Hi,
I'm new here but just wanted to share an amazing book of quotes about a mystic known as Neem Karoli Baba. Many simply referred to him as "Maharajii" which I think is common term for holy man. I'll let the quotes explain themselves.
Quotes from the book "Miracle of Love: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba".
My wife had met Maharajji and had come to get me in America and bring me
back to meet him. When we first went to see Maharajji I was put off by what I
saw. All these crazy Westerners wearing white clothes and hanging around this
fat old man in a blanket! More than anything else I hated seeing Westerners
touch his feet. On my first day there he totally ignored me. But after the second,
third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh day, during which he also ignored me, I
began to grow very upset. I felt no love for him; in fact, I felt nothing. I decided
that my wife had been captured by some crazy cult. By the end of the week I was
ready to leave.
We were staying at the hotel up in Nainital, and on the eighth day I told my wife
that I wasn’t feeling well. I spent the day walking around the lake thinking that if
my wife was so involved in something that was clearly not for me, it must mean
that our marriage was at an end. I looked at the flowers, the mountains, and the
reflections in the lake, but nothing could dispel my depression. And then I did
something that I had really never done in my adult life. I prayed.
I asked God, “What am I doing here? Who is this man? These people are all
crazy. I don’t belong here.”
Just then I remembered the phrase, “Had ye but faith ye would not need
miracles.
“Okay, God, I don’t have any faith. Send me a miracle.”
I kept looking for a rainbow but nothing happened, so I decided to leave the next
day.
The next morning we took a taxi down to Kainchi to the temple, to say goodbye. Although I didn’t like Maharajji, I thought I’d just be very honest and have
it out with him. We got to Kainchi before anyone else was there and we sat in
front of his tucket (wooden bed) on the porch. Maharajji had not yet come out
from inside the room. There was some fruit on the tucket and one of the apples
had fallen on the ground, so I bent over to pick it up. Just then Maharajji came
out of his room and stepped on my hand, pinning me to the ground. So there I
was on my knees touching his foot, in that position I detested. How ludicrous!
He looked down at me and asked, “Where were you yesterday?” Then he asked,
“Were you at the lake?” (He said “lake” in English.)
When he said the word “lake” to me I began to get this strange feeling at the
base of my spine, and my whole body tingled. It felt very strange.
He asked me, “What were you doing at the lake?”
I began to feel very tight.
Then he asked, “Were you horseback riding?”
“No.”
“Were you boating?”
“No.”
“Did you go swimming?”
“No.”
Then he leaned over and spoke quietly, “Were you talking to God? Did you ask
for something?”
When he did that I fell apart and started to cry like a baby. He pulled me over
and started pulling my beard and repeating, “Did you ask for something?”
That really felt like my initiation. By then others had arrived and they were
around me, caressing me, and I realized then that almost everyone there had
gone through some experience like that. A trivial question, such as, “Were you at
the lake yesterday?” which had no meaning to anyone else, shattered my
perception of reality. It was clear to me that Maharajji saw right through all the
illusions; he knew everything. By the way, the next thing he said to me was,
“Will you write a book?”
That was my welcome. After that I just wanted to rub his feet.
(to hear this told by Ram Dass
)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maharajji’s company was very special. He was always natural, like a child, a
saint in the traditional manner. He set no conditions nor expected any particular
behavior from his devotees. He was rarely affected by the outside. He could
converse with half a dozen people simultaneously with a camera held a foot
from his face. He had no form. He performed no rituals or puja. He followed no
orthodox customs such as ritual bathing. Yet his presence was more than
inspiring; it was enlightening. While meditating in or near his presence, even
though he’d be talking and joking loudly, one quickly reached the place of clear
light, a place difficult to achieve without his grace and power
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like the wind Maharjii was always moving:
The Indian devotees had an intricate communication system that allowed
them at least thirty percent of the time to trace Maharajji and know of his
whereabouts within a day of his arrival in any town or village. We Westerners
were not so lucky, and so we had to use our wits, our intuitions, our cunning—
and our unmitigated gall—to get to his feet. Our percentage of success was
perhaps not so impressive as that of the Indian devotees, but our style and our
dramatic entrances and exits certainly were.
