THE MAN GOD SENT TO EARTH - The Impossible Life of Neem Karoli Baba Pt. 1 (Audiobook By Ram Dass)

THE MAN GOD SENT TO EARTH - The Impossible Life of Neem Karoli Baba Pt. 1 (Audiobook By Ram Dass)

Author Name:Justin Goes Within

Youtube Channel Url:https://www.youtube.com/@JustinGoesWithin

Youtube Video URL:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axXhBwDHC4w



Transcript:
(00:00) The man God sent to earth. The impossible life of Nim Karoli Baba. There are rare souls who seem to arrive on earth for one purpose only. Not to teach doctrine, not to build institutions, not to leave behind a religion or a set of rules to follow, but simply to show us by the sheer force of their presence that unconditional love is not merely a concept, that it is real, that it is possible, that it is here.
(00:31) Nim Karoli Baba may have been one of those people. He had no formal teachings. No institution, no fixed address. He slept under bridges, appeared at people's doors in the middle of the night, and vanished before dawn. He wore a single plaid blanket his whole life and traveled with nothing. And yet, people's lives were never the same after uh meeting him.
(00:56) In this audio book, hundreds of people try to describe the indescribable. Blind men who suddenly see, barren families who suddenly have children, a woman admitted to medical school after a lifetime of failure. A man cured of alcoholism from a single embrace. Ordinary people who walked into a room, met his eyes, and felt something in them permanently rearranged.
(01:23) He knew what you were thinking before you thought it. What you had done before you confessed it. Where you had been before you told him. And he loved you anyway. Not despite your darkness, but right through it more completely than you thought it was possible to be loved. We'll travel with him through the chaos and comedy of his daily life.
(01:47) The devotees he outwitted, the locked doors he walked through, the bureaucracies that somehow bent to his will, the ancient poetry that made him weep like a child. The ricksha driver he argued with over a single rupee and then gave everything he had. We'll explore his mysterious devotion to Hanaman, the monkey god of the Ramayana, and what it might tell us about who he really was.
(02:16) We'll hear from the western seekers who found him in the mountains of northern India and never fully came back. Ramdas among them and from the Indian families who had known him for 50 years and kept a room empty in their homes just in case he he appeared at the door. And then we'll sit with what happened when he left his body in September 1973.
(02:43) a death that somehow didn't feel like one because the stories didn't stop. If anything, they multiplied. This book is not a biography. There can be no biography of him. The facts are few and the stories are many. He appeared and disappeared across India for decades, known by different names in different places, leaving no trail except the people he transformed.
(03:10) What was he exactly? his own answer. I am nothing. I am everything. I can do anything for anybody. Some of these stories will make you laugh. Some will stop you cold. Some will make you question what you thought you knew about what is possible for a human being to be and some if the devotees are to be believed may bring him directly into the room with you. This is miracle of love.
(03:38) >> In 1967, I met my guru. 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 action stretched my understanding of the human possibility. I recognized in him an alliance of the human and the divine.
(03:58) And after our initial meeting, I remained in an India as close to him as I was allowed to be for five more months before uh returning to America. Before leaving India, I had received his sherbad blessing for a book which until that mid had no thought of writing. Back in the west, I found many kindred souls open and ready to share what I had received.
(04:21) And his blessing and their thirst gave rise to be here now. In 1970, I returned to India and remained with him off and on um from February 1971 until March 1972 when my visa expired and I was evicted from the country. However, with him or or away from him, uh he remained the source and uh impetus for my spiritual awakening. Uh from the beginning, I had wanted to share him with others, but initially he forbade me uh from bringing people directly to him.
(04:58) uh relatively few uh several hundred westerners nevertheless found their way to him and were uh touched at the at the the the core uh of the uh then of their beings as as I had been on uh September 11th 1973 he he died or as the Indians would say he left his body and in the succeeding years I have found that the absence of his body has not diminished his influence upon my life.
(05:26) To the contrary, with each passing year, I have increasingly experienced his presence, his guidance, his love. And you know, and each time I've taken myself too seriously, his cosmic giggle. This suggested the possibility that others who had never met him in the body could similarly be touched by him. This suspicion has been uh confirmed by a surprisingly large number of people who have reported that through books, lectures, tapes and personal contact with devotees, they have experienced him in a way that has graced their lives and
(06:03) I speak of him as my guru. Uh but in fact I never think of him or our relationship in such a formal way. For me, he is very simply Maharaji, a nickname which means great king. So commonplace in India that one can often hear a tea vendor uh addressed. Thus those of us who were with Maharaji meet again frequently in India or in the west.
(06:29) The conversation invariably turns to recollections of him. Story after story pours forth and each story is punctuated with silence, laughter or expostulations as we savor its depth and elegance. In those moments, the space becomes rich with the living spirit and we know that he is among us. And in my travels, I have now met thousands of awakening beings whose openhearted receptivity makes me want to share the intimacy with Maharaji.
(07:01) to which stories about him give rise. And yet, thus far, only a very few stories about him um primarily uh concerning my personal experiences with him have appeared in print. It was in order to rectify this situation that the present book was undertaken. Immediately after his death, I encouraged several westerners in their plan to travel throughout India collecting stories.
(07:30) They were able to obtain some 400 anecdotes but at the time they found many of the Indian devotees uh reticent uh to speak about him. He had always frowned upon their talking uh much about him and they were still feeling that restriction. In 1976, two of us were again in India and found to our delight that many of the Indian devotees who um of course had known him far more uh extensively and over the course of many more years than we had were now willing to freely share their treasure of stories.
(08:10) At that time we collected 1,200 stories. Since then, with the help of another westerner, we have added an additional 400 stories gathered from east and west. Thus, bringing the total number of stories, anecdotes, and quotations based on interviews with over 100 devotees to over 2,000. Of course, even a hundred devotees are altogether but a fraction of the thousands who were touched by Maharaji in the course of his life.
(08:41) Each of whom holds some precious memory and piece of the puzzle. But lest we would drown in such uh in such an ocean of recollection at a certain point I made an arbitrary decision to stop gathering and begin to organize what we already had. The devotees whose stories are included are from a wide range of social and cultural uh positions. Interviews were gathered from important officials in their offices and from sweepers on the streets.
(09:07) We taped discussions of women from the Himalayan hill villages as they squatted uh warming their hands around uh a coal brazier in the late afternoon. We listen to reminiscences in living room streets, temple compounds while sitting around fires under the stars, in cars, hot tubs, airplanes, and on long walks.
(09:37) Stories were offered by Hindu priests as they puffed on their chillums, hashish pipes, by professors, police officials, farmers, industrialists, by children and uh and their mothers uh who uh spoke while uh stirring their their bubbling pots over wood and charcoal fires. Always there was the the same feeling of shy joy at sharing such a private precious memory uh with another.
(10:05) and these gatherings to speak about and were indescribably graceful. Having gathered these stories, our next question was how to present this formidable um body of material. For three years, I had been working with this problem writing and rewriting. Uh my initial effort was more in the way of a personal chronology, but I found that such a structure did not easily include all the material and additionally it demanded the inclusion of much that seemed uh irrelevant.
(10:34) So I started again this time incorporating my personal uh experiences as uh merely additional stories and grouping selected stories around various topical headings. Uh the result is the present compilation. These stories, anecdotes and quotations create uh a mosaic through which Maharaji uh can be met.
(11:03) To hold the components of this mosaic together, I have used the absolute minimum of structural cement preferring to keep out my personal interpretations and perspective as much as possible. But this strategy of sharing with you the material in its purest form makes precious little compromise for your motivation. For I have excluded the usual seductive story lines that would make you want to read further.
(11:31) I did not want to manipulate your uh desire to read about Maharaji. Rather, I merely wanted to make whatever was available to me available to you. As you will see, Maharaji demanded that all of us make some considerable effort to have his daron, the experience of his presence. And I feel that it is in the spirit of his teachings to demand that those readers who would have his daron through this book make a similar right or real effort in the sense spoken of by Buddha in the eight-fold path and by George Gerf.
(12:08) So if you approach this book with the desire to meet him and have his daron in a way that could profoundly alter your life as it has ours then you will want to work with this book slowly and deeply. I can only assure you that in my opinion each story carries some teaching and is worthy of reflection. You will neither want to nor be able to read this book through from cover to cover in one or even a few sittings. rather like fine brandy.
(12:31) Uh these recollections must uh be sipped slowly and the taste and and aroma allowed to permeate deeply into your mind and heart. And remember to listen to the silence into which the stories are set. Uh for the true meaning with Maharaji lies between the lines and behind the words. For this effort, you will be amply rewarded through meeting a being of a spiritual stature.
(12:58) rarely known on this earth. It is difficult to separate Maharaji and his uh teachings from the environment in which I knew him. His form in its larger sense is for me India and the beautiful Kuman hills and the Ganges. It is his devotees and all the their all their tenderness and bickering.
(13:23) It is his temples and the photographs of him. His teachings were uh were the love of the earth mother that I first experienced in the Indian villages and and my dysentery and and visa hassles and the sacred cows and you know the rickshaw rides, the teeming markets and and misty jungle walks. And yet while the drama of being with him was played out on the rich stage of India, the value of the setting seemed merely as a reservoir of experiences through which the teachings could occur.
(13:54) He himself did not seem particularly Indian, no more eastern than western. Although we met him in Hindu temples, he did not seem any more Hindu than Buddhist or or Christian. He used all the stuff of our lives, clothing, food, sleep, fears, doubts, aspirations, families, marriages, sicknesses, births, and deaths to teach us about living in the spirit.
(14:19) By doing this, he initiated a process through which we could continue to learn from the experiences of our lives even when we were not with him. This accounts at least in part for the continuity in his teachings that we have all experienced since his death. I hope that through working with these stories you can tune your uh perceptions in such a way as to meet and begin a dialogue with Maharaji through the vehicle of your own daily life uh events.
