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GESTALT / Transpersonal Gestalt

Gestalt Therapy as Spiritual Practice

by Paul Kapp
INTRODUCTION
There are many Gestalt theorists who believe Gestalt Psychotherapy to be a kind of spiritual practice. Spirituality is
also known as the transpersonal, and psychotherapy is seen as interpersonal work. Claudio Naranjo believed that
Gestalt is a transpersonal therapy. The transpersonal in the interpersonal. C. Naranjo 1978
When Fritz Perls arrived at Esalen in 1964, he gave a workshop that proclaimed: To expand the scope of awareness,
to bring greater contact with the environment and to end the subject object split are the goals of Gestalt therapy. and
he promised to relate this new psychology to both existentialism and Zen Buddhism. Jeffrey John Kripal 2007

THE TRANSPERSONAL
There are those within the Gestalt community who say Gestalt is humanist and irreligious, while others say it is
transpersonal in nature. Though Humanist psychotherapy is not mutually exclusive of transpersonal psychology, these
two views reflect differing poles in the community of Gestalt theorists. Fritz Perls was known to be anti religious, and
distanced himself even from Zen, saying all religions were man made crudities. Jeffrey John Kripal 2007
Claudio Naranjo puts this into perspective:
'That Gestalt therapy is commonly regarded as humanistic rather than transpersonal is a reflection of this lack of
conceptual precision, though a most understandable one if we consider that the spirituality of Gestalt therapy is, in a
sense, disguised. With this "in a sense" I refer to Perls' rejection of ordinary religiosity. C. Naranjo 1978
Fritz became disillusioned with Zen. One of Fritzs most often quoted blurbs involves his memories of visiting Zen
monasteries in Japan. This kind of meditation, Fritz insisted, was a form of constipation. Its like sitting on the pot:
one just sits there, neither shitting, nor getting off. Jeffrey John Kripal 2007
He then took refuge again in existentialism, an early secular influence on Gestalt Therapy. In spite of this, Fritz had
integrated a number of essential Zen Buddhist ideas and practices into Gestalt. Zen influence was joined by Taoist:
Fritzs religion of no religion also strongly resembled a kind of psychologised Taoism. Jeffrey John Kripal 2007
Some Zen parallels with Gestalt are, a confidence in the practice of being in the present as a healing agent, the Aha
moment and mini Satories as significant stages of growth, and the primacy of Awareness as our real nature. Perls
stated: Awareness in and of itself can be curative. Jeffrey John Kripal 2007

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ESALEN
After setting up court at Esalen in 1964, Fritz attracted a large entourage. Among them were two men who he later
regarded as his heirs, Dick Price, and Claudio Naranjo. Price was at Esalen before Perls and
Although initially suspicious of Perls when he arrived, Price decide to enter therapy with him, found the experience
helpful, and soon embraced Gestalt as one of his main spiritual practices, along with Buddhist meditation and
..psychadelics.
Jeffrey John Kripal 2007
Price inherited Fritzs mantle as leader of the West Coast Gestalt movement at Esalen when Fritz passed on and brought
a gentler way to it.
Those who knew Price best,..have all commented extensively on the incredible space or broad field that he seemed
to inhabit while he worked with people. Price accessed a spiritual dimension of consciousness that was grounded in the
experience of the basic interconnectedness of all existence.
Jeffrey John Kripal 2007
This reflects aspects of the Presence of awareness that I have as an ideal, openness, spaciousness, non-duality and
interconnectedness. Price used the phrase Gestalt Practice.