I was having Maharajji’s darshan and all of a sudden Tukaram walked up. I
asked Tukaram how he had gotten in and he said, “Oh, I jumped over the wall.”
And I thought, “Oh, God! Well, I won’t be here for long.” Then Krishna Priya
climbed in. The chaukidar saw her clambering over the wall and since he didn’t
want to take the blame for letting them in, he went to tell Maharajji. The gatekeeper said, “Baba, these people climbed over the wall. I’m sorry. I did the best I
could to keep them out.” Maharajji’s initial reaction to the chaukidar’s report
was rage: “Get ‘em out! Get ‘em all out!” I got thrown out too. We Westerners
shared the guilt among us. We came back the next day for darshan and
discovered that overnight the wall had been doubled in height.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maharajji’s Teachings: About Attachment
MAHARAJJI gave no formal teachings. Yet his every manifestation— every
word, glance, gesture, movement—taught those of us who were open to him in
ways that often bypassed our intellect and were heard directly by our hearts.
Many topics came up in Maharajji’s dealings with his devotees: truth; money
and poverty; anger; drugs; sex, family, and marriage; pilgrimages, rituals,
saints, and sadhana; service and surrender; and, of course, love. In Maharajji’s
infiniteness we found messages about all these matters—messages to guide us,
not always without confusion, on our journey back home to God.
Because Maharajji, in his mirrorlike way, responded from moment to moment to
those around him and to their unique karmic predicaments, someone seeking a
general teaching about a topic through a collection of his utterances and the
stories about him would undoubtedly be confused. At one moment he would say
one thing and a moment later the reverse.
But each person was on a different stage of the journey and thus needed a
different teaching. And in this river of contradiction that flowed from him, in
these teachings that are no teachings, there is more profound guidance than a
simplistic “do this” and “do that.” There is the continuous reminder of the
existence of the spirit, and that what appears to us in this world is not as it
seems.
To see, to hear, even to know about such a being who is “in the world but not of
the world” is more than teaching; it is grace.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maharajji’s Teachings: About Truth
I had given the first copy of Be Here Now to Maharajji when it arrived. He had asked one of his devotees to put it inside his room, and I had heard nothing more about it. Five months later I was called from the back of the temple. When I arrived at Maharajji’s tucket he was holding the book. His first comment was, “You are printing lies.” “I didn’t realize that, Maharajji. Everything in the book I thought was true.” “No, there are lies,” he said accusingly. “That’s terrible,” I said. But I was confused because I wasn’t sure whether he was serious, so I asked, “What lies, Maharajji?” “You say here that Hari Dass built the temples.” “Well, I thought that he did.” At that point Maharajji beckoned to an Indian man who was sitting nearby and asked him, “What did you have to do with the temples?” “I built them, Maharajji.” Maharajji looked at me as if this proved that I had lied. Then Maharajji said, “And you said Hari Dass went into the jungle at eight years of age.” Again he called another man forward, who ascertained that Hari Dass had worked as a clerk in the forestry department for some years. All I could lamely say was, “Well, someone had told me that he went into the jungle when he was eight years old.” Again and again Maharajji confronted me with things I had said that were not true. Finally Maharajji said, “You believe everything people tell you. You are a simple person. Most Westerners would have checked. What will you do about these untruths?” My mind spun. What could I do about it? The first printing of thirty thousand was already in the stores and certainly couldn’t be called back, but Steve Durkee had written that they were about to print another thirty thousand. So I said, “Well, I could write and have the lies deleted for the next printing.” “Fine. You do that. It will hurt you if you are connected with lies.” And with that he turned to other matters. I surveyed the damage in the book and prepared a letter for Steve at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico where the book was published. It would only be necessary to delete two entire paragraphs. Although the changes seemed of minor importance, I considered Be Here Now to be Maharajji’s book, and if Maharajji wanted it changed, it had to be changed. About two weeks later I received the reply from Steve, who said that the changes couldn’t be made in the next printing. When he received my letter at Lama, which is up in the mountains north of Taos, he had just returned from visiting the printer in Albuquerque. On