“A deeply touching, stimulating and thought-provoking talk. Heartfelt thank you.”
“Thank you for the invitation to join this lecture, which I thoroughly enjoyed, as did my son-in-law . . . , who has been a Bahá’í pioneer in the Baltics for four years and came to Scotland this year to complete university courses in psychology.”
“This was fantastic. Do you have a short list of readings/book that can be helpful for us to explore?” [There is a short reading list at the end of the PowerPoint.]
“I am recommending this talk for the Responding Effectively to Global Challenges course to be listened to in conjunction with Shogh Efendi’s letter ‘The Unfoldment of World Civilization.’”
Great presentation, but the print [in the PowerPoint] was too small and did not have enough contrast for our small group to read it on a TV monitor.” [The PowerPoint is available for printing out and having your own copy.]
Elena promised that her talk would accomplish four things: (1) bring “a Bahá’í perspective to examining the inner dynamic of oppression and the root socio-historical characteristics of a wide range of psychological conditions in the age of anxiety”; (2) “explore the challenge to develop psychological education and clinical training that address proactively the complex needs of a highly diverse and conflict-ridden global society”; (3) “offer an emergent vision of global community psychology in an explicit normative context”; and (4) “discuss processes of the systemic cultivation of cultures of social health, which foster in people spiritual awakening and progressively more empowered alignment with planetary transformation.” She said she would “draw from a synthesis of these issues, developed in a recent Bahá’í-inspired volume, Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era.” That may sound heavy, but Elena made good on her promises, as she discussed, clearly, without jargon, and with easy-to-follow diagrams, themes such as systemic inner oppression; our broken relationship to meaning; restructuring our relationship to life of the mind and society; a global mind change; the opening of the modern mind; moving from inner oppression to recognizing our deep resources; psychological and spiritual understanding; cognition, emotion, and volition; and unity processes in the advancement of human civilization. This list barely touches the depth and breadth of her Web Talk. But it may encourage you to start your own journey.
A number who listened to the talks immediately went to the Web to buy a copy of Elena’s book but found that its publisher, Springer, has priced it very high—probably because it is intended for university courses and academic libraries. Elena made these suggestions:
Ask your university or public library to get it for you on interlibrary loan.
Register for www.academia.edu, and print out the chapters that she has uploaded there. Anyone can register. It is free.
Ask Springer, the publisher, to print out particular chapters for you. You will have pay for them.
Get the book as an eBook printed in softcover for $24.99 US. MyCopies are available to anyone whose university library subscribes to Springer’s eBook package. Check out the Springer website for information about MyCopy and how to order from Springer.
One listener to Elena’s Web Talk wrote this: “Just about every Web Talk is my favorite, but Elena Mustakova’s is the one I will return to keep myself centered in our chaotic world.”
