Introduction

"When it comes to spirituality and life, Turak is as authentic as it gets. Wonderful read!"— Michael Keaton, actor

Not Less Than Everything: One Man’s Quest for Spiritual Enlightenment is the inspirational true story of how author, August Turak overcame depression and meaningless despair through a daring quest for life’s ultimate meaning and purpose.

A search for transcendence.

As a troubled young college student in 1971, Turak was seized by the idea that the mystical experience various religious traditions call Enlightenment, Satori, Nirvana, Samadhi, the Unio Mystica, or Cosmic Consciousness not only exists, but might be attainable by him.

This sparked a life altering quest as Turak became in turn,…

…the first student of a rough-hewn, hillbilly Zen master;
…the protégé of the founder of the IBM Executive School;
…the client of a mystical psychologist doing government funded research with LSD;
…a member of the original team that launched MTV: Music Television;
…a successful hi-tech entrepreneur and even a frequent monastic guest at a Trappist monastery.

It was this same spiritual roller coaster that dropped him off twenty-five years later in a tiny room of a rundown motel in Baltimore, Maryland deeply depressed, fearing for his sanity, and with nowhere else to turn. Or so it only seemed…

Through a series of true, wildly entertaining spiritual adventures and practical life lessons, Turak offers his readers an accessible, universal blueprint for a life overflowing with joy, peace, higher purpose and above all gratitude.

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Excerpt

What I found so fascinating about Jay and the Vietnam vet is that

they had, each in his own way, seen through life. They both discovered

that behind that phony cardboard cutout we usually take for reality

there is something more real, magical, and infinitely more important.

I remember lying in my bed in my basement bedroom as a boy staring

intently into the pitch-black darkness hovering right above my nose.

If I just had a knife sharp enough, I thought, I could slice that inky

blackness open, shove my head through the crack, and see what was

on the other side. As Captain Ahab says to his first mate Starbuck in

Melville’s Moby Dick, “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard

masks.” For half-mad, Heaven-storming Ahab to “strike through the

mask” is the only damn thing worth doing regardless of cost.

Of course, there is a price to pay for seeing through life, and that

price is paid in painful disillusionment. The cardboard construct the

vet so despised does have its uses as well as its charms: its mind-numbing,

ersatz, superficiality provides a wonderful buffer against all the

terrible truths about life and ourselves we would rather not face.

At the ripe old age of 19, I was seeing through life as well, but rather

than Jay’s white light or the Vet’s single point of white-hot intensity,

I was merely seeing through myself, and these insights were far less

spectacular—and about to get much darker.--P.41 view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

What other books did this remind you of?
If you got a chance to ask the author one question, what would it be?
What do you think the author's purpose was in writing this book?

What did you know about this book's subject before you started to read it?
What new things did you learn? What questions do you still have?
Of all the info presented in the book, what has stayed with you the most?
Did this book change or challenge any preconceived notions you had?

Why do you think the author chose to tell this story?
How honest do you think the author was being?
What aspects of the author's story could you most relate to?
How did this story make you reflect on your own life?

Weblinks

»	Austin Turak Foundation

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