(14:47) Such a momentto- moment dialogue carried on in one's heart is a remarkable form of alchemy for transforming matter into spirit through love. I have been hanging out with Maharaji in just this way and I can't begin to tell you. Soell, California, March 1979. Uh, acknowledgements. The material in this volume is called from over 2,000 stories about Maharaji gathered during five years from more than 100 devotees.
(15:14) To these devotees who shared their treasured memories, I wish to express my uh deep love and uh appreciation. Some of them felt that no book could or should be written about a being with qualities as vast, formless, and subtle as Maharajis. And yet they contributed their stories. Nevertheless, I honor them for for this kindness and I hope that in my zeal to share experiences of Maharaji with others who were not fortunate enough to have met him, I have not misused their trust.
(15:54) Some devotees tell me that stories told by other devotees are not factually accurate. I have no way of ascertaining the authenticity of any single story. All I can report is that those of us who gathered the stories were impressed by the credibility of those who told them. Though the responsibility for for this ma manuscript lies solely with me, I am delighted to acknowledge a lot of loving help from my friends.
(16:23) One, ani foremost among these donated over four months of full-time effort at a point when my confidence in this project was seriously flagging. Her love for Maharaji touched this manuscript in so many ways. Two, KK saw sent me thick letters from India with page by page and at times uh line by line suggestions for improving the manuscript and avoiding embarrassing cultural errors.
(16:49) His devotion and loving efforts have fed me greatly. Three, Chatanya helped gather stories in 1973 and again with me during an eventful tour of India. In 1976, he critiqued an earlier form of the manuscript and kindly allowed me to include his poem subtle is the path of love. Four Sarah Suadi uh Rosalie Ransom toured India and the United States with tape recorder in hand to enrich our story library immeasurably.
(17:20) Five, Krishna Das, Roy Bonnie, Romeshard Das and Pari Lal Sa agreed to share riches from their treasury of photographs. Six, Lilian Sandi and Jiode so lovingly typed the manuscript. Seven, Ramdev, Subramanium and Gerija Krishna and Meera and uh Sak Krishna provided helpful critiques at early stages of the work. Eight.
(17:46) Bill Whitehead edited this book with a sensitivity both to the devotees intimate love of Maharaji and the reader's newness to him. He remained patient over three years with what seemed to me like changes required from on high but must must have seemed like the minations of just another neurotic author to him. I anticipate that many of Maharaji's devotees may not find in this book the Maharaji that they know in their hearts.
(18:17) I can only beg their forbearance for this book is for those who have never met Maharaji. For those who have no book is necessary. At moments the audacity of this undertaking almost overwhelmed me. Knowing the way Maharaji works, however, I proceeded with the faith that there is no way this book could manifest without his blessing.
(18:42) The symbol for ram, which appears throughout this book, is taken from Maharaji's handwritten diary, a moment with the beloved, and the river changes its course. When the bees come, we came to Maharaji's feet, impelled by our yearning for the living spirit and drawn by his light. We came from Europe and Great Britain, the United States and Canada, Australia and South America.
(19:02) As Herman Hessa said of the fellow travelers in his journey to the east, each had his or her own special reason for making the journey, but all also shared a common goal. We came with our varying hues of cynicism and faith, open or closedheartedness, sens sensuality or aceticism, intellectual arrogance or humility.
(19:22) to each Maharaji responded uniquely. Now fiercely, now tenderly. Now through ignoring us or sending us away, now through making much over us. Now through reading the mind and heart, now through playing dumb. He did what was necessary to quiet the mind and open the heart so that the thirst that had drawn us all to him could be slaked.
(19:44) When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited. Ramach Krishna. I was traveling with a uh with a young western fellow uh in India. We had come to the mountains in uh in a Land Rover I had borrowed from u a friend in order to find this fellow's guru and get some help with his visa problem. I was in a bad mood having smoked too much hashish uh been in India too long and uh not particularly wanting to visit a guru anyway. Okay.
(20:15) And the following is adapted from D. We stopped at this temple and he asked where the guru was and the Indians who had gathered around the car pointed to a nearby hill and in a moment he was out of the car and running up the hill. They were following him and appeared delighted uh to be able to see the guru. I got out of the car.
(20:52) Now I was additionally upset because everybody was uh ignoring me and I ran after them barefoot uh up this rocky path stumbling all the way and I didn't want to see the guru anyway yet then you know then then zar and then hy was this all about a bend of the path I I came to a field overlooking a valley and in the field under a tree sat a man in his 60s or 70s with a blanket around him.
(21:29) Surrounding him were eight or nine Indians, you know, and I was aware of the beautiful tableau uh the group uh the clouds, the green valley, the visual purity of the foothills of the Himalayas. And my traveling companion ran to this man and threw himself on the ground doing dundapum fulllength prostration. He he was crying and the man was patting him on the head.
(21:57) I was more and more confused. I stood to the side thinking I'm not going to touch his feet. I don't have to. I I'm not required to to do that. Every now and then this man looked up at me and twinkled a little. His glances just made me more uncomfortable. Then he looked at me and started speaking in um Hindi uh of which I understood uh very little and another man um however was translating.
(22:27) I heard him ask my friend um you have a picture of Maharaji. My friend nodded. Yes, give it to him said the man in the blanket pointing at me. That's very nice. I thought giving me a picture of himself and I smiled and and nodded appreciatively but I was still not going to touch his feet. And then he said you you came in a big car.
(22:45) Yes, I hadn't wanted to borrow the car in the first place, not wanting the responsibility. So, the car was a source of irritation for me. He looked at me smiling and said, "You will give it to me or I started to say what?" But my friend looked up from the ground where he was still lying and said, "Maharaji, if you want it, you can have it.
(23:06) It's yours." And I said, "No, now wait a minute. You You can't give away David's car like that." The old man was laughing. In fact, everyone was laughing except me. And then he said, "You made much money in America?" I reviewed all my years as a professor and smuggler and and very proudly said, "Yes." "How much did you make?" Well, I said at one time, and I won, I sort of uh up, you know, up the figure a bit to inflate my ego.
(23:40) uh $25,000. Uh the group converted that into uh rupees and everybody was aed by this figure. You know, all of this was of course bragging on my part. You know, I had never made $25,000. And he laughed again and said, "You'll buy a car like that for me." I remember what went through my mind at that moment.
(24:04) Although I had come from a family of Jewish fundraisers, I had never seen such hustling as this. He doesn't even know my name and already he wants a $7,000 vehicle. I thought, well, maybe I I I said the whole thing was by now upsetting me very much. And he said, you know, take them away and give them food.
(24:26) And so we were given magnificent food and then we were told to rest. Sometime later we were back with Maharaji and he said to me, come here, sit. So, I sat down facing him and he looked at me and said, "You were out under the stars last night." "Um, h you were thinking about your mother." "Yes." "The previous night, a few hundred miles away, I had gone outside during the night to go to the bathroom.
(24:56) The stars had been very bright, and I had remained outside, feeling very close to the cosmos." At that time I had um suddenly uh experienced the presence of my mother who had died 9 months previously of uh a spleen condition. It was a very powerful moment and I had told no one about it. She died last year. Um hum.
(25:21) She got very big in the stomach before she died. Pause. Yes. He leaned back and closed his eyes and said in English spleen. She died of spleen. What happened to me at that moment I can't really put into words. Uh he looked at me in a certain way and two things happened. They do not seem like cause and effect but rather appeared to be simultaneous and my mind began to race faster and faster uh to try to uh you to try to get leverage to get a hold on what he had just done.
(25:52) I went through every paranoid thought I'd ever had. Uh who is he? Who does he represent? Where's the button? Um he um pushes to um make the file uh appear. Um why why have they brought me here? Um none of it would come together. It it was just too too impossible that this could have happened this way.
(26:17) Uh my my traveling companion didn't know about any of the things Maharaji was saying and I was a tourist in a uh in a car and the whole thing was just inexplicable. my mind went faster and faster. Until then, I had had uh two models for psychic experiences. One was well, it happened to somebody else and it's very interesting and we certainly must keep an open mind about these things.
(26:42) That was my social science approach. The other one was, well, I'm high on LSD. Who knows how it really is? After all, I had had experiences under the influence of chemicals in which I had created whole environments, but neither of these categories applied to this situation. And as my mind went faster, I felt like a computer that has been uh fed an insoluble problem.
(27:12) The bell rings and the red light goes on and the machine stops. My mind just gave up. It burned out its circuitry, its zeal to have an explanation. I needed something to get closure at the rational level and there wasn't anything. At the same moment, I felt this extremely violent pain in my chest and a tremendous wrenching feeling and I started to cry.
(27:41) I cried and cried and cried but I was neither happy nor sad. It was a kind of crying you know I I had had not experienced before. Uh the only thing I could say about it was it felt as if I had finished something. The journey was over. I had come home. RD note no RD that denotes a story concerning Ramas. And in the words of Dada we all think we are chasing the guru but really you see he is chasing us.
(28:10) All I knew about the about the hardships of India made me sure I didn't want to go there. Yet in October of 1971, I found myself at JFK airport with two friends uh waiting to board a plane for Bombay. A large crowd of our New York spiritual group had come to see us off or as I suspected to make sure we actually got on the plane.
(28:33) We were all three in varying states of panic wondering what we were doing. Both the panic and the confusion were to intensify a hundfold when we actually arrived in India. We three uh like nearly all the group of westerners uh we eventually joined uh around Maharaji first heard of him uh through Ramdas. Yet though my life totally changed after the night I first heard Ramdas lecture, I did not feel drawn to go to India.
