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The Serpent Rising: A Journey of Spiritual Seduction
Mary Garden
First Published in Brisbane, Australia, in 1988 by Brolga Publishing.
Revised edition published in Melbourne, Australia, in 2003 by Temple House Pty
Ltd, T/A Sid Harta Publishers.
Reviewed by
Marybeth Ayella, Ph.D.
This is the revised version of a book published in 1988 as
a fictional story. In this revised book the author has “decided that it is time
to present this story as the truth that it is and Helena as myself (vii).” The
book is based on Garden’s experiences over seven years in the 1970s with a
number of gurus/holy men in India. She left India in 1980, settled in Australia,
married, and had two children. At present, she spends much of her time writing.
My expectations of what the book would contain were based
on the front and back of the book, and thus I was somewhat disappointed. The
back cover describes how 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 cover
photo also shows a Garden in an “Energy Darshan” with Rajneesh in November of
1979. From cover and back, I had assumed Garden’s account would include a
detailed description of her time with Rajneesh, which was apparently about a
year. Instead she covers this experience in four pages of the epilogue. This,
however, could have been a questionable marketing decision of the publisher,
rather than the author’s intention.
Most of the book, chapters 4 through 10 (or 7 of the ten
chapters, plus epilogue), is focused on her experiences with Swami Balyogi
Premvarni, who headed a small group of three “boys” and two other “girls” at his
“International Academy of Yoga” in the Himalayan jungle at the time of Garden’s
entry. Garden comments on being called “boys” and “girls” when they are in their
late 20s.
This is Garden’s second experience with an Indian guru, the
first being a three-month stay at Sathya Sai Baba’s Brindavan Ashram outside of
Bangalore. Here about 300 attended Sai Baba’s daily darshans. Garden is not
specifically recognized by this guru during her stay. Her belief in Sai Baba is
instantly shattered by the comments of an American shop owner (married to an
Indian man), who asked if she’d left “that cult.” The woman tells her that Sai
Baba is “just a magician,” who “cons rich Americans for their money…not only
that, he’s a homosexual. And a hermaphrodite (pp 43-4).” The shop owner also
mentions the guru is sleeping with young boy students. Although she had had no
direct experience that the accusations were true, Garden instantly believes the
woman and immediately leaves the group.
In contrast to the large size and Garden’s anonymity in Sai
Baba’s group, Swami Premvarni’s group remains small over Garden’s time, although
the members change, as people come and go. Each afternoon, visitors, mostly
Westerners, come during the 2-5 visiting hours to seek entry; most are refused.
Sometimes servants are hired, but most leave after a short stay. In this small
group, the leader, Swamiji, seems to have a hierarchy of followers: the women
seem to fare better than the male followers, and servants are treated worst of
all.
Life is strictly regimented, beginning at 4:30 am, and
proceeding through various activities: chanting, meditating, reading passages,
listening to Swamiji, doing “kriyas” to purify oneself (which sounds difficult,
especially the one where she swallows a bandage-like cloth, to regurgitate it),
doing chores, doing the type of yoga Swamiji preferred, keeping out of sight of
the afternoon visitors, participating in evening activities. Food is also
highly regimented, and food preparation is closely monitored by Swamiji. The
ashram does not have electricity at first, and there is little connection with
the outside world (no phone, radio or television) at Garden’s entry. In this
group “working and serving the guru” is said by Swamiji to purify the ego more
than the other branches of yoga do.
Although this is a group where the leader preaches celibacy
as necessary to “maintain a strict yogic way of life,” within three weeks,
Garden is summoned to Swamiji’s bedroom where he has sex with her. As birth
control is not practiced, the inevitable consequence, pregnancy, eventually
occurs. This is when Garden learns that the other remaining women also had a
pregnancy by the guru and an abortion.
How does Garden eventually leave Swami Balyogi Premvarni?
This is a very long process. She leaves and returns several times over her years
there.
