Our first release for the iBookstore is now available! Healing the Pain Through Authentic Spiritual Life enhanced multimedia audiobook is now available on iTunes (US only, so far). This short multimedia ebook for iOS devices features audio files of the author reading the complete text. It is a great Holiday message for your friends who may not yet be ready for full Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
To sample the book free or purchase it for just US$0.99, open iBook on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, click Store and search for 'David Hughes'.
- Read the book online. [258 KB PDF - no audio]
- Read an excerpt after the break.
- Purchase the standard EPUB version for platforms other than iOS from Lulu.com. Does not include audio.
Excerpt:
Authentic spiritual life is difficult. It takes time and energy, intelli- gence, determination and self-discipline. It requires other personal qualities and activities that most people regard as unpleasant and try to avoid whenever possible. It is certainly much easier to just kick back and surf the web, listen to music or watch TV. So why bother with spiritual life? Why invest all that time and energy when you could be out enjoying yourself?
The answer is simple: Because you are a human being. Being human means that you are a spiritual being in the material world, and that includes an inherent deep dissatisfaction with life. As science-fiction writer Phillip K. Dick opined, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Oh, you can go into denial about it; you can suppress it from your consciousness for some time. You can distract yourself for hours or days on end, but it always comes back— usually when you least expect it. All of a sudden something clicks in- side, you sit up and take stock, and realize your actual situation in life: You are suffering.
Sure, you keep up a good front. You manage to force a smile somehow, and hope no one suspects. Your act is together—those periods of des- peration, those times when you feel everything caving in on you, the darkness and uncertainty eating away at your soul—you keep those to yourself and never let anyone know. Actually you are a mess, and you feel it deep within your heart. You hide it beautifully; but in the si- lence of the darkest hours of the night, within your most confidential chamber of consciousness, you know that it's all a lie, that this mate- rial life is not enough. Way down under all your phoniness, all your bluster and bravado, you just know there has got be some other way to live, some better way to look at the world, some way to touch life more fully. The truth is out there somewhere.
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