Into the Hands of the Unknown: an Indian Sojourn with a Harvard Renunciant

“I think you should come with me to India”

Thus begins this tale of the author and photographer Thomas K. Shor when he was a young man and happened to sit next to Ed Spencer, a brilliant seventy-year-old ex-Harvard professor, turned wandering holy man, who makes this offer within an hour of their meeting on a Greek ferry. Though unsure whether the old man is some kind of a bum or a realized being or both, he agrees to go with this enigmatic stranger whose credo is, “Take the Money out of your pocket and put yourself in the hands of the Unknown.”
When they arrive in Greece and Ed passes the money exchange with hardly a glance, his young companion begins to understand the gulf that separates the old man from the rest of humanity.
The ensuing journey, recounted in the pages of INTO THE HANDS OF THE UNKNOWN, takes them on an epic journey by foot into the heart of South India and then to the Himalayas where the author made his first contact with the Tibetan people.
INTO THE HANDS OF THE UNKNOWN, which is revised and has a new Postscript describing the author’s subsequent encounters with the Ed Spencer, was originally published as Part II of the book WINDBLOWN CLOUDS published by Escape Media Publishers, USA, in 2003 and by Pilgrims Publishers, India and Nepal, in 2006.

From the review by the renowned British poet Kathleen Raine:
Thomas Shor’s life is a continual unfolding of those inner and outer worlds which his sense of wonder discovers continually. His story reminds us that we are, or could be, travelers in a world of marvels, of love, and encounters with men and women themselves on pilgrimages of the imagination. Did not the Emperor Haroun al-Rashid for a thousand and one nights hear in the city of Baghdad endless stories that make up the one story of the world? Once involved in Thomas Shor’s adventure of life, one hopes only for more.

Kathleen Raine (D.Litt., Cambridge; Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France; Commander of the British Empire; Winner—Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, England, etc.)