At the end of five months at the ashram, Garden leaves to
get money wired to her and to test her new transformation. During her time away,
she loses faith in Swamiji, and decides to return to get her things. She again
leaves and wanders around Delhi for several weeks, finally encountering a former
member, who asks her to go back. She does. Shortly after returning, on the
third of March, 1974, Swamiji tells her he is giving her all the answers she has
been looking for, to resolve her confusion. During this experience, Garden has
many different physical sensations and experiences a sense of ecstasy. She feels
that she has “Awakened, I felt that I myself was god-like, a divine being (p
182).” She realizes that “My intellect with its doubting and questioning had
been my greatest barrier (pp. 185-6). Afterwards, Swamiji explains that “I just
plugged you into the centre of the Cosmos, into your own divine creation. I took
the risk of doing this to prevent you from running away again and playing into
worldliness (p. 188).” Eventually Garden concludes that Swamiji “had (through
his yogic powers) connected me directly to the Cosmos, which is exactly what he
said he had done (p. 194).”
After this extraordinary experience, Garden writes to her
parents and tells them what happened, and that she will be spending the rest of
her life at Swamiji’s ashram. This powerful experience binds Garden to Swamiji,
reminding her over the following months that “Swamiji was not a madman when I
watched him in one of his fits of rage, his Rudra dance of destruction. I now
believed that he was in a permanent state of high consciousness and always
blissful and that his body and mind were instruments only, to be used for the
purpose of waking us up. People losing faith or running away no longer
disturbed me. I was convinced that I had finally come home, that I had reached
the end of the journey and there would never be any need to leave the ashram
again (p. 189).”
In the following months, Garden took over much of the
day-to-day running of the ashram. The other woman follower, Saraswati, planned
to return to the ashram at the end of the year and Garden says “I was not
looking forward to her coming back as I had become used to being the chief
disciple. I enjoyed taking over the running of the ashram whenever Swamiji shut
himself away in his bedroom or whenever he had to leave the ashram to give
lectures and talks in Hindi at other ashrams in the district. When Saraswatii
returned, she would no doubt try to usurp my new position. Neither was I keen
on the idea of Swamiji sharing his bed with anyone else (pp. 199-200).” Exactly
what Garden feared came true when Saraswati returned. To alleviate conflicts
between the two women, Swamiji assigns the women different daily chores, became
“more discreet about our bedroom liaisons” (p. 201), and tells Garden he is no
longer sleeping with Saraswati.
Shortly after the two women settle into an amicable
relationship, Garden discovers she is pregnant. By the time she sees a doctor,
she is beyond the early stages of pregnancy. She is excited initially, but the
reactions of Swamiji and Saraswati unsettle her, as Swamiji tells her “It’s just
your bad karma catching up with you. An ashram is not the place for a
screaming baby (p. 204)” and Saraswati tells her to have an abortion. Garden
eventually decides to have an abortion, and during the procedure she felt that
“if I didn’t hold tightly onto my faith in Swamiji mainly based on what happened
on the Third of March, then there was the possibility of my losing my mind
altogether (p. 209).” Returning to the ashram, Garden thinks life will return
to usual, and that Swamiji will be even fonder of her, but he is not and life is
not the same. Instead, Garden experiences intense feelings of anger and hate,
which culminate in her telling him publicly that “You’re a murderer, Swamiji.
You killed my baby. You’re a sex maniac (p. 217).”
Two years after the Third of March and about a year after
the abortion, Swamiji calls her to his room “to give me another cosmic
experience like the Third of March.” But when she goes to his bedroom that
night, he yells at her to leave and, assisted by a female devotee, proceeds to
beat her when she refuses. He stops only to cry for help from this devotee,
because Garden is “trying to destroy me.”
Garden “creeps out of the room,” and the next morning on
her way to the gate passes Swamiji, who is instructing the “boys. “He tells them
that Garden had fallen down the steps of the veranda. She waits several hours
for the gates to be opened, and leaves for some nearby caves she knows of. She
spends several days there, all the while accepting the justification of the
beating she has received for her “betrayals” of Swamiji.
Given that she has accepted Swamiji’s definition of the
situation, Garden returns to the ashram several days later. At her return,
Swamiji was in a terrible mood that lasted for weeks. He is mad at everyone,
even the one devotee he allowed to serve him. This was the same woman to whom
he had called for help while beating Garden. One day, this woman runs away,
after stealing his key to unlock his safe, where her passport and money were
stored. Swamiji appears unconcerned at the departure of this most faithful
devotee, telling his other Western disciples that he wished they would leave,
that his teaching time is coming to an end.
Over the next few months, Garden vacillates between the
desire to leave (as she loses faith in Swamiji) and a feeling of being trapped.