THE FERTILE VOID

But there were spiritual influences before Fritz encountered Zen. Perls was inspired by the concept of creative
indifference, of an early 20th century German philosopher called Sigmund Friedlander. Perls integrated into Gestalt the
concept of the zero point, or centre of opposites, a psychological stance in which an individual is poised at rest in the
space between opposites of action. Perls said: Zero is naught, is nothing. A point of indifference, a point from where
opposites are born. If you are caught by one of the opposing forces you are trapped. If you stay in the zero center, you
are balanced and in perspective. Eventually Perls recognised that this was the Western equivalent of the teaching of
Lao Tse, that is, that it was a philosophical form of Taoism. Jeffrey John Kripal 2007
I see creative indifference as akin to Wu-wei, the Taoist concept/practice of non-doing, a view that others hold. Wu is
the Chinese word for empty or non and wei is action. Wu also means enlightenment, so the fertile void and the Aha! are
identical. But how can that be? If you accept the essence of awareness to be the fertile void, then it makes sense. Aha!
The crux of the matter is what Zinker calls the Presence of the therapist. His view is that a therapist must be present
as a witness to the system, a concerned being with, rather than a doing to. His view, while almost spiritual in its
implications, to our minds points to the Taoist concept of wu-wei or non-action. That is, the aim of the therapists
presence is to evoke rather than to provoke in the old Perlsian style of Gestalt therapy
Karin Jordan 2008
Creative indifference comes from the experience of the fertile void. A synonym for the fertile void is openness. "The
cultivation of here-and-now awareness in Gestalt therapy goes hand in hand with another issue underlined by traditional
psychologies, Buddhism in particular. Let us call it openness: to be aware of what is given here and now in our
experiential field. This involves a basic gesture of allowing an indiscriminate acceptance of experience, which may be
said to involve in turn a relinquishment of standards and expectations. Inasmuch as openness cuts across mental
content, it lies, again, in the transpersonal realm. It is expressed in Gestalt therapy in a number of ways, other than the
injunction of being aware without self-manipulation.
Naranjo sees three ways of expressing openness in Gestalt therapy: being aware without self-manipulation, being
creatively indifferent, and accepting nothingness."
Preface to Gestalt as a transpersonal approach C. Naranjo 1978
I have learnt that awareness has primacy in Gestalt. Naranjo here expresses in a nutshell the importance of awareness
in its therapeutic context: Precisely because the manipulative and inauthentic behavior characteristic of the neurotic
modes of being-in-the-world involve an attempt to avoid certain experiences, the attitude of the therapist is to invite an
undoing of such avoidances, a "staying with it," however painful or confusing. In Perls' view, our awareness is
constricted because we have not accepted our suffering
Therefore, Gestalt therapys approach of focusing on the relational, intersubjective aspects of experience (the personal)
makes human connection and relationship the basis for an embodied type of spiritual experience (beyond the
personal).
Wolfert (2000)
Naranjo describes the Gestalt principles of refraining from preconceptions, and openness of the self to what emerges, as
rooted in and parallel to Taoist traditions. Through this attitude of openness, a flexibility is present that allows for
creativity and sacred experience to emerge. "This practice of open attention within Gestalt therapy is similar to many
forms of meditation."
(Naranjo, 1970).
"A Gestalt approach also challenges us to sit in openness with feelings of not knowing, lack of meaning, or emptiness.
These feelings are often associated with the feeling of a void. Sitting in a void is a familiar aspect of Taoist and Zen
Buddhist traditions"

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(Van Dusen, 1977).