(29:02) Partially the mystique of what uh going to India represented in those days made it seem presumptuous for me to even consider the trip. Nor was it clear to me that the power of the awakening I had experienced was in fact a connection with Maharaji that he could possibly be my guru. We had all heard how difficult it was to find him and what if he sent me away as he had others.
(29:33) Now three years later I was going to India but I still hadn't the tmerity to chance rejection. I was going to see some South Indian saints and perhaps later visit up north uh if there seemed any hope of being received. uh coming off the plane uh in Bombay, we were met by an airline representative in India, a feat in itself, who advised us that we had reservations on an afternoon flight to New Delhi and that tickets were waiting for us at the counter.
(30:03) Now, this was a stunner, but after a 26 or 28 hour flight, we were two days to feel more than mild wonder. After all, we were in India. Anything could happen here. This mystery of tickets and reservations to Delhi was never solved in any reasonable way. In Delhi, we thought of going to the American Express office to ask for messages as we had planned to do in Bombay.
(30:29) After all, since we were here, there must be a message. There was go to Jaipuria Bhavan in Vindaban Maharaji expected soon. It was signed Baloram Das. We didn't know who that was. We learned that Vindaban was not far from uh Delhi and that we could get there by an afternoon train. Somehow we never thought of pausing in the relative westernness of Delhi.
(31:00) The message said go and go we did. We thereby learned the first great lesson of India. Never travel by third class unreserved coach. It was the equivalent of a three-hour ride on a New York City subway at rush hour with the addition of sunshine, dust, and engine smoke pouring in the open windows. Eventually we battled our way off the train at Mthura and in the glowing dusk of the Indian plain whose beauty we could not then appreciate we found a bus to take us to nearby Vindaban.
(31:38) There we were put down in the large bazaar of uh what uh to uh all appearances was a 13th century village of winding alleys full of people, rickshaws, dogs, pigs and cows. By now it was dark and uh most of the illumination came from lanterns in the shops lining lining the streets. Um we we asked for directions to to Jaipuryaban in our non-existent Hindi and were directed first up one alley and then down another.
(32:08) It grew later and the shops were beginning to close. Our panic grew with our exhaustion and hunger. For even if we came upon the hostel, we would not recognize it as as every sign was in Hindi. We began to envision ourselves huddling for the night among the cows in some doorway. Then suddenly approaching us appeared a westerner, someone whom I'd met the year before uh in California.
(32:35) In hysterical relief, I threw my arms around him. But he an old-timer in India was totally calm um in the face of our emotion. Oh yes, Jaipurya Bhavan was just there um around the next bend and during the next few days the small western Satsang community of spiritual seekers began gathering at uh uh Jaipury Bhavan awaiting Maharaji's arrival at his reindaban ashram monastery.
(33:01) Many of them we knew from from America, you know, and Naracom, including the mysterious Baloram Das, you know, whom we'd known as Peter. We we heard their stories of Maharaji with relief and anticipation. He didn't sound so fierce and and terrifying after all. Then word came that he was here. The next morning, we could go to have his daron.
(33:24) I arrived at the ashram a little late with Rada uh nervously clutching my borrowed sari and the offering of flowers and fruit. We circumambulated the temple and pranammed uh bowed to Hanumanji then approached the gate in the wall between the temple garden and the ashram. How well I remember that green wooden door. When we knocked the old chocolar gatekeeper opened at a crack and peered out at us.
(33:50) Then as each time afterward for for for as long as I was in India I we I wondered if he would let us in. Um but he stepped back pulling the door open for us. I looked through down the vista of the long veranda along the front of the ashram building. At the far end uh Maharaji was sitting alone on his wooden bed. When I saw his great form my heart jumped so that I staggered against the gate.
(34:13) That first sight of him is still piercingly clear in my memory. Rada had already rushed through, and I ran after her, losing my sandals along the way. It was all so simple and familiar, bowing at his feet, giving the fruit and flowers, which he immediately threw back in my lap, weeping and laughing.
(34:33) Um, Maharaji was bouncing, smiling, and crowing in English. Mother from America, mother from America. During that first daron though Maharaji spoke mainly in Hindi I understood everything without the interpreter who stood nearby and I recognized the love that had poured through Ramdas that had irresistibly drawn me to India.
(34:56) Here was the source. Everybody else was all excited but I was pretty skeptical about the whole thing. Still I was the first one off the bus and found myself running immediately into the temple even though I'd never been there. I somehow knew all the the the the the t the turns to to make in order to get to where Maharaji was.
(35:17) As I came around the corner, he started bouncing up and down and exclaiming all these things in Hindi that totally confused me. I came to him and uh bowed down at his feet. He began to hit me really very hard. I had both a sense of great confusion and a feeling of the most incredible at oneness that I've ever felt in my life. He was so totally different from what I had expected, yet so familiar at the same time.
(35:46) At that moment, I felt all the suffering, all the pain from the last several years uh dissolve completely. And though the pain was to come back again in the future, the love I felt at that moment made it all a lot less painful later. I had heard of uh of Maharaji while uh wandering in India and I finally found him in Allahabad.
(36:08) My first meeting was in the early morning. Maharaji was in a room on the bed uh with a ma uh Indian woman devote uh sitting before him on the floor. There was fruit on the bed. Then out from under the big blanket came this hand. He took some big apples and kept bouncing them off the ma's chest. But she was totally absorbed in meditation. I sat watching.
(36:33) Then suddenly Maharaji looked directly at me. He was like a tree so grounded, so organic. He flipped me a banana and it landed right in my hand. I wondered what I should do with the banana, a sacred object. I figured it would be best to eat it. I had come to India from the United States as a as a devote in a very intense uh religious sect and the guru was the guru the final and great savior.
(37:00) After only two weeks in his presence I was clearly disillusioned about him and began to wander uh about uh India on my own still hoping to find the one true and and pure uh guru somewhere. Several times in my wanderings, someone would tell me of Maharaji and that he was nearby, but I would not go as I I felt no particular um pull.
(37:28) Finally, I was down near Bombay still seeking the true guru when an old friend showed up. He looked so clear and light that before we even spoke, I determined to go to wherever it was uh he had just come from. He had just left Maharaji in Vindaban. I packed my bags and was gone that afternoon. 24 hours later I was before Maharaji.
(37:53) There were a number of Westerners there. Maharaji did not speak to me, but he kept looking very um intently at uh my uh my heart uh chakra uh psychic uh energy center in the heart area of the body. And uh what I kept hearing as a voice within me was that my search was over. I had come home. I was sitting for several months uh in Buddhist meditation in in Bodhga Gaya.
(38:22) About twothirds of the way through the second month, this funnyl looking little man started to appear in the upper right hand corner of my of my awareness. Every so often, he'd smile. I wondered who he was and and just watched him come and go. Later, I began to suspect that it was Maharaji whom I'd heard about the year before.
(38:41) And at the end of the retreat, I opened a copy of the 100,000 songs of Millerpa and a picture of Maharaji fell out. When we finally got to uh Vindaban where he was supposed to be, we found the gates of the temple locked. Feeling very sad that I'd come all this way only to find the gates locked, I went across the street and sat on the culvert.
(39:04) All of a sudden, I felt as if Maharaji had come leaping over the wall, for I was completely surrounded and filled with the greatest love I had ever experienced. I burst into tears. People passing by saw this like crazy, you know, long-haired westerner sobbing his guts out. They just looked at me and and smiled and continued on.
(39:27) I didn't know what was going on, but I had the clear sense of being home. And then there was absolutely no question that I was exactly where I wanted to be. A month before I couldn't have imagined such an experience. But here I was so relieved, so happy. My heart seemed to have burst open shortly afterward. Uh you know we were allowed into the temple.
(39:51) Maharaji asked me all the usual questions like who I was and and where I was from and what I did and and then suddenly I found myself bowing. uh with my head at his feet. Um and and feeling totally right about it and uh and he was he was patting me on the head saying something like, "Walk, welcome. Glad to see you made it. Welcome aboard.
(40:15) " And uh all I wanted to do was to hang on to his feet. And I didn't care at all that this wasn't in any way consistent with my self-image. My wife had met Maharaji and had come to get me in America and bring me back to meet him. When we first went to see Maharaji, 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.
(40:38) 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, uh 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.
(41:02) Uh by the end of the week, I was ready to leave and we were staying at the hotel up in Na Tal. And on the eighth day, I told my wife that I wasn't feeling well. And 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.
(41:24) 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 uh that I had really never done in my adult life. I prayed and I asked God, "What am I what am I doing here? Who is this man? These people are all crazy.
(41:42) I don't belong here." And just then I remembered the phrase, "Had ye but faith, you would not need miracles." Okay, God, I don't have any faith. Uh send me a miracle. So, and I kept looking for a rainbow, but nothing happened. So, I decided to leave the next day. The next morning, uh we took a taxi down to Kchi to uh to the temple to say goodbye.
(42:02) Although I didn't like Maharaji, I thought I'd just be uh very honest and have it out with him. Uh we got to Kchi before anyone else was there. And we sat in front of his tucket, wooden bed on the porch. Maharaji 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.
(42:21) So I bent over to pick it up. Just then, Maharaji came out of his room and stepped on my hand, pinning me uh 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 where were you yesterday?" Then he asked, "Were you were you at the lake?" He said lake in English.
(42:47) When he said the word lake to me, I began to get that uh 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 I began to feel very tight. Then he asked, "What were you horseback riding?" "No." "Were you boating?" "No.
(43:07) " "Did you go swimming?" "Um, no." Then he uh leaned over and spoke quietly, "Uh, were you talking to God? Did you ask for something?" And when he did that, I I fell apart and started to cry like a baby. He pulled me over and started pulling my beard and uh uh repeating, "Yeah, did you ask for something?" But uh that really felt like my initiation.