Above all it seems she desires to regain his attention as a central love
interest. She finally leaves when he “takes another consort,” an American
woman—this is about one year after Garden’s abortion. The next morning, Garden
departs, hoping that Swamiji will care enough to send someone after her. He
does not.
Garden then visits the Hare Krishna ashram in Vrindaban,
where she stays about two weeks, leaving after she hears a partner for marriage
has been selected for her. She next revisits Vipassana for two more courses in
Buddhist meditation, where she supposedly releases “mental blockages” from her
unconscious mind from this life and past lives. Eventually deciding that
Vipassana lacks something, she again leaves, and over the next year visits
numerous swamis and yogis:
Alas, Vipassana was not able to
cure me of my need or addiction to gurus. During the next year I traveled
thousands of miles across India’s endless plains and up and down Himalayan
mountains and valleys to visit numerous swamis and yogis in their temples,
ashrams or caves. Away from Swamiji, it was easier to love him and blame myself
for not being worthy of him. I was determined to change myself so I could be
Archana in Swamiji’s divine creation (p. 229).
Garden says of most ashrams: “they were masquerades for
harems. Gurus high in the Himalayas and down on the plains preached but did not
practice celibacy and restraint of the senses (p. 230).” She tells us how she
resisted their advances—not because she recognized that these were common and
hypocritical actions of gurus, but “because Swamiji had said he would curse me
if I slept with another man (p. 230).” Thus, we see that she remained attached
to Guruji, in spite of what she has learned about the common abuses of guru
authority.
Moreover, despite what she had heard about holy men
seducing female disciples Western “girls” having abortions in Indian hospitals,
Garden does not give up her attachment to Guruji and idealized view of India’s
“god-men.” She feels some ambivalence toward the gurus, but, as is common in
cultic groups, other seekers (many of whom may have had their own doubts)
encouraged her to suppress the ambivalence.
[Gurus were] compassionate
ego-less beings who merely wanted to raise the kundalini of world-weary
females in order to erase some of their bad karma. When I was in a
negative state of mind, however, I wondered whether they were hypocrites and
obsessed with sex after being repressed for so long. Whenever I shared my
doubts to other Western devotees I was quickly reassured by them that I was not
in a position to judge. The level these gurus were operating at was at the level
of Truth where there was no morality and one transcends good and evil. (p. 231).
During this year-long journey to various gurus, she writes
occasional letters to Swamiji and receives letters in return (apparently written
by the new consort, Padma) urging her to return to her “true” home. She finally
does return, and “it was the same story,” with mostly new disciples, although
Padma remains. She learns that Padma had an abortion five months earlier.
Swamiji had become more materialistic during her absence, receiving many items
requested from returning disciples.
Garden’s long absence does not seem to have really altered
her strong attachment to Swamiji, as she bursts into his room at night after a
few days there “to catch them at it (p.232).” Swamiji tells her to return to
the West, that her “cycle” had finished. After she flings a criticism at him
for his sexual performance, which enrages him, he tells her to leave in the
morning. And she does. It is as if she has received permission from Swamiji to
leave. Yet, as she is leaving she says that “it was I who felt triumphant.” She
vows that
never again would I be dependent
on anyone else’s energy field, whether guru or teacher. I would wean myself
from the drug of Eastern mysticism and the power of those who say they have
arrived. I would learn to live without the ecstasy, the bliss and the peace
that can be found in temples and ashrams and at the feet of those who call
themselves avatars, Bhagwans, yogis. (pp.233-234).
The ecstasy, bliss, and peace that she says she will have
to learn to live without do not translate well to someone who has not
experienced them, because my reading of the book is that such moments were
scarce in Garden’s Indian experience. Much of the experience sounds very far
from blissful, and it is difficult for me to see the attraction of many of the
experiences. In particular, it is very hard to understand why any of the “boys”
stayed with Swamiji, as their experience seems predominantly abusive. Unlike the
“girls,” who all seem to have developed sexual relationships with Swamiji, the
boys are celibate, they are yelled at and beaten regularly by Swamiji, they
always seem hungry and eager to sneak food when they leave the ashram on errands
(for which they get yelled at and beaten, as Swamiji inspects all bundles). I
presume that the psychological dynamics must bear some similarity to those found
in spouse or child abuse, but Garden does not offer satisfying explanations. As
with other personal accounts from former group members, she mainly tells us what
happened, not why it happened—certainly useful and interesting, but not
fulfilling to the reader.
