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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awaken the Slumbering Goddess- A physician's perspective, October 12, 2007
Awaken the Slumbering Goddess:
The Latent Code of the Hindu
Goddess Archetypes
As clinicians, we are well aware that patients bring to us encoded behavioral communications that are non-verbal. These are often presented to us in their transference, or as part of their character pathology, or in their symptomatology. Our task is to help them break the code, and to "translate" these symptoms into words, so that they can be understood and processed.
In this, his most groundbreaking work yet, Dr. Bedi proposes that the soul itself conveys its message, via the "latent code of timeless wisdom templates that have crystallized in human consciousness over several millennia". Defining our limited outer consciousness as the ego, and our deeper consciousness as the soul, Dr. Bedi points out that it is only when the ego and the soul are connected that we can bridge the gap. This allows our destiny to blossom, and reach its true potential.
Dr. Bedi's book itself is a bridge that takes us on a fascinating journey -- a journey that enables us to connect our outward consciousness with the deeper wisdom of our unconscious psyche. This wisdom is born of the cumulative wealth of human experience through the ages.
Equally at home with clarifying Jungian theory, and explaining the Vedas and Hindu spirituality in all it's glory, Dr. Bedi gives us a masterful analysis of human distress as a manifestation of the ego's disconnection from the soul (the source of innate wisdom).
He explains, step-by-step, with vivid personal and clinical examples, how to identify clues that are made available to us by the latent code of our soul. He likens this to DNA; just as DNA analysis in these modern times can sometimes set a prisoner free, so can the identification of this code release us to reconnect with the timeless wisdom of the ages. Such an analysis may at last free us from the tyranny of psychological distress and reaffirm us in our larger purpose in the universe. Perhaps this is what John Newton, in the hymn Amazing Grace, meant when he wrote the words "I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see".
The overall design of the book, like a fine Persian carpet, is interwoven with stories of Dr. Bedi's fascinating encounters with the latent code in his own life and in the lives of his patients.
Using dreams, synchronistic events, and symptoms, he produces a kaleidoscope of fascinating patterns. As these patterns flash before the clinician's eye, they evoke images of patients who could make important discoveries in their selves, and increase their creativity, if only they were able to tolerate what they experience as a "void", and listen to the whisperings of the latent code from their souls.
In a particularly illuminating chapter on the city of Bombay, Dr. Bedi describes the dream that helped to establish the Mahalakshmi temple, and to bridge the separate islands together into a cohesive city.
And in the end, Dr. Bedi warns how important it is to be aware of this spiritual code and dimension, without being possessed by it to the extent that all analytical objectivity is lost. Thereby we can avoid the present state of affairs that seem to exist, in terms of one extreme or the other, in both the East and the West.
I must stress, that although this book is full of fascinating clinical insights, Dr. Bedi's mastery of the subject, as well as his language, make it a must for any individual who is searching for enlightenment.
Once again, Dr. Bedi points out for us the path to regain our "sight" and sense of purpose, by letting the words expressed by our unconscious guide our egos into safe harbor.
Dinshah D. Gagrat, M.D.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Journey Continues, December 1, 2007
David Shapiro, MD Internal Medicine, Milwaukee, WI
Book review:
Awaken the Slumbering Goddess: The Latent Code of the Hindu Archetypes
This is a book that works on many levels and should be of interest to a large group of readers beyond those who have found themselves engaged in Hinduism or Hindu Iconography. There are, for instance, the psychologists looking for ways of understanding the psyche and its travels and travails. There are the scholars of the East. There are comparative-religion students embracing one side or the other of the controversy regarding Eurocentric views of Hindu religious life. The Wendy Donigers et al who would analyze from a western Freudian view the complexities of the Hindu Pantheon. There are American Hindus of Indian Origin, never fully endowed with their own heritage. Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana and Dzogchen students attempting to broaden their own understanding of their esotericism and Yantra Yoga traditions. Athletic yoga students feeling the pull of spirituality invading their athleticism. In short, there is much here for many of us. In short, seekers and searchers of many hues should be attracted to this book.
Written in an extremely accessible style, using the five manifestations of the female Deity figure, this book presents a landscape and a journey and a journal that all of us would find useful. The author presents cases from his extensive psychiatric practice for illustration, a method the works well to underscore the varied natures and manifestations of the Hindu Goddess pantheon. Particularly engrossing is his discussion of Kali, whose manifests the energy of destruction and of Aditi who helps to clear the ground to allow us to rebuild. Laxmi, Parvati and Saraswati are all presented as well and are shown to be useful metaphors with which we may view, enrich, enliven and perhaps rebuild our lives.
Dr. Bedi offers us many valuable lessons, each of them framed in a very readable and enjoyable style. Never talking down to his audience, he makes even the most complex Jungian and Iconographic concepts well within our grasp. I heartily enjoyed the book and would think it worthwhile for a broad audience.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Awaken the Slumbering Goddess, October 15, 2007
Why are so many people depressed? Why do so many people chase after one stimulating experience after another? Why does "the pursuit of happiness" sound more and more like a cruel joke, or an unattainable state of being?
In "Awaken the Slumbering Goddess - The Latent Code of the Hindu Goddess Archetypes," Ashok Bedi, M.D., offers both an answer to these questions as well as a method for restoring our personal and our collective sense of meaning and purpose: Our consciousness is roorless, and consequenrly starved for the nourishment that only the objective psyche-the "collective unconscious"-can offer. We are more like hydropontically-grown plants, subsisting on slurry of artificially compounded nutrients flushed into the sterile gravel where our hungry roots seek real food.
Through an insightful exploration of many of the great Hindu goddesses, those images of the archetypal feminine in their Indian cultural manifestations, Dr. Bedi reminds us with myths and clinical vignettes how discovering and connecting with the archetypal feminine aspect of the objective psyche offer us the possibility of meaning and purpose, not just brute survival. Meaning and purpose arise through dialogue, that (often non-verbal) "conversation" in which we come to know and interact with real forces and personalities-goddesses-whose existence is invisible but palpable .
Perhaps we first encounter the goddess as Kali, "the dark goddess. . . [who] incarnates in our life to destroy the darkness-of the personality to make room for a new consciousness to emerge." As e.G. Jung pointed out many years ago, often we must first dismantle our habitual conscious attitudes to make room for the new attitude that makes fruitful life possible. Mter Kali has cleared away the dead old growth, we may lie fallow, like the garden in winter.
This is the realm and our experience of Aditi, the goddess and "energy of the void-the sacred space that is essential to make room for new creation." Kali and Aditi are often the first two goddesses to appear in the transformative process of renewal.
Dr. Bedi does not stop there, for the experience of renewal is more than the first two phases imaged in these goddesses. Many of the people who come to us with their depression, anxiety, sense of futility and entrapment-and the many other symptoms we all have heard about or suffered ourselves-have felt Kali's presence in their flesh and bones. Many feel stranded in Aditi's realm-the void neither knowing they are in the presence of a goddess, nor having any idea what might lie beyond. But there are more aspects to the Great Goddess than these two, and Dr. Bedi presents them in vivid hews.
Dr. Bedi's sure guidance may well help you, the reader, rediscover your "latent code" and sink your roots in the fertile, nourishing soil of the source and sustainer of all life.
Boris Matthews, Ph.D. Jungian Psychoanalyst
Chairperson, The Program Committee
C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago
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by Edward Edinger
