The Serpent Rising: A Journey of Spiritual Seduction

Chapter 1

Learning to Fly

It all began with a notice in the window of a health-food shop in Queen Street, Auckland, back at the beginning of the year 1973. I usually ignored such pieces of paper that had begun to decorate odd shops with increasing frequency in recent years, but there was a picture of a snake that caught my attention. Even though I usually recoiled from images of such creatures (there are no snakes in New Zealand), this one was different.

This snake was coiled upwards with its forked tongue reaching as if for the sky instead of slinking and sliding low through dark places on the ground. Bordering the notice were intricate hand-drawings of pink lotus flowers, the stems of which were entwined and the petals wide opened.

I found myself reading the words sprinkled below this strange picture. There was going to be a celebration that night at a place called the Henderson Yoga Ashram. This would be led by an Indian swami (a Hindu religious teacher) and evidently the first swami to ever visit New Zealand. I had heard of this so-called ashram or Hindu ‘spiritual community’, as there were rumours around the university that hippies who took drugs and practised black magic visited and sometimes stayed there.

I cringed at the thought of Eastern brands of religion being imported into this country. Even though I sometimes practised yoga exercises, (but only for their physical benefits), the Hindu religion along with all other religions seemed to me to be mere escapism. They were for people who were too frightened to believe in a Godless existence — a life where we are born and where we die. For years I had tried to believe that death was simply a return to the dust of the earth, not a doorway to heaven or hell or some kind of rebirth.

But all the way back to my flat in the outskirts of Auckland, and on and off during the day, I kept remembering the notice and the picture of that upward-reaching, coiled snake. Although I had no desire to attend some weird religious ceremony, a strong almost compulsive feeling that I should kept arising in me. I wondered whether it was just curiosity but there was also the fear that perhaps, subconsciously, I wanted to seek some kind of religious solace. And why had I been so fascinated by that snake and the pink lotus flowers?

When I was young I had been a Christian believer and as a child had often dreamt of being a missionary or nun when I grew up. As a child I believed everything I was taught in the church my father made us attend each Sunday. There we were told that God would punish us when we did wrong and would reward and bless us when we were good. There seemed to be clear divisions then of what constituted heaven and hell, good and evil: they were all stated in the Bible. As well as believing in a kind, benevolent father-figure way up in the heavens above the skies watching over me all the time, I also believed in guardian angels who were supposed to (and I imagined they did) come near me to comfort me during times of sadness.

However, as years passed I realised it wasn’t so simple. There were times at school and at home when I was punished for doing no wrong and there were times when I got away with misdemeanours. Was this the working of a just and omnipotent God? And why were church services so boring? As I questioned the teaching and practices of Presbyterian Christianity, I became more and more confused until doubt finally eroded my childhood faith. I stopped going to church and Sunday school. I stopped praying to God and the angels at night before drifting off to sleep. And even stopped calling out for help to Jesus. Instead I pasted pictures of Elvis all over the ceiling of my bedroom and had him watching over me instead.

Adoration of Elvis and then the Beatles ushered me into the sixties, and by the time I was sixteen — my first year at university — life was a constant round of sex, alcohol, parties and sometimes experimenting with drugs. Many of us smoked pot and we sometimes smoked it with lecturers at parties, and most of us tried other drugs such as LSD. I don’t remember anyone warning us of the dangers, except the possibility of a police raid. We believed we were somehow part of a massive movement that would bring peace to earth. Then we would no longer have to worry about America or Russia putting their finger on the button of the ‘big one’ — the phrase used for the atomic bomb that would destroy the planet earth. We mocked our parents and called them square. Even though we were into the notion of ‘free love’ (loving each other and sleeping with anyone we felt like) I still found myself with the romantic notion of wanting to fall in love with only one man, the love of my life. Such idealism was still featured in the romantic paperbacks and films of that time and I longed to fall madly in love and remain in love for the rest of my life. But none of the relationships I had (mostly with older men) lasted.

