Miracle Of Love

These are excerpts from Miracle of Love — a collection of stories about Neem Karoli Baba — by Ram Dass, the American spiritual teacher and author of Be Here Now.

Neem Karoli Baba — known as Maharaj-ji, a common term of respect in India — died in 1973, six years after his first meeting with Ram Dass. As Ram Dass writes in the introduction to Miracle of Love, “that meeting changed the course of my life, for through him I came to perceive my life in spiritual terms. In him I found new depths of compassion, love, wisdom, humor, and power, and his actions stretched my understanding of the human possibility. I recognized in him an alliance of the human and the divine.”

Bo Lozoff (see “What in the Name of God?”) picked these stories and sayings as some of his favorites.

Our thanks to the Hanuman Foundation for permission to reprint them.

— Ed.

Ten or twenty of us would sit in the back of the ashram at Kainchi, talking with Maharaj-ji. One of us would say, “But Maharaj-ji, what about so-and-so?” asking some question about God or life. Maharaji-ji would start talking and pretty soon everybody would be in tears. Sometimes he’d start talking about Christ and start crying himself.

Maharaj-ji never preached, never lectured. He spoke within your heart. With him one automatically knew everything. It came through the heart, not by reading books.

Actually you can be more truly with Maharaj-ji when you are away from his form. At a distance you can concentrate on him undisturbed.

Again and again Maharaj-ji enjoined us to “feed people.” He was continually arranging for large bhandaras (celebrations consisting of mass free feedings for all comers, including the wealthy, the poor, the beggars, the lepers). The people were fed when they arrived, for Maharaj-ji instructed, “A starving person should not have to wait; such a person should be fed when he is hungry.” At these great bhandaras, which often served a thousand or more, many devotees would vie to help in the preparation and distribution of the food. Here judge and merchant, teacher and politician, could all be found peeling potatoes, stirring the huge pots, or ladling out the halva or rice with huge spoons. At the Kumbha Melas (huge gatherings of people from all over India), Maharaj-ji’s tent usually served 250 to 500 a day for at least a month. That is a lot of potatoes to be peeled!

At the mela, many came to the tent and Maharaj-ji told us to prepare tea for all those people. No one wanted to tell Maharaj-ji that he had run out of milk. Finally someone did, and Maharaj-ji said, “Go and get a container of water from the Ganga and keep it covered with cloth.” All that day and until midnight that night, there was plenty of good tea with milk.

A man brought some oranges to Maharaj-ji and put them in an empty basket by his side. Maharaj-ji started giving the oranges to the people in the room and then to others in the temple. The man had brought eight oranges, and Maharaj-ji gave out forty-eight.

I never felt that the words were really important. The true Guru is within. And Maharaj-ji was a manifestation that I needed to see in order to understand that truth.

Once Maharaj-ji was reiterating to me for the hundredth time that I should give up attachments. I told him that another teacher had told me the same thing. “Does he have desires?” asked Maharaj-ji. “Yes, I think he still does,” I replied. “Then how can he free you of desire?”

Once a Harvard professor and his wife came to visit Maharaj-ji. The wife was an artist and she sketched a likeness of Maharaj-ji as she sat before him. That night she became violently ill, shaking with fever and coughing blood. This was extremely unusual, as she was a very healthy woman. It was also unfortunate, because they were on a tight schedule and had planned to leave that day for Delhi. When word of her illness was taken to Maharaj-ji, he replied, “She will go to Delhi today.” But the doctor came and said she would have to be transported to better lodgings and that it would be at least a week before she could travel. They bundled her up to take her to better lodgings, and passed by the temple en route, so they stopped the car. Everyone went in to pay their respects to Maharaj-ji, including the sick woman. The closer she got to him, the better she felt — and when she was directly in front of him, she felt completely well. He was beaming at her. She took out her sketch of him and he wrote, “RAM RAM RAM (God God God)” all around the edge of her drawing.