(43:27) By then others had arrived and they were around me uh caressing me. And I realized then that almost everyone there had gone through uh some experience like that. A trivial question. Were you at the lake yesterday which had no meaning to anyone else? Shattered my perception of reality. It's it was clear to me that Maharaji saw right through all the illusions.
(43:58) He knew everything. By the way, the next thing he said to me was, "Will you write a book?" That was my welcome. Uh after that, I just wanted to, you know, rub his feet. And uh it was in London. and I was on a bus with many empty seats. Then an old man carrying a blanket got on the bus and chose to sit on the window seat beside me so that I had to stand up to let him in. This annoyed me somewhat.
(44:23) But as he sat down, he gave me such a sweet, gentle smile that I forgot my annoyance and sat thinking to myself, "What a what a sweet old man." Before the bus came to the next stop on its route, I turned to look at him again, but he was gone. the bus had not stopped uh again since he had gotten on. Um how could he have gotten off without my uh standing to let him pass? Later I went to India on the advice of uh a friend who had been there and I saw a picture of Maharaji and it was the same man.
(44:54) I I located Maharaji and found out that on the day I had seen him on the bus in London carrying a specific plaid blanket. A woman in India had given Maharaji just such a blanket which he was wearing that same day. And the Indians also came uh to Maharaji with varying degrees of desire and and and readiness. Yeah.
(45:16) But for them it was different. They had grown up in a culture in which uh holy beings abounded and the parents of most of them had had gurus. For the family, the guru was a combination of grandfather, worldly and spiritual guide and reflection or manifestation of God. They often treated Maharaji more as a man and less as a god.
(45:43) And yet at the same time they could they could surrender more easily to him. For them uh surrender was not a personal matter of ego as it was for us. And in the group of stories about initial meetings described by some of Maharaji's closest Indian devotees, both the differences of culture and the similarity of opening and love are apparent.
(46:06) I have known Maharaji since I came into this world. My father and mother were both devotees and my father since 1940 and my mother since 1947. because our parents were devotees and because he was always being discussed in our family. We were all born devotees of him and I first met Maharaji in Bahwali many years ago.
(46:26) Maharaji uh frequently visited a certain ma's home there. I told her that I had heard about him but had never met him and I asked her to tell me the next time he came. After a week or so, Maharaji came at night. In the morning, a message came for me and I went at once. I found him lying on a cot. He looked at me then uh closed his eyes for a moment.
(46:50) He knew at once who I was, who I had been before um and and what I was going to do um in this in and and the world in a few seconds he said I am very pleased to see you which he repeated many times. Maharaji had walked from uh Ninatal to Bali during the night. He said you have brought me here.
(47:14) I shall see you again in Haldwani. Then Maharaji boarded a bus for Almora. In those days he traveled mostly by you know by bus not the uh by car. Um people warned me you know not to not to take him you know seriously. And Nee Cari is a big liar. You he very seldom tells the truth. You can't depend on him. I in in any case uh I I went to Haldwani after a few days someone came to my room and told me that uh Maharaji had come to Haldwani and gave me his address.
(47:51) I saw him then and have been with him ever since. I I first met Maharaji in 1950 when I rode with my boss and Maharaji uh from Ninatal to Haldwani. My boss, a government minister, was already a devote of Maharajis and had offered him this lift. But I was smoking and acting as if Maharaji uh was just another person in 1958 after the death of my mother.
(48:19) I was in Bwali with my father on vacation. We spent a night in the government rest house there and my father became ill in the night in much pain. They called the Powali doctor who gave him an injection but to no avail. The next day doctors from Ninatal came and said that he needed an emergency gallbladder operation.
(48:43) That same day I went to consult doctors at the nearby TB sanatorium. Uh preparations were then underway for uh a puja ritual of prayer to celebrate the opening of a small hanaman temple built by the doctor there who was a devote of Maharaji. I stayed I stayed on to uh watch uh Maharaji arrived but stayed hidden.
(49:06) I grew curious to meet him. I heard that Maharaji had put someone in a trance. So I watched a while from a distance before leaving. That evening a messenger from the Ninatal bus station came to me and uh told me to visit a certain Babe Karoli. Since there are so many Babas, I dismissed the message.
(49:27) But at night I went to the bus station and in inquired uh as to uh who had sent this message uh but no one knew and this aroused my my my curiosity even more. I asked where I could find this uh Babanim Karoli and and went there. Maharaji said to me, I know your name is so and so and your father is very ill.
(49:51) Yes, you thought he might die but God has cured him. Doctors have told you that he should be operated on, but he shouldn't be. He'll be all right. Maharaji gave me uh two or three mangoes for my father which I fed to him and he began to improve. After a few days, Maharaji again called me. I went but didn't touch his feet.
(50:09) I was planning to return to Delhi and uh Maharaji said uh you're going to Delhi. Uh you drive too fast. Take your father carefully and he'll be all right. This touched my heart and I touched Maharaji's feet. My father uh never had the operation and became very healthy with no relapse. Since I wasn't married, I was living with my brother and his wife.
(50:42) When Maharaji came to them, I went into the farthest room so I wouldn't have to be involved with such people. before I thought Sadus uh renunciates are no good. After some time, Maharaji came into the room where I was. He walked in, sat down and said, "Sadus are no good." And after that, uh I just became a devote. One of Maharaji's closest devotees for the last 20 years gives the following account.
(51:09) In 1933, I was on vacation from school and went to Dshinwar on a religious pilgrimage. When I reached the place where there were many Shiva temples, a man appeared before me whom I had not noticed to be there before. My son, the man said, you are you are a Brahman. I shall give you a a mantra and I will not take it.
(51:28) I said, I do not believe in it. You must take it, he insisted. And so I relented and thereafter I faithfully uh recited the mantra daily. You many years passed and it was June uh 1955. I had some close friends who were like members of the family. Um, every Sunday we'd chat in the evening at our house and around 9:00 one evening I saw my wife, aunt and mother going out.
(51:55) I uh asked them where they were going and they said just to an adjacent house that some baba was visiting. One of the fellows with me said cynically, "Does he eat? I can arrange food for him." And this fellow was a hunter. My wife said, "You should not say things like that." In 10 minutes they returned.
(52:13) They reported that uh he had been sitting in a dirt hut with an oil lamp and had told them to go. When they didn't go, he said, "Go. Uh your husband's Bengali friends have come. Go and serve them tea. I shall come in the morning." In the morning, my wife and I went over together. Maharaji was on a small cot in a tiny room.
(52:38) As we entered, he sprang up and took my hand, saying, "Let's let's go." and we left so fast that my wife had to remove her sandals to keep up. He took us to our own house and said, "I shall stay with you." When the women from the other house came to take him back, he would not go. Later he questioned me, you are a devity of Shiva. Yes, you already have a a mantra.
(53:02) And uh and it was at that moment that I realized it had been Maharaji uh who had given me the mantra uh 20 years before. See my first meeting with him in Kpur was uh short and sweet perhaps only two minutes. I I pronounced uh bowed to him. He asked me who I was and uh gave me his blessing and left abruptly.
(53:26) Uh where he went nobody could say. I met him again uh 10 months or a year later in luck now. One by one, he he sent the many people who were were sitting with him away until only we three were left. And then he asked my sister-in-law, "What do you want?" She said she'd come only to pay her respects.
(53:45) And then he asked me and I replied, "I only need your blessings, nothing more." And then he said to my wife, "You have come, you have come with positive questions. Why don't you ask them? In fact, she had come with some questions which she hadn't even confided in us. But she had made a decision beforehand not to ask the questions herself.
(54:07) She wanted Maharaji to answer them uh unasked and she wanted it done in private. So she so she didn't speak she couldn't say that she didn't have questions but because of her decision she couldn't ask them. So Maharaji said to her, "You want me to answer your questions without your asking and you want me to tell you when you are alone, you are putting a sadu to a very hard test.
(54:28) Tomorrow I will come to your house in Kpur and answer your questions." We sat there a few minutes more and then he said, "Go." As we were leaving, a doubt came to my mind that Maharaji had just sidetracked us by saying he'd visit us tomorrow and answer the questions. At about 10 o'clock that evening a message came to our house for a Maharaji devote who was visiting us.
(54:54) The message was that Baba Gi familiar form of Baba was coming to the devotees house and he should return home right away. We accompanied uh him you know uh as soon as I proname Maharaji he said you you doubted my integrity never doubt a sadu like the burden is on him not on you. You have not to doubt.
(55:15) Uh I I apologized to him. I had indeed doubted. Then he said, "All right, tomorrow I'll come to your place. Um, so the next morning he came over and and as this was his first visit, I really didn't know what to do." Um, others told me that that nothing is to be done. Just provide a big pillow on a bed for him to lean on and offer some food or fruit or milk.
(55:37) Uh, he'll take whatever he feels like. It's his sweet will. When he arrived, I escorted him to the sitting room. He said, "No, I won't sit there. uh let the other sit there. You take me to that small room. I was surprised and confused since I did not know which small room he was referring to.
(55:56) He gave a description of the room and walked through the house as if he knew where the room was. I was following him, not leading him in our own house. He went straight to the room and said, "Here, I want to sit." He said, "Call Ma, my wife. She came and he then answered all the questions she had in her mind. Is there any question to which I haven't replied? He asked.
(56:24) She had to say that there were no more an Indian civil service commissioner of Lucknow used to drink ferociously. The superintendent of police said to Maharaji that they should go visit him. Maharaji agreed and when they arrived the commissioner had a bottle hidden behind him. Maharaji yelled from the car, "What's the matter?" The commissioner was furious.
(56:47) He screamed at the superintendent, "Who have you brought here? He has no manners. Get him out of here." The superintendent opened his holster and was about to shoot the commissioner for talking to Maharaji uh that way. Uh but uh Maharaji uh blew up. Uh what are you doing? He is a great saint. You see only his outside. I'll never come with you again.
