Perls' Gestalt Dream Analysis and the Awakener

In an effort to enable his clients to explore the dimensions of their functioning, Fritz Perls, noted Gestalt therapist, would often help his clients to explore their dreams. He cited Freud, who called dreams the golden road to the unconscious. His book, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, described his thoughts in this therapeutic process

His dream work was fascinating. If a person was climbing a ladder up a castle wall, fleeing a monster, he would have the client be the climber and describe the feelings. He might then have the client be the ladder and (by changing chairs) enter into a dialog with the climber. Next he might have the client play the part of the castle wall. It was intriguing to read the relative ease with which clients could take on these unexpected roles. Finally he might have the client become the monster, which was generally more challenging. The monster role as I understand it would be our shadow. The part of ourselves that we repudiate and cannot own. In these therapeutic dialogs, Perls was uninterested in calm and placating conversations. Instead he tried to heighten the tensions, and the sharpen the distinctions between roles.

I have tried this technique with clients, and though as a therapist I never rose above rank amateur status, it was clear that the process worked, and was viable.

Perls explained that this can happen because the client is the creator of the dream, and though he identifies with particular roles, and is alienated from others, it is his (or her) ego structure that dictates all of the details of the dream.

The parallel with Meher Baba starts when he points out that all of this life is a dream, and that He is both the dreamer and the Awakener. In a recent book Rustom Falahati pointed out that Bhau would often assemble residents and workers at the Trust office at 4PM ever day just to remind them that all of this is a dream.

Just as Perls would try to heighten the conflicts between dream characters, Baba would try to heighten conflicts between people, before fostering a spirit of love and reconciliation.

So?

Well for me the earlier Gestalt dream work helps me to understand that I who am writing this brief piece, and you who are reading it, are being dreamed by the same eternal Beloved. What is challenging is the recognition that even when I encounter a monster, a person who threatens my core ego, that it is all a dream, and that Baba is the same dreamer in each of us.

Baba tells us that to love those we cannot love is the way to learn to love God.