'This is often called a fertile void by Perls or place of creative indifference by Friedlaender in Gestalt psychology.'
(Frambach, 2003).
It is the center from which all phenomena arise. Wolfert (2000) tells us that it is through dwelling in the fertile void that
we can have deeper contact and allow spiritual experience to enter.
"This fertile emptiness also has been compared to the psychological openness of grace in Christianity "(Van Dusen,
1977).
Lynn Williams 2006
Ruth Wolfert shows how the fertile void can be used in the stages of contact as a therapist explores a clients figures
with them. As each figure is investigated, it can dissolve into a deeper figure and so on until therapist and client are
sitting in the fertile void, with possibilities for growth. Gestalt therapy has these spiritual underpinnings in its organizing
principle of the process of contact. The stages of contact can be considered as a description of transcending ordinary
reality and entering into an experience of unity (Wolfert, 1989). In the contact continuum, we move in a series of
shifting figures and grounds to final-contact (PHG, pp. 179-207 R. Wolfert 2001
I have not had much experience of this, but once I was in a clinic session and working with a client who was a Gestalt
student, and quite mature and aware. At the beginning of our session I was a mixture of excitement and nervousness. I
had rushed from 30 kilometers away through traffic to be at the clinic on time. After a moment of her taking care of me
because of my nervousness, we settled into our session. I calmed myself by acknowledging how I felt and allowing my
feelings with an open attention. I felt very present. We quickly became attuned. She had something figural she wanted
to work on. She had a block to doing an essay. There was quite a bit of similarity to my experience so I felt I had to
come clean a little and admit that I too had the same difficulty. I allowed her to bring what she wanted to the session
and discuss it, but after we explored her experience in this matter a bit, I invited her to participate in an experiment.
She talked about the block as an entity that was external to herself, as if it was alive and in opposition to her moving
forward with her essay. She used the phrase constricted awareness which was a cue for me that she would be open to
an awareness based experiment. I proposed to her we put the entity out on a chair beside her and then, in a departure
from traditional Gestalt chair work, I suggested that we imagine that her and I and the entity were present together
sitting, surrounded by space. We developed this imaginary situation for a few minutes. I asked what its qualities were,
like colour and so on. She described it as smoky, hazy, dark, frenetic. After a while I invited her to report on her sense
of the entity. She said it had transformed. She said it was gradually losing its power. I did not make the suggestion that
she would now be able to do her essay with no problems, but left an open space for her organismic wisdom to come
forth. I shared with her though, that when I had blocks to doing this kind of work, when my interest was aroused it
drew me into the work, and through to completion. We had a sense of meeting which felt very much like I-thou. I felt
that our eyes met in a gaze of mutual acceptance and respect. At one point, dialogue stalled and I left her in silence for
about 30 seconds. At the end of the session I asked her for feedback, and she said the one thing she had difficulty with
was that awkward moment of silence. This was useful to me as it made me aware of the potential for rupture with a
client who was not ready for a silent void. Though she handled it well, a client with less self-support may have gone into
regression or into their trauma. The experiment seemed to bear fruit for her. What I had tried to do was to bring a
spacious, open awareness to her experience of the block and allow that to transform it. My intuition was that, partly
because of her presence and also her reference to a restricted awareness, she would be open to the experiment, and
she was.

I-THOU
Another profound influence on the formation of Gestalt Therapy was the thought of Martin Buber, a German Jewish
philosopher and mystic. The notions of I-thou, dialogue, realisation and inclusion were integrated into the foundations of
Gestalt early on, probably by Lora Perls, Fritzs partner and co-author of Ego, Hunger and Aggression.
Inclusion, according to Buber, means the ability to develop a dual sensation among those engaged in dialogue:
experiencing oneself and simultaneously perceiving the other in its singularity. The inclusion of a person causes one to
know ones fellow human being both physically and spiritually, in the Biblical sense of knowing a lover. Buber
illustrates this two-fold sensation of inclusion with an erotic metaphor: a man who caresses a woman who lets herself
be caressed, unexpectedly senses the contact from both sidesthrough the palm of his hand, and through the womans
skin. This two-fold event occurring between two human beings is the actualization of love, which is the expression of
responsibility of the I for the Thou.
Kalman Yaron 1993
This I-Thou stance is not unique but makes relations with the other, predominately our fellow humans, the prime focus
of his philosophy.
The experience of dialogue and I-Thou is similar to Zen Dokusan, where teacher and student meet intimately and knit
eyebrows in realisation. And of course the notion of the fertile void is classic Zen teaching. For Buber, the absolute
I-Thou, is God, but all else is between humans. There is no self without other(humans). This differs, on the surface,
with most eastern though which could be said as, There is no separate self, of individual and environment. In this
environment, human relations are implied, but as part of the totality of experience. From my predominately eastern

