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 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. There was gossip and laughter for he loved to joke. Orders for running the ashram were given, usually in a piercing yell across the compound. Sometimes he sat in silence, absorbed in another world to which we could not follow, but bliss and peace poured down on us. Who he was was no more than the experience of him. Here are his sublime life and teachings.
