The walls in Steve Jobs’s bedroom, the room in which he breathed his last, were bare except for the lone picture of Neem Karoli Baba hanging on one one of them. Until I read this in Jobs’s biography, I’d never come across the name ‘Neem Karoli Baba.’ And, even after I did, I didn’t really feel the urge to find out who he is, or why Steve Jobs had his picture up in the room he was preparing to die in.
All that would change a couple of months ago when Sachin would write this piece and send it to me as the first post on our blog. It’s on the magic of Neem Karoli Baba through his four American disciples. (Steve Jobs isn’t one of them.)
Did you know that amongst the Americans who spent time with Maharaj ji (as Baba was called by devotees) were:
- Larry Brilliant, who went on to eradicate small pox from India
- Daniel Goleman, creator of the concept of Emotional Intelligence
- Krishna Das, Grammy nominee and world’s best known kirtanwallah
- Ram Dass, the author of Be Here Now, and the West’s foremost spiritual teacher in recent times
And all of them consider coming in contact with Maharaj ji the most significant event in their lives.
What did Maharaj ji do to these guys? How was he able to inspire genius in them?
This question led me on a two-month journey that started with watching the documentary ‘One Track Heart.’ I became addicted to the songs of Krishna Das, read obsessively about Maharaj ji, and watched Ram Dass’s videos for hours every day. All this culminated in a visit to Maharaj ji’s Kainchi ashram near Almora, and volunteering in its annual bhandara.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
Steve Jobs never actually met Maharaj ji. By the time he arrived in India in 1974, Maharaj ji had already left his body.
The first thing that strikes you about Maharaj ji is that he never did the stuff gurus usually do. He didn’t give lectures, he didn’t write books, he didn’t initiate people. He just let people be in his presence for some time and then sent them away. And that was enough to get their cylinders fired up.
“Maharaj ji sent Ram Dass on the path of dhyana, sent Daniel on jnana, me towards whatever the hell it is that I do, and he chose bhakti as the route for Krishna Das,” ~ Larry Brilliant
The story of how Maharaj ji came into Ram Dass’s life is the stuff of legends.
Ram Dass was earlier known as Richard Alpert and was a professor of Psychology at Harvard. He and his Harvard colleague Timothy Leary had discovered LSD, and had been expelled from the university for experimenting with them with students.
To understand what LSD does to people, Alpert arrived in India with a boxful of pills and met with sadhus and mystics on the Himalayas. Finally, he met Maharaj ji.
When Alpert first saw Maharaj ji, he saw a rustic old Indian man in a shawl sitting on a rock surrounded by 5–6 other Indian men. Nothing seemed special about this man.
Alpert’s impression was to change very soon.
Maharaj ji took one look at Alpert and correctly told him that the previous night he was looking at the stars and remembering his mother, and that his mother had passed away six months ago of spleen.
The cognitive-minded Harvard professor was knocked out of his skull at that very moment.
Later, Alpert handed Maharaj ji one LSD pill. He popped it. Nothing happened. He gave him two pills. Maharaj ji popped them too. Nothing happened. Then, he gave him enough pills to kill a horse and sat with him the whole day. Nothing happened.
“The yogi medicine puts you in a room with Christ,” said Maharaj ji. “But it can’t keep you there. The only thing that can keep you there is love.”
Soon after, Richard Alpert became Ram Dass.
When Ram Dass returned to India in 1971, he traveled across the country for 3–4 months searching for Maharaj ji but he wasn’t to be found. He was leading a group of 24 westerners who had rented a bus and were driving from Bodh Gaya to Delhi when, almost as an afterthought, he asked the driver to turn towards the Sangam in Allahabad. And there, standing in the receding sun with a disciple and waiting for them, was Maharaj ji.
They all jumped out of the bus and surrounded Maharaj ji. Ram Dass grabbed his feet and was crying and laughing uncontrollably. Maharaj ji took them all to his house in Allahabad where, for the next few hours, they sang kirtans, drank tea, and ate poori-subzi and truckloads of jalebis.
The funny thing is, as Ram Dass recalls, when they reached the house they were welcomed as if they were all expected. And food and tea for 24 hungry people seemed ready even before they had arrived. He found out later that Maharaj ji had already told the ladies of the house to be prepared to welcome 24 more people in the evening.