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perspective, I do not see such a distinction between the eastern understanding of self and a view of the self like
Bubers. The above quote with the metaphor of lovers reminds me of one of Nisargadattas:
I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very
thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become
the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other
focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like.
Nisargadatta 1982
But Buber was a theist and Zionist, and the absolute Thou, was for him the God of the old testament. Regardless of the
differences between Bubers I-Thou and eastern thought, I-Thou is definitely a transpersonal point of view, and shows
one of Gestalts original transpersonal in the interpersonal influences.
..if the morality of Gestalt therapy is one of authenticity and nonmanipulation (of self or other), its awareness training
may be summed up in the statement that J.S. Slmkin proposed as a capsule definition of the approach: "I and thou,
here and now." In other words, it is a practice of awareness in relationship"
C. Naranjo 1978

AWARENESS
Perls spiritual outlook is shown by the central place he gave to awareness. Some would disagree with this, and on
the surface, awareness may not seem to have anything to do with spirituality.
But,
The fact, however, is that awareness is transpersonal. Or, to use the earlier term, spiritual. The most articulate
spiritual traditions make this very clear. Buddhahood (from the root bodh,"awake") is not a particular state or content of
the mind, but mind as such, the container. C. Naranjo 1978
And from Perls:
..Fritz could get even more metaphysical. In his autobiography.. he is quite clear that everything is awareness, and
that even matter and molecules have some quantum of consciousness.
Jeffrey John Kripal 2007
I too place awareness at the centre of my world view, though the word awareness has many connotations for me that
would be unknown to, or not shared by all. I see Gestalt as the practice of interpersonal presence. Presence is
synonymous with awareness for me, and that is one of the connotations of awareness that I have, that in essence, it is
pure presence, and the practice of this presence as a therapist, I believe, is both therapeutic and spiritual. This presence
is I-thou in the fullest sense. When he says everything is awareness, to me Fritz implies awareness as ground of
being, and the ground of all phenomena. The subject-object split dissolves in pure presence. This is also known as
non-dual awareness. I have learnt that awareness has a primacy in the Gestalt understanding of dis-ease and its
treatment. Naranjo here expresses in a nutshell the importance of awareness in its therapeutic context: Precisely
because the manipulative and inauthentic behavior characteristic of the neurotic modes of being-in-the-world involve an
attempt to avoid certain experiences, the attitude of the therapist is to invite an undoing of such avoidances, a "staying
with it," however painful or confusing. In Perls' view, our awareness is constricted because we have not accepted our
suffering C. Naranjo 1978

THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY

This brings me to another point about the transpersonal nature of Gestalt Therapy. Buber and Christian philosophers
influenced by him were and are wary of non-duality, but Jesus, when asked Who are you? by Salome, answered: I
am he who exists from the undivided, a perfect expression of non-duality. St Thomas c70
Modern researcher Andrew newburg equates absolute unitary being with God. Newburg 2001.
Christian mystics called this experience, the Unio Mystica. So although some orthodox Catholic Christians dont like the
notion of non-duality, perhaps because they fear it replaces God, Jesus Gnostic Christian teachings have a striking
resemblance to eastern non-dual teachings.
Ruth Wolfert believes that Gestalt has central elements of the perennial philosophy, Huxleys term for the common
ground of all spiritual philosophies All these traditions are based on transcendence and unity. At certain moments, the
time-and-space of ordinary reality is transcended and the unity of the spiritual ground emerges. Gestalt therapy has
these spiritual underpinnings in its organizing principle of the process of contact. The stages of contact can be
considered as a description of transcending ordinary reality and entering into an experience of unity. In the contact
continuum, we move in a series of shifting figures and grounds to final-contact (PHG, pp. 179-207). From the
deliberateness of the ego functions' identifications and alienations in contacting, we move with, "a sense of readiness...
to final-contact where there is a relaxation of conscious considering, the dissolving of boundaries, and a unity of figure
and ground in which splits of mind, body and external world are healed; and in the aftermath, growth occurs (PHG, pp.
5, 17-18, 193-97) (Wolfert, 1989).
The perennial philosophy is another term for non-dual awareness.