that visit he had arranged for the reprinting, and the printer, as a favor, was going to rush the job and put it on the press the next day. The press would print, cut, and assemble the entire book in one continuous process. Steve had then done other business for two days on the way back to Lama, and though he hadn’t spoken to the printer (because there are no phones at Lama), he was sure that the job had been done. But he assured me that the changes would be made in the following printing, which would probably occur in three or four months. With the letter in my jhola (shoulder bag) I took an early morning bus to Kainchi. As I entered the temple, Maharajji yelled, “What does the letter say?” It always struck me as humorous when he did that, for if he knew there was a letter he obviously knew what it said. He just wanted me to tell him. So I reported, and when I had finished he said, “Do it now.” I repeated the explanation patiently about the Web press and that the changes couldn’t be made for these thirty thousand copies. And he repeated, “Do it now.” I explained that it would mean throwing out all thirty thousand books and a loss of at least ten thousand dollars. Maharajji’s retort was, “Money and truth have nothing to do with one another. Do it now. When you printed it first you thought it was true, but once you know it isn’t you can’t print lies. It will hurt you.” Well, if Maharajji wanted it changed now, then that’s the way it would be. It would mean the loss to Lama of all the profits, and they weren’t going to be overjoyed about that; but, after all, the entire sum of money came from Maharajji anyway. Although it was not yet 9:00 A.M., Maharajji sent me from the temple, telling me again to, “Do it now.” I thumbed a ride back to Nainital and cabled Steve with the new instructions. About a week later I received the reply from Steve. He reported that the strangest thing had happened. When he had gone to the post office, my cable was there, and in the same mail was a letter from the printer. It seems that immediately after Steve had left, he had proceeded as promised to put the plates for reprinting the book on the press. But the printer found one plate of one page —a full-page photograph of Maharajji—missing. So he went to the files, thinking he would get the original and make a new plate, and much to his surprise he found that the original of that page was also missing. Not knowing what to do, the printer pulled the job off the press and was holding it for further instructions. So, Steve concluded, it took only a phone call to change the two paragraphs, not ten thousand dollars as I had feared. I rushed back to Maharajji with the news, but that day and the next he never gave me a chance to speak.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the punchline to a much longer story about a devotee having a crisis once he realised that he hated people and loved them at the same time, which sent him into a spiral of anger and hate on others around him (as he thought he was telling the truth). Also to keep in mind is that Maharjii talked in riddles, so it made the confusion worse.
“Something troubling you?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, looking over at all the Westerners. “I can’t stand adharma (behaviors which take people away from God). I can’t stand it in them (pointing to the Westerners), and I can’t stand it in me. In fact, I can’t stand anybody at all except you.” And as I looked at him, I felt that he was my only safe harbor in this darkness of my soul, and I began to cry. No, not just to cry but to wail. Maharajji patted me vigorously on the head and sent for milk, and when I could see through my tears, I saw that he was crying, too. He fed me the milk and asked me if I loved him. I assured him that I did. Then, when I had composed myself sufficiently, he leaned up close and said, “I told you to love everybody.” “Yes, Maharajji, but you also told me to tell the truth. And the truth is that I just don’t love everybody.” Then Maharajji came even closer, so that we were practically nose to nose, and he said, “Love everyone and tell the truth".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A devotee asked Maharajji why he always told nice things to people, or predicted a bright future, when in fact he knew that the opposite would happen. Maharajji replied, “Do you expect me to tell people that their loved ones will die? How can I do that? All right, since you advise me, from now on I’ll answer people frankly.” A while later, a woman came for his blessing that her husband get well. Maharajji shouted at her, “Mother, why have you come here? Your husband is at home in bed dying and in a coma. He can’t be saved. You should go!” Shocked and hurt, the woman left. Maharajji was equally blunt with a few more people. Then he asked the devotee, “How can you expect me to be blunt with people? How can I hurt their feelings?”
