Mary Garden’s Sathya Sai Baba experience – book excerpts

In 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’—————————————— This book starts out looking like an act of self-indulgence but it quickly becomes impossible to put down. It is a compelling and shaking account of an extraordinary journey that takes the heroine beyond the superficial religious manipulators of contemporary India to a thoroughly bizarre and sinister situation. It is best described as a spiritual thriller. Dr Martin Duwell, The University of Queensland. ————————————— There is no other book that I know of which reveals the addictive nature of the search for spiritual enlightenment better than this one. While it does not seek to be sensational, it is so, by virtue of its subject matter and the courageous honesty of its author. Mary Garden’s book may just stop you from falling into that vortex of group hysteria where discernment and common sense are discarded in favour of dubious mysticism. Sue Cough. Courier Mail.

Read a 5-page excerpt concerning Sathya Sai Baba from ‘The Serpent Rising’