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PRESENCE
An aspect of the Presence of awareness is its void essence, like space, it is empty, and like space, is all pervading. This
Presence is known as
unconditional Presence by John Welwood 1996
Raw Presence by Jim Valby 2007
Instant Presence by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu 2009
Chogyal Namkhai Norbu says that the essence of Instant Presence is infinite potentiality, a similar expressing to the
fertile void. This presence of awareness does not have the same meaning as presence does in Gestalt. It does however
encompass the Gestalt meaning.
Gary Yontev describes Gestalts understanding of presence thus: "Presence. The Gestalt therapist expresses herself to
the patient. Regularly, judiciously, and with discrimination she expresses observations, preferences, feelings, personal
experience and thoughts. Thus, the therapist shares her perspective by modeling phenomenological reporting, which
aids the patient's learning about trust and use of immediate experience to raise awareness. If the therapist relies on
theory-derived interpretation, rather than personal presence, she leads the patient into relying on phenomena not in his
own immediate experience as the tool for raising awareness. In Gestalt therapy the therapist does not use presence to
manipulate the patient to conform to preestablished goals, but rather encourages patients to regulate themselves
autonomously." G. Yontev 1989
Buddhist presence is the ground of being or greater field which encompasses all phenomena. It is empty in essence but
its nature is radiant awareness and phenomena spontaneously arise within this field as its energy. This is meant as
both the true nature of the individual and the all pervading nature of everything. So being in a state of pure presence is
being in tune with the Buddha nature. From this space, a therapist has all the qualities needed for an I-Thou meeting
with the other person. John Welwood speaks of an esoteric practice of self-liberation from the Dzogchen tradition and
how it can enhance therapy. In pure presence, awareness is self illuminating, or aware of itself without objectification.
Psychotherapy a dialogic process is essentially reflective, although when practiced by a therapist with a contemplative
background, it can also include moments of nonreflective presence that facilitate a shift into a deeper dimension of
being. J. Welwood 2000
I see Gestalt as the practice of interpersonal presence. Presence is synonymous with awareness for me, and that is one
of the connotations of awareness that I have, that in essence, it is pure presence, and the practice of this presence as a
therapist, I believe, is both therapeutic and spiritual. This presence is I-thou in the fullest sense. When he says
everything is awareness, to me Fritz implies awareness as ground of being, and the ground of all phenomena. The
subject-object split dissolves in pure presence. Presence is also known as non-dual awareness.
What this can look like in practice is, with the therapists presence, the figure in the clients experience is explored
together respectfully. The client feels met and understood, their experience validated and accepted. The figure and its
context, its ground are illuminated and the client may be able to make meaning of their situation. To give an example
from my limited experience as therapist, I was being therapist for a young woman who had never done therapy before.
She bravely volunteered to be a client at our training clinic. She presented as a cheerful and charming and attractive
young lady, who had quite a high degree of self honesty. She had come along on the invitation of a friend who is a
student at SGI. After greeting each other, I enquired if there was anything she wanted to work on in our session. She
said she had difficulty in social situations because she felt she did not have anything worthwhile to talk about. I invited
her to explore where that statement might have come from. I was more present than I ordinarily am as I had meditated
that morning and had just done a session as therapist, which honed my presence. My attitude was one of acceptance
and responsiveness to the client. I was listening attentively but responding in an intuitive manner, not premeditated but
yet drawing on all my experience of 4 years of training and so on. I think this helped allow her to come forth openly and
to quickly come to the figure which for her was a sense of pain that was in large part grounded in the rejection and
abandonment of her partner of 8 years, one year ago. She seemed to have doubts as to whether she would meet
anyone soon for a new relationship. As we explored where the critical voice might have come from that told her she had
nothing worthwhile to say, she realized straight away it was her ex who said things like, her job as a childcare worker
meant she had nothing interesting to say. He had been constantly critical of her. She had not been able to withstand this
and had been swallowing his critical words whole for years. I told her how I was feeling about what she was telling me.
Now I realize I was intuitively practicing inclusion. I said I was angry. At first she didnt understand where I was coming
from. Then I told her I felt angry at her ex for the way he had spoken to her. She began crying. She had not realized
that the way she had been treated was unacceptable to others. The figure of her self perception as having nothing
worthwhile to bring to conversations had a context of many years of low level emotional abuse. This was the ground
which through our exploration she was able to connect with her perception of unworthiness. She was able to question
her own belief and change her perception. No doubt it was only planting the seed, but I feel sure she would have begun
to change her sense of herself about this mater and more generally. I enquired about her occupation as a childcare
worker and she told me how much joy it gave her. As another example of inclusion I shared with her my work with
people with disabilities and how much I enjoyed it. I told her I really enjoy the presence of children and how much I
valued what she does, how important it is to their development to have adult carers who delight in, and value them. Our
eyes met and we held a gaze for what seemed quite a while. That she was able to look straight back and hold her gaze