But after seeing that notice at the health-food shop, I was not thinking of romance or dreaming of ‘the perfect man’. Instead I kept thinking of the notice and its snake and pink flowers. For the rest of the day I tried to resist this pull, this attraction to attend the Hindu ceremony until finally, towards evening, I suddenly decided to go. Within minutes I had changed into a brightly coloured floral skirt and a large striped men’s shirt that was left hanging down over the skirt rather than tucking it into my waistband. I raced outside, leapt into my little grey Morris Minor, and headed out towards the Waitakere Ranges that fringe the Western reaches of Auckland. As I drove I could feel a depressing sadness permeating me like thick, suffocating smog. I had often felt like this during the past year, which had been the most harrowing of my life in spite of continued academic success.

In five years I had already collected a degree, a teaching diploma and a sizeable wad of research manuscript towards a Masters degree; the further possibility of a future job as a lecturer had already been mentioned. But this success was overshadowed by other things.

In the past year my closest girlfriend had made several suicide attempts. I felt helpless and guilty because I did not know how to help her. My mother, whom I had always been close to and able to confide in even about intimate things, had become distant. Perhaps she was menopausal, retreating somewhere inside herself in lost and passing dreams? I did not know how to reach her. I also discovered that a boyfriend, a lecturer in Physics, was secretly fascinated by the occult and by Hitler and that leader’s rise to power. Days after this discovery he was badly burnt by a hand-made bomb that had accidentally exploded; he survived, just. Our relationship did not. I felt mortified that I had become involved with such a person and never was aware that he was making such things. By the end of the year I was beginning to feel completely inadequate in relating to people. Was there something wrong with me that was causing these unfolding dramas?

It was dark when I pulled up outside the ashram in the outskirts of the small town of Henderson. Realising that the ceremony would have probably started, I sat in my car for a few minutes feeling ill at ease, wondering whether to turn around and go back to Auckland. But I finally dragged myself out and walked up the path edged on both sides by foot-high grass. Long sticky paspalum grass kept wrapping themselves around my lower calves and left their seeds in sticky blobs on my skin.

The ashram was a dilapidated wooden two-storied house surrounded by towering trees whose branches leaned and crept against its walls. The place looked in darkness yet there was a long line of cars parked down the road outside the entrance. The only noises that could be heard were the hum of the traffic on the distant motorway, crickets shrieking in their monotonous tone and frogs croaking to each other. Up in the night sky a moon was lying on its back as it floated above the clouds.

Upon reaching the wooden steps I noticed they were covered by untidy mounds of shoes and sandals. I kicked off my sandals, tiptoed inside the house and made my way towards a room from which came a faint glow of light and some strange murmuring sounds. Nervously I peeked around the door.

A few candles provided the only light at one end of the room, large vases of flowers were placed at all corners and there were long garlands of flowers hanging around various pictures on the wall. The smell of sweet incense filled the air and thin threads of smoke were dancing in whirls and spirals upwards. A group of people sat cross-legged on the floor, their attention fixed on a figure at the far end of the room. I slipped quietly inside and found a place to sit at the back of the group, next to one of the sidewalls.

The swami was a large man, naked from the waist upward. What looked like an orange sheet was draped awkwardly around the lower portion of his body and left to dangle unevenly over the floor. His head was closely shaven and his brown skin was shiny almost glowing in the dark. I noticed his enormous stomach protruding over the top of the garment. The swami turned to face the altar — a sideboard covered with a white cloth — on which were placed various pictures, brass incense holders and candles, flowers and fruit. He began to chant some peculiar sounds, deep sounds that appeared to be coming from his belly and echoing upwards and outwards. I sat there, watching him as he chanted and waved a brass lamp slowly in large circles around an ornate picture of one of the Hindu deities.