Maharajji would lie to someone so as not to hurt their feelings; but then he would tell the truth in some other way. When K asked about his sick mother, Maharajji said, “Who will feed you if she is not here? She will be around for a long time.” But then Maharajji called a specialist from Agra and had her examined. The specialist said, “This woman cannot survive more than twenty-eight days.” This surprised the doctor because he had never used that number, saying, rather, a month or two. On the morning of the twenty-ninth day she died. K felt that Maharajji brought the specialist as a hint. Saints give clear hints, but we can’t always understand them.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maharjii's Teachings: Anger
At times Maharajji’s behavior reminds me of a story Ramakrishna tells of a saint who asked a snake not to bite but to love everyone. The snake agreed. But then many people threw things at the snake. The saint found the snake all battered. “I didn’t say not to hiss,” said the saint.
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Several people were once discussing a saint who had lived some five hundred years earlier. Maharajji said, “Oh, I knew him.”
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There are many famous stories about Neem Karoli Baba, these are just the ones Ram Dass published from direct quotes of those around his ashram. Some of he other interesting stories are about the time he stopped a train and one about a random motorcycle rider that stopped by the ashram and Maharaji told him to FUCK OFF, FUCK OF NOW, RIGHT NOW! to which the rider speeded off in anger and on his way home he saw a car accident, he arrived exactly on-time to help save his brother from a car crash, the doctor literaly said any later and he would be dead.
Maharaji was obviously still human though, many of his followers said that he did make mistakes and often married people together with very little foresight as the couples would only really get married because maharaji suggested so and then later divorced. There are also reports of a sexual abuse, though he had many many women followers of which many still have podcasts/youtube appearances and would basically do anything for this man, so they did not feel any threat from him.
Also Krishna Dass is an original devote of Maharji and releases devotional albums, I believe he even won a grammy and recorded an album with Rick Ruben. Krishna dass is literally seen on youtube videos in caves in india chanting and then on the grammys performing in the USA, its pretty nuts. There are also stories of
I'm happy to post more quotes from the book or link to the pdf.
I'm new here but just wanted to share an amazing book of quotes about a mystic known as Neem Karoli Baba. Many simply referred to him as "Maharajii" which I think is common term for holy man. I'll let the quotes explain themselves.
Quotes from the book "Miracle of Love: Stories about Neem Karoli Baba".
My wife had met Maharajji and had come to get me in America and bring me
back to meet him. When we first went to see Maharajji I was put off by what I
saw. All these crazy Westerners wearing white clothes and hanging around this
fat old man in a blanket! More than anything else I hated seeing Westerners
touch his feet. On my first day there he totally ignored me. But after the second,
third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh day, during which he also ignored me, I
began to grow very upset. I felt no love for him; in fact, I felt nothing. I decided
that my wife had been captured by some crazy cult. By the end of the week I was
ready to leave.
We were staying at the hotel up in Nainital, and on the eighth day I told my wife
that I wasn’t feeling well. I spent the day walking around the lake thinking that if
my wife was so involved in something that was clearly not for me, it must mean
that our marriage was at an end. I looked at the flowers, the mountains, and the
reflections in the lake, but nothing could dispel my depression. And then I did
something that I had really never done in my adult life. I prayed.
I asked God, “What am I doing here? Who is this man? These people are all
crazy. I don’t belong here.”
Just then I remembered the phrase, “Had ye but faith ye would not need
miracles.
“Okay, God, I don’t have any faith. Send me a miracle.”
I kept looking for a rainbow but nothing happened, so I decided to leave the next
day.
The next morning we took a taxi down to Kainchi to the temple, to say goodbye. Although I didn’t like Maharajji, I thought I’d just be very honest and have
it out with him. We got to Kainchi before anyone else was there and we sat in
front of his tucket (wooden bed) on the porch. Maharajji had not yet come out
from inside the room. There was some fruit on the tucket and one of the apples
had fallen on the ground, so I bent over to pick it up. Just then Maharajji came
out of his room and stepped on my hand, pinning me to the ground. So there I
was on my knees touching his foot, in that position I detested. How ludicrous!
