The Serpent Rising [Paperback]

Mary Garden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2003

n 1973, Mary Garden abandoned a promising academic career to spend seven years in India at the feet of such gurus as Rajneesh, Sathya Sai Baba and an enigmatic yogi in the Himalayan jungle - Swami Balyogi Premvarni. The Serpent Rising is her own story of the heaven and hell she experienced as she fell under the spell of self-appointed 'god-men'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A courageous memoir and a salutary warning to all shoppers in the spiritual supermarket. -- Review by Robin Osborne, The Northern Rivers Echo (Lismore), 27 November, 2003.

An autobiography of power and authenticity. A very good read. Mary’s style is lucid and unpretentious but very honest. -- A review by Harry Whitehouse
Published in The Range News, Maleny, December 30, 2003.
Review by Harry Whitehouse. The Range News, Maleny, December 30, 2003.

Provides some very concrete examples of the guru-trap and its hazards in her highly entertaining but ultimately very serious book. -- Review by Professor John Wren-Lewis.

There is no other book which reveals the addictive nature of the search for spiritual enlightenment better than this one. -- Review by Sue Gough. The Courier Mail.

This journey is a cautionary tale for spiritual seekers lest they suspend their mental faculties and lose their own power. -- Review by Ruth Parnell. NEXUS Magazine, Vol 11, No 2, February – March 2004

From the Publisher

The Serpent Rising explores on an intimate level the relationship between guru and disciple, a relationship that has no parallel in other spiritual traditions. Because of its demands for total surrender and obedience it is probably the most authoritarian of all relationships and potentially the most destructive. Unlike Sarah Macdonald?s best-selling Holy Cow! The Serpent Rising goes much deeper into what life is really like in the inner circle of a guru.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 262 pages
• Publisher: Sid Harta Publishers; 2nd edition (December 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1877059501
• ISBN-13: 978-1877059506
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,031,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Real Spiritual Rising! by Robert Priddy, November 26, 2004

By 

kerry b. collison (Jakarta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Serpent Rising (Paperback)

A real life spiritual thriller! Such a frank and wholly engaging account of such
a remarkable 'spiritual journey' to India has seldom been written. This can be
said with confidence because it is shatteringly frank. It takes 'seekers of the
spiritual' on a vicarious tour of the mystique of yogis, gurus, swamis and their
kind, without personally having to go through the accompanying betrayals and
horrors that happened to Mary Garden and which so often occur. The extraordinary
psychic and paranormal experiences, which are almost invariably also a baited
hook, were also had by Mary Garden in plenty. For me this account represents
a broad and experientially-founded rebuttal of much of what the vast New Age
literature builds up in groping for spiritual solutions to living and following
fraudulent gurus, and not least the search for transcendental experiences of
any kind at all costs. The dangers she encountered were great and her survival
of them and the intense physical and mental-emotional sufferings involved shows
how the human spirit can recover from the direst of abuses.
Mary Garden's marathon through seven years of inner and outer heaven and hell
began after arriving in India in the early 1970s at the ashram of the self-declared
'avatar' or Incarnate God of all Gods, Sai Baba of Puttaparthi in South India.
The experience of staying in the ashram after having entered into an inner spiritual
bond with this self-proclaimed avatar are recorded with great accuracy, a fact
to which I can attest because my wife and I experienced or observed all the described
kind of events there 12 years later, so little of real import had evidently changed.
The teaching for self-brainwashing was already firmly in place and at that time
the sinister aspects of a dangerous cult were already present, later to become
known only when sexual abuses and cold-blooded murders were impossible to suppress
successfully. Mary Garden eventually realised the fraud involved when she was
told frankly about Sai Baba's homosexual abuse of young men in the name of God
by an American lady who lived and worked in Bangalore and who was not under the
delusions shared by all Sai followers.
This episode, bad enough in itself, was as nothing compared to what was to come.
.. from the frying pan into the actual fire, with another 'pure yogi' with undoubted
powers of an extraordinary nature who turned out to be a seducer of women and
many a worse quality. That it was anything like an 'ordinary trip' would be a
huge understatement… but the reading of the book itself alone can convey
what is to be learned from it. Meanwhile, throughout the long agon, the anachronistic
time capsule that is India becomes almost sensually present, like virtual reality… but
one where unearthliness mixed with the direct social reality rules so much of
the lives of its inhabitants.
<strong>Robert Priddy</strong>, retired researcher and lecturer in philosophy and sociology at the University of Oslo. Former member and national leader of the Sathya Sai Organisation in Norway.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, engrossing and remarkable, July 28, 2008

By 

Gordon Neufeld (Schenectady, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Serpent Rising (Paperback)

Mary Garden's memoir of going on a spiritual quest to India and then being drawn under the spell of two gurus is remarkable in the way it brings the reader into her world and shows the true elation she experienced at times even as she was being sexually exploited by the second guru, and how he got her to love him in spite of his rages and cruelty. As a former follower of a different cult leader (Sun Myung Moon), I could understand her difficulty in breaking free of him. At one point she totally renounced him, only to be drawn back. The writing is excellent throughout and the feeling of the world she lived in is conveyed powerfully.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Heart Wrenching memoir, July 25, 2011

By 

Uccai Siravas - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Serpent Rising (Paperback)

As an Indian skeptic, I was very disappointed and angry at the westerners who flock to India in search of "spiritual enlightenment." When Indians were first exposed to the European philosophies and scientific world view, they became quite embarrassed by their own religion and started making reformations: For example, the Arya Samaj and the Brahmo Samaj are the two of the well known reform movements. However, such reformations stopped when raw hindu shamanism got the admiration of westerners. This made the task of Indian skeptical and rational movements extremely difficult. So I have always disliked all the western nut jobs who flocked to India for "enlightenment." They were validating a system of thought which must go if Indian masses are to live like human beings. Mary Garden's book is a heart-wrenching memoir in which she vividly describes her travails in India. Her guru -- who preached the virtues of celibacy to his male disciples -- secretly had sex with his female devotees and forced them to have abortions. It looks like the some people under, certain conditions and certain stages of their life, are vulnerable to exploitation by religious conmen. The challenge for all rationalists/humanists is to inoculate our young people against such weaknesses. This book is a tool for that.