I had never looked closely at one of these pictures before as they always seemed grotesque, even sinister, with their multiple heads and arms. This particular picture, which was well illuminated by the candles alongside it, was a figure with only one head and one set of arms though in other ways it appeared unworldly, hardly human. The god was sitting in full lotus position in the snow with his back erect and his head held high. Long matted hair fell over his shoulders, his face was smooth with no sign of facial hair, numerous snakes were entwined around his neck and upper body and a third eye gleamed from his forehead. Placed at his feet was a strange black object that looked like an erect penis embedded in two lips, resting on a curved base. These slippery looking snakes and this phallic object reminded me of some terrifying nightmares I could remember clearly from my childhood.

These dreams occurred when I was about six years old. I can remember the small room I slept in and shared with my younger sister. I did not like that room. The wallpaper was ugly, with large brown-yellow flowers splattered over it. It was so ugly our parents did not mind that we drew all over it with our crayons and sometimes tore strips off it. I can still remember this wallpaper vividly because in these dreams monsters slid slowly down the wallpaper until they crawled on top of me in my narrow bed. They were like sirens. Attractive from a distance with long blond hair and sweet smiles but as they loomed closer, I noticed their eye-teeth, horns sticking from their heads and blazing yellow-red eyes. They made screeching and snarling sounds as they crawled over me and their slippery hands slid up and down my legs and played in between them. I would lie there without moving. These recurring dreams seemed so real that when I finally struggled free from them, my fear persisted. I used to think that God had sent the Devil to punish me for something dreadful I had done. I had no idea what it could be.

In the dreams the name for these creatures that enjoyed tormenting me was cannas. Some years later I was to discover that the nickname the kids in my neighbourhood used for penis was canna or lily. Yet I did not remember making any connection at the time with these nightmares. Thirty years later my younger sister told me that the neighbour next door took us into his hen house covered with vines and forced us to have oral sex with him. She said she loved it but I had run screaming down the long dusty driveway back towards our house. She claims she had done this more than once, but that I never went back. About that time though, I vaguely remember pulling off the head and limbs of my favourite doll and burying them underneath the tall pine trees outside my bedroom window. Of the hen house and oral sex I have no memory. A few years ago my mother finally said she could remember me running down the driveway and telling her (and my father) what had happened even though whenever I had tried to discuss it previously she would say ‘Oh, you’ve got such a good imagination’.

Shuddering at these memories, as I gazed at the picture behind the swami, other memories also began to surface — vague memories (or were they mere imaginings?) that I could not connect to anything in this lifetime. There was this feeling that I already knew the symbolism behind these snakes wrapped around the god’s bare torso and this black phallic-shaped object. And there was a sense of closeness, almost a familiarity, with this god Shiva whose opened third eye was shining like a diamond in the centre of his forehead, an eye with a calm and an all-knowing quality. In some strange way this eye looked real as if it was meant to be there, seeing all, in contrast to the two eyes that were almost closed. I began to feel mesmerised, as if my consciousness

was being sucked into this picture. At the same time, the words the swami was chanting were passing through my brain, soothing tension and they seemed to be slowing my thoughts down, even stopping them completely at times. I closed my eyes and sighed. The swami’s words seemed familiar though I did not know what they meant. My attention then went to my heart region because a warmth was there, getting stronger until it felt as if I was pouring out love. I felt in love but with no one in particular. Being in love I was giving out love to all round me. I had never felt anything like this in my life. Beads of sweat covered my forehead and were sliding down my face, which felt delicate and soft and no longer tight and strained. An extraordinary sense of the deepest peace was seeping through me. A peace that grew into ecstasy itself. The thought occurred to me that I had been hypnotised by perhaps the swami or even some power in the picture of Shiva, but I didn’t care. Whatever it was that I was feeling I wanted more.

How long I sat there like that I do not know, but when I finally opened my eyes people were beginning to get up and move about. I slowly stood up and walked out without saying a word to anyone. Reaching the front steps, I noticed the moon was floating through a clear space now, the clouds having vanished from sight. The cool night air washed over my face and as I walked down the path towards my car, I noticed my whole body had a new gracefulness and lightness about it. The heaviness of my negative feelings had lifted. Now I was bathing in sublime peace.