He looked down at me and asked, “Where were you yesterday?” Then he asked,
“Were you at the lake?” (He said “lake” in English.)
When he said the word “lake” to me I began to get this strange feeling at the
base of my spine, and my whole body tingled. It felt very strange.
He asked me, “What were you doing at the lake?”
I began to feel very tight.
Then he asked, “Were you horseback riding?”
“No.”
“Were you boating?”
“No.”
“Did you go swimming?”
“No.”
Then he leaned over and spoke quietly, “Were you talking to God? Did you ask
for something?”
When he did that I fell apart and started to cry like a baby. He pulled me over
and started pulling my beard and repeating, “Did you ask for something?”
That really felt like my initiation. By then others had arrived and they were
around me, caressing me, and I realized then that almost everyone there had
gone through some experience like that. A trivial question, such as, “Were you at
the lake yesterday?” which had no meaning to anyone else, shattered my
perception of reality. It was clear to me that Maharajji saw right through all the
illusions; he knew everything. By the way, the next thing he said to me was,
“Will you write a book?”
That was my welcome. After that I just wanted to rub his feet.
(to hear this told by Ram Dass
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maharajji’s company was very special. He was always natural, like a child, a
saint in the traditional manner. He set no conditions nor expected any particular
behavior from his devotees. He was rarely affected by the outside. He could
converse with half a dozen people simultaneously with a camera held a foot
from his face. He had no form. He performed no rituals or puja. He followed no
orthodox customs such as ritual bathing. Yet his presence was more than
inspiring; it was enlightening. While meditating in or near his presence, even
though he’d be talking and joking loudly, one quickly reached the place of clear
light, a place difficult to achieve without his grace and power
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like the wind Maharjii was always moving:
The Indian devotees had an intricate communication system that allowed
them at least thirty percent of the time to trace Maharajji and know of his
whereabouts within a day of his arrival in any town or village. We Westerners
were not so lucky, and so we had to use our wits, our intuitions, our cunning—
and our unmitigated gall—to get to his feet. Our percentage of success was
perhaps not so impressive as that of the Indian devotees, but our style and our
dramatic entrances and exits certainly were.
I was having Maharajji’s darshan and all of a sudden Tukaram walked up. I
asked Tukaram how he had gotten in and he said, “Oh, I jumped over the wall.”
And I thought, “Oh, God! Well, I won’t be here for long.” Then Krishna Priya
climbed in. The chaukidar saw her clambering over the wall and since he didn’t
want to take the blame for letting them in, he went to tell Maharajji. The gatekeeper said, “Baba, these people climbed over the wall. I’m sorry. I did the best I
could to keep them out.” Maharajji’s initial reaction to the chaukidar’s report
was rage: “Get ‘em out! Get ‘em all out!” I got thrown out too. We Westerners
shared the guilt among us. We came back the next day for darshan and
discovered that overnight the wall had been doubled in height.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maharajji’s Teachings: About Attachment
MAHARAJJI gave no formal teachings. Yet his every manifestation— every
word, glance, gesture, movement—taught those of us who were open to him in
ways that often bypassed our intellect and were heard directly by our hearts.
Many topics came up in Maharajji’s dealings with his devotees: truth; money
and poverty; anger; drugs; sex, family, and marriage; pilgrimages, rituals,
saints, and sadhana; service and surrender; and, of course, love. In Maharajji’s
infiniteness we found messages about all these matters—messages to guide us,
not always without confusion, on our journey back home to God.
Because Maharajji, in his mirrorlike way, responded from moment to moment to
those around him and to their unique karmic predicaments, someone seeking a
general teaching about a topic through a collection of his utterances and the
stories about him would undoubtedly be confused. At one moment he would say
one thing and a moment later the reverse.
But each person was on a different stage of the journey and thus needed a
different teaching. And in this river of contradiction that flowed from him, in
these teachings that are no teachings, there is more profound guidance than a
simplistic “do this” and “do that.” There is the continuous reminder of the
existence of the spirit, and that what appears to us in this world is not as it
seems.