What I love most about Maharaj ji is that his message was very simple. No big talk, no big words, no esoteric philosophies. He told devotees that the way to enlightenment is servitude. The way to God is by feeding people.
“God comes in the form of food in front of the poor. Feed people.”
He often said that ‘giving’ doesn’t come easy. “You can only truly give if you don’t consider it your own in the first place,” he would tell devotees.
He told devotees that whatever material wealth comes their way should be accepted as a gift from Hanuman meant to be passed on to the needy.
“You are only the ladle, the leaf on which it is given.”
He often tested his devotees by asking them to make big sacrifices. Like the time he told Ram Dass to tell his Dad that he will not accept his share of inheritance. Ram Dass did so without hesitation. And, in return, he got a taste of the ultimate wealth.
“He shows us through his eyes a speck of what he sees: the exquisite web of maya, the dream that we call life. He allows us a taste of his peace within, while at the same moment he is buffeting us with the winds of chaos. We are ecstatic; we are confused.” ~ Ram Dass
For his devotees, Maharaj ji’s life was his message. In his presence, they felt boundless love, the taste of which changed their lives forever.
“Just like the sun shines equally on everyone, Maharaj ji loved us equally despite our flaws. I never felt the way I did in his presence,” Krishna Das
Just being with him was a lesson on love. Like the time, late at night, when everyone in the Ashram woke up to the sounds of him crying for Khemua, the poor worker in the village who had gone to sleep on an empty stomach because people forgot to feed him. Or the time when he accepted a glass of milk from the hands of a poor shilpakar even as wealthy people stood in queue to shower him with gifts, all of which he gave away before even accepting them.
For most of his life, Maharaj ji didn’t have a fixed place. He would travel from place to place, showing up at disciples’ homes whenever they needed him.
“When you remember me, I come to you.”
In his last 10–12 years, he started setting up temples and ashrams. His close disciples say that this weighed heavily on him. He was like a river, always flowing. But he had to build these ashrams for his devotees and he always felt chained by them.
The last time he left Kainchi ashram, he said that he was leaving Central Jail. Even his blanket fell from his body. The devotee who drove him from Kainchi that last time said that a rainbow followed them from hill to hill throughout the drive. And Maharaj ji talked about the beauty of creation.
During his lifetime, devotees saw him perform several miracles. Him awakening of kundalini in others with a touch, him appearing in two places at the same time, him healing the sick and bringing the dead back to life. But, to his devotees, those things are just the beckonings that entice them to the feast. As Ram Dass says,
“Far dearer for us are the stories of his humanity … his sweetness … delicacy … rascality … tenderness … his childlike delight in our delight … his pain at our pain.”
His devotees say that his greatest miracles happened after he left his body.
There is a very popular belief that he was a reincarnation of Hanuman. There are accounts of several devotees to whom he showed his Hanuman form.
What I found most striking in his Kainchi ashram was the Hanuman statue. Its eyes are alive, life-like. During the arti on the eve of the bhandara, as I stood there looking at the Hanuman statue, I found it looking back at me, looking through me into my soul, following my thoughts. It was like he is there, watching everything, enjoying the lila.
“Of course, he is,” his devotees say. “He’s still here, watching over us, guiding our lives, keeping us safe.”
Ram. Ram.
“For to us he represents enlightenment … freedom … God … Rama … Hanuman … Krishna … Shiva … the play of form … compassion itself … a beloved and wise grandfather … the closest member of our most intimate family.” ~ Ram Dass
There are a couple of other stories you have to read to complete the picture of Neem Karoli Baba.
The first is the incredible story of grammy nominee and the ‘rockstar of yoga’ — Krishna Das. It’s a story of what true devotion can do to you. It’s bhakti and karma yoga rolled into one. It’s a story that deserves to be made into a Hollywood movie. Read it here.
Much of Neem Karoli Baba’s narrative is through his famous disciples. But there’s another beautiful narrative through his relationship with his closest disciple, a university professor, whose life Maharaj ji barged into and turned it upside down. This is the eternal love story of a Guru and his disciple. The story of Neem Karoli Baba and Dada Mukherjee. Read it here.
