Beauty, Spirituality, and Gestalt Theory

• Children, Sages and Clowns...Spiritual Experience and Gestalt Therapy by Brian O'Neill, 4/26/97
  • Spiritual Experience and The Field by J. Richard White, 4/26/97
    • Aim to Please by Ed Riemann, 4/30/97
      
      

But that's another issue for me. I didn't miss the beauty of the prose; I wasn't addressing it. I am primarily a writer, one who is part of the Gestalt discussion because that discussion presents experience in a way that is natural to me. But I was commenting on the necessity of spirituality from the Gestalt perspective.

Let me try again. Gestalt theory, at its highest level, neither demands nor excludes spirituality. It is indifferent to it; I am creatively indifferent to it. But beautiful prose, beautiful poetry? I can not be so detached. And, perhaps, this is, for me, a moral equivalent of spirituality. Keats is nice on this point (although the quotation will not challenge your knowledge): "Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know". If that’s spirituality, I’m spiritual. If that thought is supported by Gestalt theory, then I’m a Gestalt theorist.

Can not tell you how appreciative I am that you responded. The momentum at the bottom end of this string has not been particularly exhilarating.

• Spirituality and Therapy by Ed Riemann, 5/1/97