Claudio Naranjo, M.D. was born in Chile where he studied medicine, psychiatry, music and philosophy, taught psychology and social psychiatry, and served as the director of the Center for Medical Anthropology. Moving to the U.S., Naranjo joined the staff of the Esalen Institute where he worked closely with Fritz Perls. Dr. Naranjo's life pilgrimage brought him in contact with various spiritual masters, including Swami Muktananda, Idries Shah, Oscar Ichazo (from whom his Enneagram work developed), Suleyman Dede, His Holiness the XVI-th Karmapa and most decisively, Tarthang Tulku, Rinpoche.Naranjo has taught comparative religion at the California Institute of Asian Studies, humanistic psychology at the University of California in Santa Cruz, and meditation at Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, CA. He was the founder of SAT Institute, an integrative psycho-spiritual school. He is the honorary president of two Gestalt Institutes, a Fellow of the Institute of Cultural Research in London, and a member of the U.S. Club of Rome. He is considered a pioneer of the Human Potential Movement, as well as for his introduction of "Fourth Way" (Gurdjieffian) ideas to psychotherapy.

Currently, Dr. Naranjo is dedicated to an integrative and transpersonal education of psychotherapists in various European and South American countries. He is published widely, in Spanish, Portuguese and German.