brings us to the final and the most interesting form of professional assistance, which results not from any specific requirement of people but on the contrary, from compassion of the giver. Compassion may be equivalent to love with the difference that it involves no reciprocity. This form of assistance works like this: People look for meaning in their lives. They are helped to discover it by the enlightened spiritual masters. These spiritual masters function out of their compassion, looking at miserable condition in which people live. They show them the path to self-realization and eternal bliss. The enlightened masters are a rarity and their compassion if available is a blessing in disguise.

A relationship of guru-disciple is often established in this form of assistance, where the seeker surrenders his/her ego to the spiritual master or the guru. It does not involve any fees, but donations are not ruled out. Some spiritual masters have turned out to be the wealthiest persons around.