(57:13) And the commissioner later became a great devote. He would come for Dar Daron but you must sit outside by the shoes uh for he felt that was his place. He eventually became head of the administrative officer school in Allahabad. And he suffered from thrombosis. At the end he suffered great agony but kept Ram mantra uh repetition of Rahm a name of God going and was very peaceful.
(57:41) The superintendent was in tears when he visited him near the end and he asked, "Uh, should I call your wife and son?" The commissioner said, "No, this is not a time of attachment. At this time, all I have to do is remember Rahm and Maharaji." Yeah. Goodbye. We'll meet again. And he died. And I had wanted to meet Maharaji for a long time, but could never catch him.
(58:01) Finally, a friend came and took me in his company car to where Maharaji was supposed to be. There were four rooms, and Maharaji was in the far room. I went in. The minute I entered, uh, Maharaji said, "Well, get out you." So, I went out and sat down but wouldn't leave. I sat for many hours.
(58:19) And then finally, my friend had to return the car because it was closing time. And although my house was quite distant, I was um I was uh determined to stay and have Maharaj's full daran. Finally, someone took pity and said, "You aren't doing it right. When some people start to go in, you go in with them.
(58:37) And if he throws you out, wait and try again with the next people. I did so and uh was twice thrown out. Finally the third time Maharaji said come sit here. What is your name and what do you do? Then he said okay now go. But I said I'm not going. I haven't had darian yet. I haven't had a chance to discuss my problems with you. Maharaji said uh go now and come at 6:00 in the morning.
(59:08) So I went home but I couldn't sleep. And at 2 in the morning I got up and did puja. I was afraid Maharaji would leave before I got there. When I arrived at the house at 6, Maharaji uh had already left but they said he would return. After some time he did come back and then Maharaji and I spent many hours together. In fact, the rest of my life has been spent with Maharaji Darian.
(59:35) Uh, a meeting of the spirit. Not everyone who met Maharaji was opened or awakened uh at the initial visit. Many came and enjoyed a a pleasant visit and and left apparently unaffected. They seemed to have no business with Maharaji. That is they were either unready to be touched so deeply or the vehicle of the guru or this particular guru was not their way.
(1:00:01) A balleram to a new arrival on the veranda at at Vindaban. Have you had Maharaji's daran yet? I don't know. Is is he the fat one sitting over there? Then there were those um who um while uh experiencing uh no um dramatic uh moment uh of awakening yet responded to uh some subtle thread that drew them back to Maharaji again and again.
(1:00:29) I was astonished to watch the way in which tough people would melt as they stayed around Maharaji. For many of us who were either uh dramatically opened initially or or subtly drawn, the desire that became uppermost in our lives was to be with Maharaji. We had become devotees for when we were with him. We were experiencing being at home uh in the heart of God.
(1:00:57) Little wonder that his presence became so addictive and that we would leave home and go to any lengths to be with this spiritual pied piper who was teaching us to dance and play in the fields of the Lord. But to assume that just because you wish to be with Maharaji, you could be did not take into account the nature of this man's behavior.
(1:01:20) He moved about unpredictably and whenever he stayed in any one place for um even a few days, people would arrive in a continuous stream uh from morning till night. Some came barefoot with naked babies from from nearby farms. Uh others came by jet and taxi. And I was standing in the front yard of a humble house in a little village in the hills when Maharaji arrived unexpectedly.
(1:01:47) I was told to remain outside. So I had the opportunity to watch the people come. Um they seemed to appear almost out of nowhere arriving from all directions. They were running. Um uh some of the women uh wiping the flower uh from their hands on their aprons. Others carrying their babies half-dressed.
(1:02:08) The men had left their shops unattended. Some uh uh uh were uh pulling uh flowers from the trees as as they came to to have something to offer, but they came with an expectancy, with a joy, with a reverence that could not be be mistaken. RD true um many uh wanted something worldly from the miracle Baba, but beyond that, they wanted uh once again to taste of the nectar of being with him.
(1:02:40) Many of us vacasillated in our reactions to this constant demand upon Maharaji. At one moment we saw ourselves and the other devotees and seekers as so many vultures around a piece of raw meat or like flies crawling over a piece of sugar. At those times we tried to protect him and often we held back so as not to contribute to the scene.
(1:03:00) But at other times we would realize how how totally Maharaji had control of the situation. uh when he felt that people were uh as he put it uh eating his head uh he would simply go into a back room and close the door or send everyone away or get kind or get in a car and leave without a backward glance.
(1:03:21) Once after traveling many months to see Maharaji, we at last found him at a devotees home in Delhi. We were allowed into the back room with him for a few minutes and then were sent out to have tea with many others. About 15 minutes later, Maharaji walked out of the inner room and right by us, not more than 2 feet from our faces with not the least turn of the head or signal of recognition.
(1:03:53) He went to uh what you to a car uh in which a driver was waiting. He got in and the car left for a destination uh unknown. Such a person was clearly not at our mercy. So Maharaji kept continually on the move in a totally unpredictable fashion. Within a temple compound he would move from place to place at one moment freely available while at the next closeted in some room with the door securely bolted were that his only movement devotees could settle in near the temple and just visit each day and wait for the moments when he would appear. But his movement
(1:04:30) was not limited to a single compound. Rather, he wandered from village to village, from Nabber, from the mountains to the plains, from one end of India to the other, from temples to private homes to jungle ashrams. In the middle of the night, he might leave unannounced for a destination unknown.
(1:04:48) Or he might board a train and supposedly be destined for a certain city only to leave uh the the the uh the uh the train at some uh uh uh other station uh sometime so quickly. uh even as as uh the train was moving that devotees who had followed him were left behind. The intense desire of the devotees to be with Maharaji uh combined with his elusive and unpredictable behavior gave rise to the most intricate dramas of hideand seek labeled by one wagish devote as the great grace race.
(1:05:24) Being a devote of Maharaji was like participating in a continuous and unending treasure hunt limited only by economic resources or family responsibilities. The pot of gold was of course daron with Maharaji and gold. It was one Indian devote put it succinctly when he said even sexual intercourse with my wife cannot equal daron with Maharaji and the Indian devotees had an intricate communication system that allowed them um at least 30% of the time to trace Maharaji and know of his whereabouts within a day of his
(1:06:05) 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.
(1:06:31) I was having Maharaji's daran 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 Chakadar saw her clambering over the wall and since he didn't want to take the blame for letting them in, he went to tell Maharaji.
(1:06:53) The gatekeeper said, "Uh, Baba, these people climbed over the wall. I'm sorry. I did did the best I could to to keep them out. You know, Maharaji's uh initial reaction to to the Chakadar's report was rage. Like, get them out. Get them all out. And I got thrown out too. Like we we westerners shared the guilt among us.
(1:07:21) We came back the next day for uh Daron and uh discovered that uh overnight the wall had been doubled in height. when you finally arrived at the right place at the right time and were told, "Yes, he's here." and found yourself seated before him, what was it like? Even the the tongues and hands of the gods and goddesses of speech, music, and poetry could not do justice to those occasions.
(1:07:50) Like the blind men with the elephant, each devote met a different Maharaji. When Maharaji came out, you never knew what to expect. He could do the same thing a week in a row until you'd think, well, he'll come out at 8. Then he might not come out all day. Or he might just go into another room and close the door and be in there for two days.
(1:08:10) You had to learn to expect the unexpected. One day he came out and all he said all day long was thul thul naan nan repeating these words to himself like a mantra. Days went by like this and somebody finally said, "Maharaji, what are you saying?" Why? And it turned out to be an old Bihari dialect.
(1:08:31) And all it meant was uh too big, too big, too little, too little. When he was finally asked why he was saying this, he said, "Oh, all you people, you all live in thul naan nan. You live in the world of judgment. It's always too big or too little. You can never know as you sit before Maharaji who it is that he is working with in the course of a darian.
(1:08:58) He may be talking with one person while another is being deeply moved in some special way. Uh you yourself can't know what you are receiving from him. One aspect of being with Maharaji that struck me and a lot of people was the multi-level nature of the experience. Uh we would just be sitting with him and seemingly nothing much would be happening.
(1:09:25) We'd be having tea and uh sometimes uh he uh would throw some fruit around or or somebody would come and say a few words. It was all very low-key, but we'd be watching everything that he would do uh taking the most extreme delight uh in the tilt of his head or uh the movement of his arms.
(1:09:48) Uh at the same time that we would experience an incredible light joy, we'd also have the sensation that we were in the midst of a raging fire. People are sitting quietly around Maharaji concentrating. Maharaji faces the opposite direction of a person when he picks up on a loose thought and then he rolls to face the person with an expression of annoyance and love.
(1:10:18) Um he raises one finger uh or shakes his fist. If someone is meditating he tweaks his nose or pulls his beard. He turns to a person and tells her that she is very good. Another he maligns telling all sorts of bad stories. Again he turns to another and says go you wicked person. And the words and apples and tea and silences and laughter were all washed in a continuous river of love that poured forth from Maharaji.
(1:10:45) The devotees who knew were equally as happy with Maharaji's insults as as was with his praise for it was all palpable love and food for the spirit. We took our cue uh in this uh respect from one of Maharaji's long-term trusted devotees called Dada who served Maharaji with a singleness of purpose that aed us and when Maharaji would compliment him dada would say Baba uh meaning uh yes Baba and and when Maharaji would shout insults at him sometimes upraiding him from morning till night he would reply in exactly the same tone own. Ha baba.
(1:11:25) Obviously, fame and shame were one to him. At least when Maharaji was the source. No longer could Maharaji get Dada angry or guilty. Over the years, it had all been burned out. For Dada, it was all grace. And sometimes Maharaji would uh would talk to one person and everyone else would listen perfectly content just to be present.