As Garden finally prepares for departure to her New Zealand
home, she is a physical wreck. She is plagued with intestinal parasites
resistant to Flagyl and has large abscesses breaking out all over her body. One
in particular delays her departure, as she waits to recover from the lancing of
a very large abscess on her buttock (which lancing apparently gave her
hepatitis).
Once finally home, she takes the time to physically recover
from her experience, although psychologically she is between social worlds, and
she felt “like an alien from another planet, and indeed was treated as such as I
was still wafting around in white robes, mala beads and a spaced-out look
in my eyes (p. 239).”
For those readers hoping this is the end of Garden’s Indian
spiritual journeys (as I was), it is not. She became involved with Rajneesh
devotees in Auckland. Eventually she goes to Rajneesh’s ashram in Poona, India,
where she is initiated as Ma Prem Sagara, and where she lives for a year. This
year is described as her happiest ever in India. She learns to express her
feelings, heals from her childhood wounds and from her abortion. She attributes
the psychotherapy that was a part of this group to changing her life for the
better, to “help me overcome my need for gurus, including Rajneesh himself (p.
240).”
She returns to Swamiji, at Rajneesh’s urging, to discover
that she has indeed lost her attachment to him as guru. Returning to Poona, she
stays there, on the periphery of the Rajneesh group, until she says that things
became bizarre—suicides, murders, rapes, and armed guards posted at the gates.
Garden finally leaves India for good, after reading an
article her mother sent her about the Jonestown mass suicide, which she believed
could happen with the Bhagwan and his group. Rather than return to New Zealand,
she returns to Brisbane, Australia, where she settles down, and within the next
several years she marries and has two children. She says: “Even though
motherhood and marriage provided my life with stability, an anchor previously
not experienced, it was a long and slow process to wake up and see Swamiji for
what he really was and is: a dangerous and violent megalomaniac” (p. 243).
The book was published thirty years after Garden’s first
foray into India. At that point, she can hardly recognize herself as the main
character. Yet, “this is also the story of thousands of others who have gone
searching for something better, some of whom have still not woken up” (p. 244).
In the end, it seems as if Garden “aged out” of her Indian
spiritual experiences, as she married and had children within a few years of
leaving India for good. It also seems as if it took the instruction/permission
of one guru (Rajneesh) to finally leave her long-term relationship with another
guru (Swamiji). I am also struck by how alone Garden seemed to be during all
her Indian experiences—which may have contributed to her being so enmeshed for
so long with Swamiji. She does not seem to have developed a single close and
enduring friendship. The relationship with Swamiji is what is most important to
her, and this is a lover relationship, rather than simply a guru/follower
relationship. A close friendship over time (rather than a semi-close transitory
friendship, which is what she developed at various points) might have allowed
her to gain more perspective on the relationship with Swamiji.
Though she knows that “it was a long and slow process to
wake up and see Swamiji for what he really was and is,” (p. 243) I was
disappointed by the lack of explanation about what helped her to come to this
realization? Other than to say she attributes a part of her actual separating
from the yogi to Rajneesh, she does not explain. I think telling more about how
she came to this realization would have added to Garden’s story, perhaps to act
as some cautionary hints to other spiritual seekers to avoid the “seduction” she
experienced. Garden concludes that:
The guru-disciple relationship is
probably the most authoritarian in its demand for total surrender and obedience
and hence potentially the most destructive of all relationships. And so, far
from achieving the freedom and “enlightenment” that many of us wannabe spiritual
pioneers of the 70’s went looking for (and indeed were promised), we experienced
mental imprisonment and confusion….We were seduced by yogis and swamis telling
us what we wanted to hear: that we were special and that they were
God-incarnate. Our need was our downfall. In the final analysis the authority
of the guru is bestowed on him by the disciple! (pp. 243-4).
How to avoid or escape such destructive authority as Garden
experienced is thus not answered to my satisfaction. Nevertheless, this is a
well written account of someone who really seems to fit the category of “seeker”
over a period of years. Throughout the book, we also see how gurus’ definitions
of the situation reshape the reality of participants, as they come to accept the
new definition, and let go of previous interpretations of reality and self. We
don’t learn a great deal, however, about why followers put up with gurus’
abusive authority.
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