Customer Reviews

Secrets of the Silk Road: Finding the Lost Sacred Books of the Gobi

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I picked this book up at a friends and was hooked right at the intro. It starts off as a simple story about growing up with subtle awareness and takes you on the journey of Life. With true jewels for growth and awareness hidden in plain sight as simple realizations I read this book like it was a travelogue for the Soul, or a memory enhancer for the heart, and when I'd finished wanted to start again... But I gave it to an 85 year old friend who reads voraciously and she told me... " I was hooked at the Intro and was twenty pages deep before I looked around to see where I was"...

This captivating tale seduced my spirit with powerful ancient wisdom. Larry Andrew's journey through central Asia held my attention with page after page of spiritual gems. A unique perspective of truth that is very much applicable to our modern lives.

I really loved this book. It was so interesting and different from anything that I have read. New information and takes you on quite an adventure. I loved it so much. Was sorry when it ended. I would recomend this book to anyone who would read it.

Going back to Gurdjieff, there has developed a literary genre in which a Westerner journeys to remote outposts in the Middle East and Asia in search of a long-lost fountain of spiritual wisdom. This journey typically brings the neophyte into contact with a gruff sage who educates him in the ways of wisdom through a mixture of tough love, humor, sarcasm, and hard work. "Secrets of the Silk Road" sticks very close to this formula, a formula perfected by such writers as Gurdjieff himself, Reshad Feild, O. M. Burke, J. G. Bennett, Murat Yagan, and Louis Palmer. I would rate this book a couple of notches below the efforts of those writers.

Author Larry Andrews is an American civil engineer who travels to Central Asia in search of the legendary "Monastery of the Sacred Tree," purportedly the locus of an ancient and little-known spiritual lineage. Through a series of extraordinary coincidences that suggest some kind of Divine Plan, Andrews is passed from one intermediary to another until he finally meets his destined mentor, Thod, a brusque, handsome man from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgeztan. Thod in turn introduces Andrews to an elderly sage named Gil-Hamesh, and a sidekick identified as "the Cook." Together these four travel across the desert to their eventual destination, the fabled "Monastery of the Sacred Tree."

Andrews' mentors - including "the Cook" - take turns instructing him in the wisdom of "The Song of Eternity," an ancient set of four books describing the path to spiritual enlightenment. We are given only brief excerpts from these books, along with fragments of the teaching and cursory descriptions of various spiritual exercises. As presented here, the material is too sparse and disorganized to provide a basis for a spiritual practice; we are told that a more detailed and sytematic presentation of the teachings will be provided in forthcoming books.

The teachings themselves are said to pre-date the rise of the world religions, but to have influenced them all. The teachings have a definite Sufi feel to them, but - unlike most of the teachings in this genre - the presentation is totally divorced from the religion of Islam or the ambiance of organized Sufism; the teachings are in fact described as shamanistic in origin, yet the "Monastery of the Sacred Tree" contains primarily Buddhist art work. I find this eclecticism and non-denominationalism refreshing in a world in which religions are still pitted against one another at the point of a gun.

This is a good book, not a great book; if you start it, you will probably finish it. I gave it three stars, but it might have been four. The book has enough loose ends that you will probably want MORE, to see if all your questions will be answered. It is essentially a spiritual travelogue, a general introduction to a previously hidden spiritual path, and a teaser for the teachings to follow. Andrews returns home presumably a changed man, and his life takes a new direction. Stay tuned.