(1:11:45) There was the sport of uh watching the newcomers uh arrive uh skeptical with questions and then seeing their hearts gently open and their their soft flower-like quality uh emerge under the tender care of the master gardener. We would sit in those groups as Maharaji turned this way and that attending now to a person at his side and the next moment to a devote far distant who was just entering the temple.
(1:12:19) And as he changed the mood of the group uh from uh you know easy uh laughter to uh you know fierce uh intensity uh in a in a moment and then back again. One felt at such times as if Maharaji were the puppeteer and and we the puppets and Maharaji's company was very special. He was always natural like a child a saint in the traditional manner.
(1:12:46) He he set no conditions nor expected any particular behavior from his uh devotees as uh he was rarely affected by the outside. He could converse with half a dozen people simultaneously with a camera held uh you know a foot from his face. He performed no rituals or puja. He followed no orthodox customs such as ritual bathing.
(1:13:08) Yet his presence was more than than inspiring. It was enlightening. While meditating uh 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. Maharaji often counseledled the Indian devotees to sit in silence just to sit listen and absorb.
(1:13:36) But around Maharaji that was difficult to do for there was a continuous and compelling drama going on around him. who came, who went, what they said, what food was being distributed, who got to sit closest to him, how he was working with each person, which person he petted and which he yelled at, how he moved about on the tucket.
(1:14:00) One Indian told us that those of us who did not speak Hindi were lucky because it kept us from getting too involved. When there was a little silence or when you could detach yourself from the melodrama, you could just bask in the timeless grace of his presence. The minute you meet him, if you are ready, he will plant himself within you.
(1:14:22) The seed and time is nothing. You'd forget everything when you were with him. There would be nothing but Maharaji. Total effortless worship. That's the real puja prayer ritual. Sometimes we would we would sit up so late at night in in kchi talking with Maharaji that we would lose all sense of time until we would hear someone taking their their morning bath and we would realize that the whole night was gone.
(1:14:49) It was one of those darons where you think somebody must have put uh LSD in the tea. We would bask in his radiance. Actually, you can be more truly with Maharaji when you are away from his form. At a distance, you can concentrate on him undisturbed. For others, what stands out is the precious intimacy that comes from experiencing another being within the same space that your own being occupies.
(1:15:22) The whisper of a lover who knows your innermost heart. Maharaji never preached, never lectured. He spoke within your heart. With him, one automatically knew everything. It came through the heart. Not by reading books. 10 or 20 of us would sit in the back of the ashram uh at Kchi talking uh with Maharaji.
(1:15:44) One of us would say, "But Maharaji, what about soand so asking some question uh about God or life?" Maharaji would start talking and pretty soon everybody would be in tears. Sometimes he'd start talking about Christ and start crying himself. And I never really had much going on the verbal level, but inside I felt so much love um that I'd hang around.
(1:16:04) Uh when I'd leave I wouldn't go very far and I would always come back. It was like that with a lot of people. Maharaji reached each person's heart in a way special to that person. Everyone's experience with him was different. You cannot explain what it is like to be with him. It is a thing to be felt in your heart.
(1:16:24) He was so gentle that you weren't afraid of him at all. But sometimes you'd think that there must be a lion in there. Uh three or four young uh western women were at Krishna's uh birthday celebration. While everyone was singing curtain in the temple before Lakshmi Narayan, they went over to Maharaji's window which was shuttered from inside and began softly uh singing a song about uh the baby Krishna called Dvakanandana uh Gopala.
(1:16:57) After some time, Maharaji opened the shutters and angrily told them to go away and slammed the shutters again. Uh this scene was repeated uh several times uh while uh while the young women continued softly singing. Finally, Maharaji again opened the shutters only this time he had tears streaming down his face and he listened in a state of uh bahhava spiritual emotion for quite some time.
(1:17:23) Remember where Castana talks about uh stopping the world? Sometimes Maharaji would do things to you and you'd feel like he'd just stop the world. Sometimes you'd be listening and sometimes not. And then suddenly Maharaji would do something and you'd hang suspended. And there was one period in my life when I used to keep whole scrapbooks all about horses.
(1:17:48) No one else knew about them. And once when my mind was somewhere else, Maharaji turned to me and asked me about horses. is my mind just stopped and every time my mind wandered Maharaji would catch me. He would never miss. When I got when I wavered from concentration in the least bit he would catch me and put me back. Maharaji was uh sitting on the tucket and he he he he he um leaned over um and kissed Kabir on the head.
(1:18:18) And that kiss affected everyone who was there. It made people feel really warm inside. And every time Maharaji would hug somebody, everybody in the room would go ah uh all the love and affection and kindness that came from Maharaji. You cannot get these from man. How can you describe what it was to be with Maharaji? It is like trying to describe the sweetness of a fruit or the fragrance of a rose.
(1:18:49) You never have met one so lovable, so kind, so sweet. How could you not love him? You almost wanted to give up your breath to him if you could. A devote asked me if I had ever been caught by Maharaji's glance in a way that as he briefly looked at me, I forgot everything but knew only Maharaji's love. The devote said, "It is a wonderful and rare thing when he looks at you in that way.
(1:19:12) " And and and you are very fortunate if you can hold his gaze in that state. He could go through your heart with just a look or a movement. The slightest thing could feel as if it were piercing you. I was leaving for Nepal the next day. It was evening and we were sitting in the back of the ashram. Maharaji never actually mentioned my leaving the next day because I had received a quit India notice.
(1:19:39) But uh at the end of the dar and he just held my eyes with his. It was the guru's glance and a look of absolute universal total compassion. It was love beyond words. Not long but just yeah my being and his being and that filled me with such what's the word for that feeling or grief or longing I and I felt in that that look infinite compassion and even though the glance you didn't last very long its power still comes through to me particularly at very difficult times.
(1:20:06) I was only about 16 when I first met Maharaji. It was a bandara feast and and many people were there. When I met him, I was filled with such uh bhava spiritual emotion transported it seemed by divine love. Maharaji uh instructed me to serve the devotees at the bandara. There were many to be fed and we worked long hours but that feeling never left me.
(1:20:36) When asked what he experienced on meeting Maharaji, one man replied, "It is not something that can be said. It must be experienced. The love, the affection, the compassion, the grace of knowing him." He would talk with no limit and with no rhyme or reason. If he was upgrading someone, he would go on shouting without end. But he was hearing everything. What an intoxication.
(1:20:57) He would behave like a very unusual man uh doing all sorts of things, shouting and scolding. But what made you stay there? You wouldn't be conscious of time and space. You never questioned where you were or or or or why you were there. Uh days and months would pass with him and they seemed like a moment.
(1:21:17) Sometimes I I wasn't aware that I had I I had not eaten or or slept for days and he made me do things I uh I wouldn't do in in the normal course. If I wanted to leave him, he'd make me stay. If I wanted to stay another night, he'd force me to go. voice, you know, he was always rattling on like a child, talking about this and that.
(1:21:38) Uh, most of which wasn't translated. It was like seeing a a fine foreign film where you don't really need the subtitles. Uh, in some instances, he would say a thing only once. If you didn't catch it, it was gone. One Westerner was sitting in front of the Hanuman uh Morty um uh consecrated uh statue in uh Vindaban.
(1:22:01) She was very much longing to see Maharaji but in those days he was refusing to allow westerners in for Daron. She sat there head bowed singing some curtain. Just then there was some flurry of excitement. She looked up and there standing directly in front of her uh smiling so very sweetly was Maharaji. Then to her delight he cocked his head and said in English too much.
(1:22:32) Several westerners were uh recalling Maharaji's favorite English phrases. A few were uh coconut right face quick march left right go sit down uh bus has come. Uh sometimes damn fool uh commander-in-chief. Thank you. Stand up water. When you were with Maharaji uh you talked about what he wanted to talk about.
(1:22:54) If you started your own topic, Maharaji uh would ignore it or change it. And you know there was no conversation around Maharaji other than with him. Maharaji talked about irrelevancies as if they were very important. Maharaji would talk to one and be hitting another and only the one who was supposed to would understand. Maharaji showed great interest in everything just like an ordinary man.
(1:23:19) and uh he had no pretensions yet nobody could deceive him. Um with the westerners the plight of the talk usually included uh uh a series of uh of routines and with many of them Maharaji uh developed uh special routines and and the particular individual would be called to the front day after day to perform the same dialogue uh to one young woman.
(1:23:47) uh he would ask each day the same questions. Uh what are Indian women like? Why are they good? She would reply each day with the same answer. Uh because they are devoted to their husbands. And to another devotee, he would ask again and again, will you marry? The devote would always reply, Maharaji, how can I marry? I'm so useless.
(1:24:08) To another, what is your name? Uh Caitana Maha Prabhua, the name of a great Indian saint. in which Maharaji would then repeat and and his head appreciatively. He had trained us well as performing uh humans and one devote commented about all this. Maharaji had a zoo and we were all inmates. Um and then there was arty the ceremony of light and it is a ceremony for honoring uh the guru.
(1:24:33) A a flame is waved before the guru and it is accompanied by a chant that enumerates the guru's many qualities under the toutelage of KK Sa one of uh the longtime Indian devotees. We had learned the entire Sanskrit chant and how to perform the ceremony in order to surprise Maharaji. When we finally performed the arty, Maharaji was seemingly so delighted that he made us perform it over and over again.
(1:25:00) Even though while we did it he talked continuously to one or another of those gathered about him. And from that time on whenever a new group of Indian devotees came to pay their respects we were trotted out from from the rear of the ashram to perform arty and and thus show how spiritual the westerners really were.