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meant to me that she trusted me and felt accepted beyond what she was used to. She confirmed this saying she felt
understood for the first time in a long time. My trainer was right there in the room but my attention was almost
exclusively on the client. Time seemed to stand still and our contact seemed beyond the ordinary. We could have
explored further back to see if her introjects had an earlier history but she did not seem to want to go in a direction
other than where we were and I continued to practice respecting what she was presenting to me and what she wanted
to explore. It felt very much like I-Thou, my strongest sense of this in my training as a therapist. It felt like a very real
and ordinary exchange and at the same time, to have a transcendent quality. The client reported very positively about
her first experience of therapy in feedback afterwards. I did not handle the session perfectly, but it seemed a very
powerful yet very human experience for both of us.

EAST & WEST SIMILARITIES

The Gestalt Therapy of the Perls gained its name from the German Gestalt Psychology movement, a largely
materialistic, scientific movement interested in the psychology of perception. The Buddha examined his experience and
deduced the structure of the mind as originating with sensation(contact of senses with the sense objects), leading to
perception, leading to mental formations, leading to desire and suffering. My point is, the Buddha was primarily
concerned with mental suffering and its causes and examined the psyche phenomenologically from first principles
starting with sensation. This is what the Gestalt Psychologists were trying to do. The Buddha used the instrument of
meditation for his experimentation. So even the empirical experiments of Gestalt Psychology have something in
common with eastern thought. The field theory of Lewin which greatly influenced Fritz & Lora Perls has much in common
with eastern thought. The interconnectedness of all phenomena is an aspect of both Gestalt Field theory and many
eastern traditions. In Zen, an individuals(great) body is not bound by the skin, but radiates with his awareness to
embrace all possible phenomena, in all directions. Gestalt calls this the phenomenological field.

CONCLUSION
16 years ago I managed to break free of the bonds of active addiction to substances. Some years ago I acquired the
aspiration to work with addicts in recovery to share what I had learned in transcending the damage of addiction, and the
conditioning that had led me into addiction. I sought a path to follow this and looked at Alcohol and other Drug studies,
Counseling and Hakomi. What drew me to Gestalt was its closeness to Zen and other spiritual traditions and its field
theory, its values of living in the present with awareness. It held much excitement for me as a path to continue my
spiritual practice and benefit others. I look forward to practicing Gestalt in a way that helps others to awaken, as I am
also awakening with them.
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