Maharaji Is Always With You: Neem Karoli Baba

Summary

Neem Karoli Baba known to his followers as Maharaj-ji - was a great Hindu guru, mystic and devotee of Lord Hanuman. He is very well known outside India for being the spiritual master of a number of prominent Americans who traveled to India in the 1960s and 70s, including spiritual teachers Ram Dass, Bhagavan Das, and musicians Krishna Das and Jai Uttal. His ashrams are in Kainchi, Vrindavan, Rishikesh, Shimla, Neem Karoli village near Khimasepur in Farrukhabad, Bhumiadhar, Hanumangarhi, Delhi in India and in Taos, New Mexico. Maharaji was a lifelong adept of bhakti yoga, and encouraged service to others (seva) as the highest form of unconditional devotion to God.

There can be no biography of him. Facts are few, stories many. He seems to have been known by different names in many parts of India, appearing and disappearing through the years. His non-Indian devotees of recent years knew him as Neem Karoli Baba, but mostly as “Maharajji” – a nickname so commonplace in India that one can often hear a tea vendor addressed thus. Just as he said, he was "nobody". He gave no discourses; the briefest, simplest stories were his teachings. Usually, he sat or lay on a wooden bench wrapped in a plaid blanket while a few devotees sat around him. Visitors came and went; they were given food, a few words, a nod, a pat on the head or back, and they were sent away.