A sadhu (holy man) who was visiting the temple upbraided Maharaj-ji for having temples and being attached to possessions. He sat on the tucket with Maharaj-ji and was very fierce. Maharaj-ji just listened and kept the devotees who were present quiet. A little later, the sadhu brought out a shaligram, a special stone used in doing puja (devotion) to Shiva. Maharaj-ji said to the sadhu, “You will give it to me?” “But Maharaj-ji, I need it for my puja (devotional rituals).” Then, playing into the sadhu’s accusation that Maharaj-ji was a materialist, Maharaj-ji said, “You will sell it to me?” “Oh, no,” said the sadhu. But Maharaj-ji finally convinced the sadhu to sell it to him for forty rupees. And the exchange duly took place. Then Maharaj-ji said, “Give me your money.” The sadhu took out the forty rupees and begrudgingly gave them to Maharaj-ji. But Maharaj-ji said, “No, give me the rest of it.” The sadhu brought out several hundred rupees and gave them to Maharaj-ji, protesting all the while that this was all the money he had, so how would he live? Maharaj-ji took the rupee notes and threw them into the brazier that was burning before them. The notes were consumed. The sadhu was very upset and admonished Maharaj-ji for burning the money and protested that now he would starve, and so on.

At this point Maharaj-ji said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were so attached to money.” And with that he took a set of tongs, reached into the fire, and began pulling new, unburned rupee notes from the fire until he had returned all the rupees to the sadhu. After that, the sadhu did not sit on Maharaj-ji’s tucket anymore — but at his feet.

Once Maharaj-ji went to a barber to have his beard shaved. As the barber was working, he told Maharaj-ji that his son had run away some time ago, and that he did not know where he was. He was missing him terribly and worried about him. Maharaj-ji’s face was only half-shaved, the other half still lathered up, but Maharaj-ji insisted that he must go out just then and urinate. He returned shortly, the shave was finished, and Maharaj-ji left. The next day, the barber’s son returned to his father with a strange story. He had been living in a town more than one hundred miles away and the day before, this fat man, whose beard was only half-shaved, had come running up to him in the hotel in which he worked. He had given him money and insisted that he return at once to his father by train that same night.

One evening in Kainchi one other devotee and I were sitting with Maharaj-ji. The other devotee was reading the newspaper to Maharaj-ji in a dull monotone. I thought to myself, “Maharaj-ji, how can you bear this boring man? Why do you put up with him at all?” Slowly, I began to experience the most incredible love welling up in my being, greater and greater love until I felt my heart would burst. Just then Maharaj-ji simply put his hand on my head, and the sensation stopped. When I tried once more to recapture it, I couldn’t. I looked up at Maharaj-ji and he was smiling at me, filled with compassion. I felt like weeping.

The Sayings Of Neem Karoli

I have no powers. I don’t know anything.

I am the father of the world. The whole world is my child.

I am everybody’s guru.

Saints and birds don’t collect. Saints give away what they have.

Temples are but piles of stones. Attachment holds you back.

God will give you everything you need for your spiritual development: hold on to nothing.

Love the poor. Serve them. Give everything to the poor, even your clothing. Give it all away. Jesus gave away all, including his body. “Who is poor, Maharaj-ji?” Everyone is poor before Christ.

Clinging to money is a lack of faith in God. A saint never accepts money.

All the money in the world is mine, even the money in America.

Even if the person hurts you, give him love. The worst punishment is to throw someone out of your heart. . . . You should love everyone as God, and love each other. If you cannot love each other, you cannot achieve your goal.

Keep me in your heart.

For a sadhu to stay in one place means trouble. A moving yogi, and a moving river. . . . Impurities and sediments and filth can never settle there. If I stay here, attachment will form.

I send people away because attachment happens both ways.

The eyes of a saint are always concentrated on the supreme self. The minute he is aware of himself, sainthood is lost.

The body passes away. Everything is impermanent except the love of God. . . . Clear the mind of all worldly things. If you can’t control your mind, how will you realize God?. . . . To see God, you must have special eyes. Otherwise you cannot bear the shock.

I am here and I am in America. Whoever remembers me, I go to. . . . When people think on me, I am with them.

Maharaj-ji, how can I know God? Serve people.
Maharaj-ji, how can I get enlightened? Feed people.