To see, to hear, even to know about such a being who is “in the world but not of
the world” is more than teaching; it is grace.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maharajji’s Teachings: About Truth
I had given the first copy of Be Here Now to Maharajji when it arrived. He had asked one of his devotees to put it inside his room, and I had heard nothing more about it. Five months later I was called from the back of the temple. When I arrived at Maharajji’s tucket he was holding the book. His first comment was, “You are printing lies.” “I didn’t realize that, Maharajji. Everything in the book I thought was true.” “No, there are lies,” he said accusingly. “That’s terrible,” I said. But I was confused because I wasn’t sure whether he was serious, so I asked, “What lies, Maharajji?” “You say here that Hari Dass built the temples.” “Well, I thought that he did.” At that point Maharajji beckoned to an Indian man who was sitting nearby and asked him, “What did you have to do with the temples?” “I built them, Maharajji.” Maharajji looked at me as if this proved that I had lied. Then Maharajji said, “And you said Hari Dass went into the jungle at eight years of age.” Again he called another man forward, who ascertained that Hari Dass had worked as a clerk in the forestry department for some years. All I could lamely say was, “Well, someone had told me that he went into the jungle when he was eight years old.” Again and again Maharajji confronted me with things I had said that were not true. Finally Maharajji said, “You believe everything people tell you. You are a simple person. Most Westerners would have checked. What will you do about these untruths?” My mind spun. What could I do about it? The first printing of thirty thousand was already in the stores and certainly couldn’t be called back, but Steve Durkee had written that they were about to print another thirty thousand. So I said, “Well, I could write and have the lies deleted for the next printing.” “Fine. You do that. It will hurt you if you are connected with lies.” And with that he turned to other matters. I surveyed the damage in the book and prepared a letter for Steve at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico where the book was published. It would only be necessary to delete two entire paragraphs. Although the changes seemed of minor importance, I considered Be Here Now to be Maharajji’s book, and if Maharajji wanted it changed, it had to be changed. About two weeks later I received the reply from Steve, who said that the changes couldn’t be made in the next printing. When he received my letter at Lama, which is up in the mountains north of Taos, he had just returned from visiting the printer in Albuquerque. On that visit he had arranged for the reprinting, and the printer, as a favor, was going to rush the job and put it on the press the next day. The press would print, cut, and assemble the entire book in one continuous process. Steve had then done other business for two days on the way back to Lama, and though he hadn’t spoken to the printer (because there are no phones at Lama), he was sure that the job had been done. But he assured me that the changes would be made in the following printing, which would probably occur in three or four months. With the letter in my jhola (shoulder bag) I took an early morning bus to Kainchi. As I entered the temple, Maharajji yelled, “What does the letter say?” It always struck me as humorous when he did that, for if he knew there was a letter he obviously knew what it said. He just wanted me to tell him. So I reported, and when I had finished he said, “Do it now.” I repeated the explanation patiently about the Web press and that the changes couldn’t be made for these thirty thousand copies. And he repeated, “Do it now.” I explained that it would mean throwing out all thirty thousand books and a loss of at least ten thousand dollars. Maharajji’s retort was, “Money and truth have nothing to do with one another. Do it now. When you printed it first you thought it was true, but once you know it isn’t you can’t print lies. It will hurt you.” Well, if Maharajji wanted it changed now, then that’s the way it would be. It would mean the loss to Lama of all the profits, and they weren’t going to be overjoyed about that; but, after all, the entire sum of money came from Maharajji anyway. Although it was not yet 9:00 A.M., Maharajji sent me from the temple, telling me again to, “Do it now.” I thumbed a ride back to Nainital and cabled Steve with the new instructions. About a week later I received the reply from Steve. He reported that the strangest thing had happened. When he had gone to the post office, my cable was there, and in the same mail was a letter from the printer. It seems that immediately after Steve had left, he had proceeded as promised to put the plates for reprinting the book on the press. But the printer found one plate of one page —a full-page photograph of Maharajji—missing. So he went to the files, thinking he would get the original and make a new plate, and much to his surprise he found that the original of that page was also missing. Not knowing what to do, the printer pulled the job off the press and was holding it for further instructions. So, Steve concluded, it took only a phone call to change the two paragraphs, not ten thousand dollars as I had feared. I rushed back to Maharajji with the news, but that day and the next he never gave me a chance to speak.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the punchline to a much longer story about a devotee having a crisis once he realised that he hated people and loved them at the same time, which sent him into a spiral of anger and hate on others around him (as he thought he was telling the truth). Also to keep in mind is that Maharjii talked in riddles, so it made the confusion worse.
