Dr. Ashok Bedi is a colorful story-teller, skilled analyst and sweeping philosopher. In this wide-ranging course Bedi offers many illustrations of shadow dynamics. The Bhagavad Gita, Puranic heroes and anti-heroes, Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray”, the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, Carl Jung and Krishna all take their place on the stage. The common thread is the tension of opposites in the psyche, the play of light and shadow.
In this course Bedi begins with the Western perspective on the shadow. We learn the personal shadow is mostly colored by parental complexes. He touches on the Jungian idea of scape-goating and projecting shadow on a cultural level.
He continues with an Eastern perspective on the Shadow, which offers another path to deal with the Shadow. The East transcends the duality of the good and evil and considers them as aspects of the totality of the individual and the divine. This is amplified in the Bhagavad Gita in Krishna’s wonderous dialogue with Arjuna.
Ashok Bedi also talks about three classic Eastern responses to outer manifestations of shadow. Lord Rama acts as a warrior, Krishna acts as a trickster, and Ghandi models the spiritual anchorite response.
Bedi concludes with two gripping stories of shadow events. A true crime killer and Hindu mythology illustrate the twists and subtleties of when light meets dark. He invites us to explore the mystery of the Shadow and its creative, and transformative impact on healing the individual and the dark side of our contemporary culture.