(1:25:19) Through these these many repetitions we learned much. Initially we had wanted to please and and impress Maharaji. Later the um prayer uh became just more spiritual materialism. But through that constant repetition we came to appreciate how a a ritual can take on a life of its own and generate a spiritual power independent of the specific reason for which it is being performed at any one time.
(1:25:45) One of Maharaji's devotees was 80 years old and very spry like a mountain goat. One day he came in for Maharaji's uh daron when a young distant relative of his was also there. Uh the relative pranam to the old devote but didn't get up. Maharaji turned to the elder and said if you had money he'd get up and touch your feet.
(1:26:15) Once a devati uh wore a a new and expensive uh sari to to to Daron. Maharaji saidly uh you know ma you know I went to this wealthy family for a visit but they they wore such simple clothes that you know you couldn't tell the difference between the rich ones and the poor ones so simple and clean. One evening Maharaji was out squatting on a dirty street when along came some important uh people uh poets judges and officials.
(1:26:44) As they stood around Maharaji, he asked them, "Why don't you sit?" With some hesitation, they sat down uh on on the street. Immediately um Maharaji arose. Okay, let's go. I had purchased some apples in Mthura to take as prasad, an offering, usually food which becomes consecrated when accepted by Maharaji for Maharaji. They were costly and I had handpicked them.
(1:27:15) When I offered them, Maharaji said, "Put them away. I'll eat them later." I wouldn't do it because of my pride. So, I peeled the first and it was rotten. And so, with the second and third and fourth, Maharaji looked at me and said, "I told you to put them away." I discovered later that the other five were fine.
(1:27:39) I was working in Agra and whenever Maharaji came to Vindaban, I would take him uh 10 or 15 rupees worth of prasad and I would see others coming with so much more that uh one Sunday uh I felt quite bad because I could only bring so little. Monday morning I was waiting to touch his feet before going off to work and I thought to myself with my limits my 10 rupees are worth 10,000 of someone else's.
(1:28:08) Just then Maharaji uh came out of his room saying one strange people come to me and offer 10 rupees and say they have offered 10,000 and there was one expression he would never allow me to catch with my camera. He'd be sitting normally and then all of a sudden he would straighten up and look directly down at you, his eyes wide open and intense.
(1:28:29) I tried for months to catch that expression. I'd take a photograph, but in the time it took to advance the reel, he'd return to normal, giggling and laughing. He'd look at me and smile with with delight at my frustration. And once he walked over to me and took my bamboo staff and began to do this chaplainesque dance with it, he moved it back and forth as if he had never seen uh a stick before, as if he were a large monkey.
(1:28:54) And he started playing with it and moving it around. Then he just threw it away and walked down the road. That was the end of that daron. I was the only one who saw this happen. And one morning the e coals in the braier uh in front of Maharaji had gotten really low. So they piled some wood on it and uh of course the wood started to smoke and wouldn't light.
(1:29:17) So Maharaji said they should pour some kerosene on it which they did but they still um it didn't light. Big clouds of smoke were coming up. Maharaji was leaning forward uh looking and then all of a sudden pow the flames leaped right up to the roof. Maharaji jumped back as delighted as a child giggling and clapping his hands. He was so thrilled.
(1:29:44) One day saw I got to the ashram very early and I was just sitting over on the porch. Uh some man arrived carrying a gun. Of course Maharaji said bring it over. Let me see that rifle. one. So, the man opened up the barrel and checked the chamber to make sure it wasn't loaded. Even though it was a shotgun broken in the middle, he wanted to make sure it wasn't loaded.
(1:30:04) Maharaji took it and opened it up and then he snapped it shut and held it up to his shoulder as you would to shoot it. He played a while opening it up and and snapping it shut, then gave it back to the man and sent him away. After the man had left, he asked, "Uh, why does he carry a gun?" I don't know my standard answer and Maharaji said he carries it because he's afraid of of uh afraid of things.
(1:30:37) >> In the winter of 1971, it started getting very crowded and Maharaji began telling people to go to different places. I was told to go to Puri and he also said I could go and see uh Goena a well-known Buddhist uh meditation teacher uh on the way back. Uh I had been feeling that I really needed to uh learn something about meditation.
(1:31:01) So I went to Bodga Gaya and stayed there for 40 days. During that time my mind was exceedingly clear like nothing I'd ever experienced before. When I came back to Dada's house, Maharaji was there. I don't know if I was experiencing my uh love for him in a new way or if my heart was closed. Maybe both.
(1:31:20) Uh but all I was seeing was uh a man doing all these different things. And I felt none of that love connection I had felt before. There was a clearness and an openness, but none of that emotionality and warmth. I stayed there 2 or 3 days and kept waiting for the return of that feeling I'd felt before. And I saw all these people opening in a way that I missed.
(1:31:44) I prayed to Maharaji and it still didn't change. I decided I'd go to the sanam, the holy place at the confluence of three sacred rivers. While I was there, I prayed that after bathing, my heart would open again. And as I was bathing, I felt my heart open wide. I got out and everywhere I looked, everything was glowing.
(1:32:04) I got into a rickshaw to go back to Dada's house and realized that I had no prasade and the route from the sanam to dada's doesn't go by any bizaars. We did pass a calendar walla vendor with those devotional calendar pictures. I looked at all the pictures but they were so go just as I was giving up I looked down at my feet and there on the ground in the dust was a picture of ram embracing Hanuman which was was so exquisite.
(1:32:32) I bought the picture and went on to Dada's house. I was late so I didn't think there would be time for me to reach Maharaji and and present the prasad. But as I came through the door, a path opened up right to Maharaji. I was so opened up from the meditation course and the sanam that I gave the prasad without my ego. It was the purest act I'd ever done around Maharaji.
(1:32:56) Something was taking place but I was not doing it. I put the picture on the tucket and sat down. When Maharaji picked it up and looked at it, tears started coming out of his eyes and I started to cry too. Then he stood up and stormed out of the room giving the picture to Dada. Few weeks later, this picture uh was up in the Vindaban temple right next to the my uh the point of the story is that because I was able to do that selflessly, he was able to accept it fully.
(1:33:26) At other times I came with all kinds of prasade and I would really want him to accept it in a certain way and and he would hardly look at it. I' I'd polish up the apples for hours, hold them on the bus, say mantras over them. I was trying to be pure. But this time I wasn't trying to be pure. The purity was simply there.
(1:33:46) I take the dust from the lotus feet of the guru to cleanse the mirror of my mind. So begins a sacred ode to Hanaman. Touching, holding, rubbing the guru's feet has always had profound significance in the Hindu tradition. For out of the guru's feet comes the spiritual elixir, the soma, the nectar, the essence of the sacred Ganges river, the subtle prawn energy that heals and awakens.
(1:34:10) To touch the feet of such a being is not only to receive this grace, but it is an act of submission, of surrender to God. for that is what the guru represents on earth and but for those of us around Maharaji the theories connected with uh the spiritual value of touching the guru's feet had little uh if anything to do with the matter rather it was the strangest pull of the heart a mother who with her husband had come to India from the United States out of concern for the wellbeing of her uh son who uh who was deeply devoted to Maharaji stayed on for some
(1:34:53) time. At the conclusion of her visit, uh she reports the following. Then as the time came that we had to return to the states, I began thinking about the last darian I would have. I realized that I really wanted to touch Maharaj's feet. I didn't know why I wanted to, but I did. I figured uh that if I went ahead and did it, uh it would upset my husband, but I thought so it upsets him.
(1:35:19) It is still my decision. At my last darian, I touched Maharaji's feet. To my surprise, so did my husband. Chapter 2. Under Maharaji's blanket. And how vividly I recall after my first meeting with Maharaji, how all my disdain and arrogance disappeared before an almost overwhelming desire literally to be at his feet.
(1:35:42) It was perhaps the second or third visit with Maharaji. Um when the opportunity presented itself, I was watching the man next to me. The expression on his face uh suggested that he was experiencing waves of rapture and as I watched him out of the corner of my eye, I felt jealous. We sat next to each other, cross-legged before a large, heavy, chest high wooden table.
(1:36:11) The man, the principal of a school in the vicinity, was probably in his late 50s. He was dressed in a heavy woolen suit with socks. His shoes had uh been uh left uh outside the the door of the temple. a tie, a muffler, and uh in the fashion common to the men of the Hill Country in that late November, a woolen hat before us sitting on the table cross-legged was Maharaji well wrapped in a bright plaid blanket so that only his head showed above the blanket and a bare foot stuck out beneath. It was this foot that was the
(1:36:53) source of both the rapture and the jealousy. For the man was massaging the the foot uh with great tenderness and love and I was yearning to be in his place. How bizarre to find myself sitting in a tiny Hindu temple halfway around the world, jealous because I could not rub an old man's foot as I reflected on this strange turn of events.
(1:37:20) Maharaji talked now to one and now to another of the 20 or so people gathered in the small room at the back of the temple compound. He spoke in Hindi which I did not understand but he seemed to be asking one a question, scolding another, joking with a third and giving instructions to a fourth. In the midst of these conversations, I saw him move ever so slightly and his other foot appeared beneath the blanket just beside me.
(1:37:48) I suspected that only people who had been around him for some time uh were allowed to uh to massage his feet and I was the newest comer. But I decided I couldn't be be faulted for for trying. Um, so slowly my hands went up and touched the foot and began to massage. But instead of waves of bliss, my mind was full of the sharp edges of doubt and confusion as to whether I should use my fingers or my palms.
(1:38:13) Just as suddenly as the foot appeared, it was withdrawn back under the blanket. And my mind was filled with self-rrimation about my own impurity. And as the visit went on, Maharaji took me more and more out of my self-consciousness and into a space that had no familiar boundaries. I was experiencing waves of confusion bordering on hysteria.