“Something troubling you?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, looking over at all the Westerners. “I can’t stand adharma (behaviors which take people away from God). I can’t stand it in them (pointing to the Westerners), and I can’t stand it in me. In fact, I can’t stand anybody at all except you.” And as I looked at him, I felt that he was my only safe harbor in this darkness of my soul, and I began to cry. No, not just to cry but to wail. Maharajji patted me vigorously on the head and sent for milk, and when I could see through my tears, I saw that he was crying, too. He fed me the milk and asked me if I loved him. I assured him that I did. Then, when I had composed myself sufficiently, he leaned up close and said, “I told you to love everybody.” “Yes, Maharajji, but you also told me to tell the truth. And the truth is that I just don’t love everybody.” Then Maharajji came even closer, so that we were practically nose to nose, and he said, “Love everyone and tell the truth".
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A devotee asked Maharajji why he always told nice things to people, or predicted a bright future, when in fact he knew that the opposite would happen. Maharajji replied, “Do you expect me to tell people that their loved ones will die? How can I do that? All right, since you advise me, from now on I’ll answer people frankly.” A while later, a woman came for his blessing that her husband get well. Maharajji shouted at her, “Mother, why have you come here? Your husband is at home in bed dying and in a coma. He can’t be saved. You should go!” Shocked and hurt, the woman left. Maharajji was equally blunt with a few more people. Then he asked the devotee, “How can you expect me to be blunt with people? How can I hurt their feelings?”
Maharajji would lie to someone so as not to hurt their feelings; but then he would tell the truth in some other way. When K asked about his sick mother, Maharajji said, “Who will feed you if she is not here? She will be around for a long time.” But then Maharajji called a specialist from Agra and had her examined. The specialist said, “This woman cannot survive more than twenty-eight days.” This surprised the doctor because he had never used that number, saying, rather, a month or two. On the morning of the twenty-ninth day she died. K felt that Maharajji brought the specialist as a hint. Saints give clear hints, but we can’t always understand them.
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Maharjii's Teachings: Anger
At times Maharajji’s behavior reminds me of a story Ramakrishna tells of a saint who asked a snake not to bite but to love everyone. The snake agreed. But then many people threw things at the snake. The saint found the snake all battered. “I didn’t say not to hiss,” said the saint.
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Several people were once discussing a saint who had lived some five hundred years earlier. Maharajji said, “Oh, I knew him.”
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There are many famous stories about Neem Karoli Baba, these are just the ones Ram Dass published from direct quotes of those around his ashram. Some of he other interesting stories are about the time he stopped a train and one about a random motorcycle rider that stopped by the ashram and Maharaji told him to FUCK OFF, FUCK OF NOW, RIGHT NOW! to which the rider speeded off in anger and on his way home he saw a car accident, he arrived exactly on-time to help save his brother from a car crash, the doctor literaly said any later and he would be dead.
Maharaji was obviously still human though, many of his followers said that he did make mistakes and often married people together with very little foresight as the couples would only really get married because maharaji suggested so and then later divorced. There are also reports of a sexual abuse, though he had many many women followers of which many still have podcasts/youtube appearances and would basically do anything for this man, so they did not feel any threat from him.
Also Krishna Dass is an original devote of Maharji and releases devotional albums, I believe he even won a grammy and recorded an album with Rick Ruben. Krishna dass is literally seen on youtube videos in caves in india chanting and then on the grammys performing in the USA, its pretty nuts. There are also stories of
I'm happy to post more quotes from the book or link to the pdf.
