Iranian teens review Rhonda Byrne's Power
6 Feb 2012 15:45
As an important psychological book, Rhonda Byrne's "The Power" was reviewed yesterday evening by a group of junior school students with the presence of the translators Mahdi Gharachedaghi and Irna Mohyeddin Bonab.
IBNA: At the beginning of the session, an attending teen said: "It is stated in a part of the book that those enjoying a good life do not usually know how they have reached there, whereas in reality most of successful characters followed a purpose and carried it out with energy and belief. I also learnt a lot from the sayings of Imams and compared the book's guidelines with these sayings."
Another teen mentioned that there are many similar books available in this field, such as 'The Prospering Power of Love'. But while 'The Power' only deals with ways to achieve material success in the world, the other volume 'The Prospering Power of Love' is about God and divine knowledge."
Yet another student opposed to the idea by saying that the book only recognizes the power of love saying that without love the world will come to an end, whereas in real world 'hatred' stands besides love and sometimes hatred is a stronger force in moving man ahead.
Another student added: "But in my opinion, hatred is lack of love and without love no one would ever perceive hatred. The only problem with this book is that it is limited to earthly love of human beings."
"The book introduces mankind as a mean and greedy creature that is only seeking earthly pleasures. Also, the book totally neglects the role of reason when it talks about the effects of positive and negative energies," said the next student.
The discussion was then followed by the translator's comments. "What is meant of love in this book is an all-encompassing love, but due to so many repetitions one might think that by love it only means earthly love," said Mohyeddin Bonab.
Another point is that each writer has a different outlook of a given subject and their opinions may vary widely. Therefore, we cannot take all the things we read and we should rather keep in mind the useful points. If young readers learn to read the books critically, they will come up with a number of interesting questions and challenges that motivates them for further studies," added Bonab.
Then Mahdi Gharachedaghi - the other translator of 'The Power' – said: "To a large extent I agree with most ideas expressed in the book as I firmly believe that psychology has different categories. Only one category deals with clinical problems such as depression, anxiety or fear. Another category includes emotional matters of each individual – the heart matters."
He added: "This category deals with instincts and intuitions and it reachable through science. Many of the ideas discussed in the book are also mentioned in Quran and also found in Iranian culture – you can see many examples of these in Mowlana Rumi's poetry. For instance, the idea of the mind-as-magnet is a common motif.
The session was held on Saturday evening (February 5) at Farhangsaraye Eshragh.