I decided to leave university and go to India as soon as possible. I would go and learn more about this Hindu religion. This land of India, this pearly tear on the cheek of Asia, had begun to possess me. I had no doubt I had found what I had been looking for all my life.

For the next week, I visited the Henderson Yoga Ashram every day and stayed for some hours most nights. I had to drag myself away when it was time to go for I felt completely at home there and also felt very much at ease with the four other young people who lived there. At the end of the week I was given permission by the owner of the ashram, a man called Mr Postleweight but known as ‘Guruji’, to go and live there. Guruji was an elderly man in his late seventies. He was incredibly energetic and seemed to be in excellent health. He spent most of his time practising, teaching, and preaching a branch of yoga called ‘hatha yoga’. This branch of yoga includes asanas (physical postures), pranayama (breathing exercises) and kriyas (techniques to purify the body including short fasts). Guruji had the appearance of an Indian ascetic, with his lean body, his white hair falling well past his shoulders and a long raggedy moustache and beard. His clothes were simple, baggy, usually white in colour, and he often wore just sandals or else went barefooted. Most of his teeth were missing, except for a few crooked ones in the front and his nose was large and bulbous. He smiled a lot (especially when talking about yoga) but at other times he seemed rather distracted perhaps from the effect of holding various yoga asanas for long periods of time or from the many ventures he was involved with. He had a dream that he could spread yoga throughout New Zealand, humanise and uplift what he called a spiritually derelict society. He was often away from the ashram giving lectures and demonstrations around Auckland or he would shut himself up in his room spending many hours writing articles for magazines and letters to newspapers.

We paid Guruji a moderate amount of money for food and accommodation. Most of the vegetables we ate came from the ashram gardens in which we worked daily for as long as we wished. There was little routine to life in this ashram, the only rules being no smoking, drugs, or Western music. Guruji led a morning hatha yoga class and in the evenings we all sat together to chant and meditate. These nightly sessions I found intoxicating. We would light incense and candles, sit in a circle and hold hands to pass on the energy, and chant Hindu mantras over and over.

The sounds of these mantras would resonate in different parts of my body especially at the top of my head, in my forehead, just above my eyebrows and in the region of my heart. I would feel energy moving, sometimes heat, and often a sensation as if these areas were opening up. I was convinced I was connected to some higher energy, some powerful force, and that this force was God. I had never before felt so happy or at peace with myself.

At the ashram I slept on a mattress on the floor in one of the rooms on the upper-storey of the large rambling house. I even set up my own puja (worship) place with two framed pictures — one of Shiva, the other of Krishna. Around the pictures I arranged trinkets, flowers, incense and candles. I became a vegetarian and started various purifications, such as fasting and colonic irrigation, to cleanse my digestive system.

Guruji gave me many books to read — mainly autobiographies — including Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, Paul Brunton’s Search for Secret India, and the books of Herman Hesse. My favourite was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and I hoped one day I too would sit by a great river, realise all the mysteries of the universe and discover my true nature. Each day was an adventure as I discovered all these ways of progressing along the road to ‘enlightenment’. And the greatest realisation of all was that I no longer needed to worry about men, searching or waiting for romance, looking for the ideal man to marry and live happily ever after with. I was in love with God and would not have to worry about that relationship ending.

Since the night of my conversion I was a different person. I believed that now I was spiritual and I wanted little to do with those who weren’t. Those moods of depression and loneliness had mysteriously vanished and in their place were tremendous joy and calmness. I felt like someone who had lived an unfulfilling life on the bottom storey of a multi-storeyed building, completely unaware there were people living on the storeys above me who all shared something in common — they were consumed by the quest for spiritual development. It was a revelation. How had I missed all this going on behind my back?

During the next two weeks I left university, burnt my half-finished Masters thesis, gave away tea-chests full of