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8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Awaken the Slumbering Goddess- A physician's perspective Oct 12, 2007
By Dinshah D. Gagrat
"M.D."
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.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
The Journey Continues Dec 01, 2007
By David Shapiro
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.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Awaken the Slumbering Goddess Oct 15, 2007
By Boris L. Matthews
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
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Brilliant discussion Mar 22, 2008
By Ellen B. Mafarland
Awaken the Slumbering Goddess is a refreshing discussion of how to understand the complicated pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses. Dr. Bedi brings his expertise as a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and Hindu to the subject. Archetypal energies are alive in all of our psyches and Dr. Bedi explains how these energies might be understood and accepted. Once brought to consciousness they can be used in forming healthy relationships. Whether Hindu or not reading this book can enlarge one's understanding of psychological dynamics. Dr. Bedi is a master at bridging Eastern and Western traditions of psychology and spiritual traditions. Ellen Macfarland, PhD Author of "The Sacred Path Beyond Trauma.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
A physicist's view Mar 10, 2008
By Alkesh Punjabi
My interest in Dr. Ashok Bedi's literary work began with his first book Path to Soul, published in the year 2000. From then on, I have carefully followed his writings that include Accidents & Synchronicity, and Retire Your Family Karma. In his latest book Awaken the Slumbering Goddess, Dr. Bedi has accomplished a seamless integration of Indian existentialist thought, traditions, and practices with the Western Jungian psychoanalysis. Lest I be misunderstood, let me state that, I am not a psychologist, nor a psychiatrist, nor a psychoanalyst. I am a theoretical physicist. And as such, what struck me as the unique in Awaken the Slumbering Goddess is the parallel between psychoanalysis and existentialist constructs of Hindu Goddesses on one hand, and physics and mathematics on the other. In physics, the seemingly disparate phenomenological universe is made sense of and comprehended through a process that we can call concretization. What this means is that reality is expressed as mathematical relations that follow logical patterns. Thus, the abstract becomes concrete (or comprehensible), and then concrete is either objectively validated or refuted by experience or experiment. I believe Dr. Bedi has subtly grasped this scientific methodology. Dr. Bedi clearly understands that the Hindu Goddesses and Gods are the archetypes of human condition governed by an existentialist logic, and that these Goddesses and Gods represent a distillation and "concretization" of eons of human experiences, struggles, thoughts, and reflections of a vast, hoary, and living civilization. Dr. Bedi's psychoanalytic descriptions of Goddesses are accurate, correct, and authentic. A great amount of unbiased and objective research has gone into characterization of the Goddesses as archetypes of existential transitions, travails, and struggles of human race surpassing the bounds of time, space, and race. Since human experience is not mathematically quantifiable, it is only through the existentialist paradigm that we can grasp it, and apply it to ameliorate human crises; and thus the necessity and universality of the archetypes represented by the Goddesses. Dr. Bedi has brought about this essential indivisibility of Jungian with Goddesses with the ease and comfort of a quantum physicist - who is at once comfortable in the world of particle and wave. No doubt, Dr. Bedi's innate knowledge and experience with Indian thought and traditions, and his long experience as a working physician-psychiatrist, and classical training in Western medical, psychiatric and Jungian psychoanalytic sciences in England, USA, and India have clearly helped him. Also, Dr. Bedi's deep insight and vast experience in expertly applying Jungian psychoanalytic approaches to problems of mental and psychological health have also stood him in good stead. Dr. Bedi's seamless integration of the existentialist world of Hindu Goddesses and Jungian psychoanalysis is a unique and valuable scholarly, practical contribution. His approach is unbiased and objective, yet holistic and empathetic. It is scholarly, yet rooted in practice as a working physician. I think Dr. Bedi's work will set a canon that will guide future scholars and professionals in the essential integration of the European Jungian and the Eastern worlds.
Alkesh Punjabi, PhD
Professor of Physics and Mathematics
Director, Center for Nuclear Fusion Research
Hampton University
Hampton VA 23668
USA
March 7, 2008
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