(1:38:42) And that was the moment the foot reappeared before me. And again, I reached for it, but this time my mind was too overwhelmed to analyze procedure. I just clung to the foot as a drowning man to a life preserver RD. There was one particular moment I remember in Kchi. I was sitting in front of Maharaji's tucket rubbing his feet for the longest time wondering if I was pure enough to be doing this.
(1:39:04) Then I went beyond thoughts going deeper and deeper in into that uh love until there wasn't any concern about rubbing Maharaji's feet or even my love for Maharaji. I was just swimming in his feet. Sitta would always sit on my right and uh being a greedy obnoxious Leo, I'd push my way up front and grab Maharaji's foot.
(1:39:28) Sitta would always want the same foot. So I'd have a shoving match with her. She'd say, "Get away from here. You You don't belong here." You and she'd throw her shoulder down to block me. Sometimes Maharaji would give his foot to me and sometimes to her. I very rarely touched his feet because I felt he was too pure. What was it about the Darons that that captured us? Was it the many levels and changes or the the moments of timelessness or perhaps the intimacy and love or was it the talking and chiding and humor or maybe the purity and of course perhaps it was the
(1:40:02) touching of the feet or was it all of them or none of them? Was the connection perhaps a subjective one beyond our dualistic experiencing? Maharaji, who are you? Are you other than our very selves? There is no answer. There is no question really. There is just daron which is grace. Take chai. Take chai. Tea.
(1:40:25) But Maharaji, I've already had chai. Take chai. Uh, okay. Uh, go take Kana food. Uh, Maharaji, I just ate an hour ago. Maharaji wants you to take Kana now. Okay. Um, and Maharaji sent these sweets over for you. But I I couldn't eat another thing. It's Maharaji's wish that you have these sweet. Okay. Maharaji sent me to give you chai. Oh no, not again.
(1:40:51) I am only doing my duty. It is Maharaji's wish. Um, okay. A devote has just arrived from Delhi with a a large bucket of sweets. Maharaji is distributing it. He wants you to come. Oh my god, I'll explode. It's Prasad. Thank you, Maharaji. Oh, no, not the apples too. Ah, thank you, Maharaji. Uh, while many experienced Maharaji's qualities of timelessness or love at at Darian's, everybody who came before him felt his concern that they be fed.
(1:41:28) Often, even before you could sit down, he would insist that you Take Prasad. People just never went away from him hungry. I stopped at a at a gasoline station in in Berkeley, California, uh run by a seek fellow. And and you know, I thought I'd practice my Hindi with him. When he found out that I I stayed at the temple at Kchi, the first thing he said was, "Oh, uh, you belong to that baba.
(1:42:10) I visited him. He gave me uh purists uh fried bread. Uh, nobody else gives you food just for nothing." um many of the poor people um in the areas around the temple or on pilgrimages came to depend upon the food that was freely given for their survival. But for the rest of us, such excessive feeding and continuous preoccupation with food seemed to indicate that the food represented something more.
(1:42:41) And my first impressions focused on all the food that was present. I had just come down from Nepal where I had been on a strict Buddhist meditation trip for a long time and I saw all these people sitting down and stuffing their uh faces and I thought uh oh they don't know where it's at. Look at the glutton. Then I sat down to eat and in a few days I was stuffing my face.
(1:43:09) I had never before experienced such a feeling as that. Literally, I could not get enough to eat. It was as if I were feeding my spirit. He offered the parah a sweet back to me to eat. And oddly enough, I I turned it down. What was in my mind was that I felt completely filled and someone else should have it. So, he gave it to someone else.
(1:43:32) At another daron, he had filled my hands with uh paras, which I promptly ate. Shortly thereafter, he started to give me another huge handful which I turned down thinking that I'd had my share. An Indian behind me became upset and uh told me I I should never turn down Maharaji's prasad that I should always take what he offers to me.
(1:43:58) Then of course I felt bad. Next Maharaji offered me another handful which I joyfully received. I arrived at the temple in November and lived there continuously until the end of March. During all that time, I was fed well daily. And yet, not a penny was ever asked of me in compensation. I couldn't understand it.
(1:44:17) Here I was a relatively um wealthy uh westerner and and the Indians had such a hard time economically and yet they would not accept payment. So I just kept sneaking money into the box uh at the temple RD. I was trying to hide somewhere around the temple uh across the courtyard from where he uh came out the door. And when he came out, I got pushed by the people right up to the tucket.
(1:44:44) I tried always to be far away and hide myself. So when I got pushed near to him, I tried to hide behind the column, but people pushed me and pushed me and Maharaji came out. I was scared and crying and Maharaji gave me a pair. When I ate the pear, it made me feel like there was water all over inside me. It was like eating love alive.
(1:45:05) Since that day, this pair has always been in my mind. And nothing has ever matched this feeling. I have never eaten another pair since that day. And one time when my daughter was young and and still with us, we stopped in Bowwali on route to Kenchi for Daron. Um she wanted uh a jellabase uh a suite and but there were none.
(1:45:27) I said we uh when we get to Kchi there will be some sakit sam but when we got there uh we found uh that it was a Hindu fast day ekadashi you know literally 11th day in in the lunar month and so only boiled potatoes were served as we entered Maharaji's room to our surprise a man arrived with a large basket full of uh jellabes Maharaji said give some to that girl first pointing to my daughter.
(1:45:56) He knows everything. A sadu once came to the temple and upbrided Maharaji. You do nothing for people. You don't feed or help people. Maharaji said, "Give him a room and food and money, Ruru." Yet all that the devotees felt like doing was beating this sadhu. They got him around a corner to do so.
(1:46:14) But Maharaji yelled at them. After the sadu had eaten, he became very quiet. Maharaji said, "The thing you people don't understand is that he's hungry. He hasn't eaten for three days. What else could he do but what he did once I said why do you feed so many people and why so much I could eat four chapatis flat unleavened bread and stay alive Maharaji answered weh we have an inner thirst for food we don't know of it even if you don't feel you can eat your soul has a thirst for food take prasad the nature of the food uh that was served around Maharaji is
(1:46:47) worthy of note for uh uh though it satisfied our souls our intellects were often appalled. The usual diet at the temple consisted of white rice uh purus and and potatoes um both fried um and sweets of almost pure white sugar. The diet was starch, grease and sugar and much black tea. All the sensitivity that the western preoccupation with diet had awakened in us screamed at this diet.
(1:47:16) And yet this was Prasad. Did you did you did you reject prasad or did you did you give up your your dietary models? What did you do when the love came in the form of starch, grease, sugar and tea? Greasy potatoes were one thing. A a blessing from the guru, however, was an entirely different matter. And I previously believed that a saint should observe uh certain restrictions as to food.
(1:47:44) Also, I never took tea or coffee. And uh I ate a very simple uh small diet. I never took medicines. I wondered how people could take so many pills. After Maharaji left, I caught a cold. At first the doctors thought it was flu. Then they said it was a a more serious disease. So I had to take 15 pills a day to cure it.
(1:48:07) It was all Maharaji's play. The doctors also told me to put on weight. So from 6 in the morning until 10 at night, I ate. I wondered how I could eat so much when previously I had eaten only two chapatis at a meal. All my old ideas vanished. This was similar to what happened when I came to Kchi prior to which time I never uh drank tea.
(1:48:32) And uh on the first day at Kchi I did not take it and on the second day when uh Maharaji asked me if I would drink tea and I didn't reply and the third morning he asked me do you want tea? you don't want it here you should drink tea it's a cold place and you know so this time I drank tea and since that day I take anything tea coffee whatever when Maharaji spoke about diet he generally um ignored uh the nutrition issues that so concerned some of us but he did suggest that we eat simple foods and he also advised us to eat food that was indigenous to the area in which we
(1:49:08) were living and then to various devotees he gave specific instructions about diet advising one to forego wine meat, eggs, and hot spices because they lead to an impure heart. Yet to another he said, "What is this concern with what is meat and what is not? When you can live without meat, well and good, when you cannot live without it, then you should have it.
(1:49:33) " Some he counseledled to uh eat alone, silently, simply, or with a few people. To others, his his instructions concerned the value of fast three times a month. Although when you were around him, he interrupted any fast you might attempt from this confusion of instructions. Most of us came away with the feeling that he was counseling us to trust our intuitions rather than get too caught in rules.
(1:49:56) At least that's what we wanted to hear. Because he fed us all so unstintingly with love and attention as well as food. We sought ways to reciprocate. Yet his life was so simple that there was nothing to give. So most people brought flowers or food, especially fruits and sweets. These he would then distribute by his own hand or touch the food and then have it distributed.
(1:50:23) Such touching or blessing by such a being as Maharaji converted the food vibrationally from a physical material into prasad. In the absence of the physical form of such a being as Maharaji, food is offered in the heart and the mind of the devote before partaking. If food is offered purely, the beings to which it is offered except in essence from the food.
(1:50:50) Uh and then uh we eat what is left which has become prasad in the west. Uh this would be uh similar to our saying grace before eating. Uh Maharaji also showed a continuous concern for the quality of the food that was being distributed from the kitchens uh at the uh at the temple. Uh he uh he would call the cooks uh and examine the food.
(1:51:19) If it was poorly made, he would yell. If it was unnecessarily extravagant, he would yell. When I was living up on the hill in that uh in that little cooty hut, the Maharaji would send me away with a box of food every evening. But when he gave it to me, he always checked the entire box, putting his hands all through it.
(1:51:35) Maharaji would tell the mothers that the vibrations with which food was cooked could definitely affect your state of mind. He would say that if you truly made your food pride, it would purify you. But even a very pure man, if he ate food that was prepared without proper consciousness, that food would create confusion in his mind.
(1:51:55) And he said that eating purely uh prepared food made a yogi great. At the market, I bought that, you know, some clusters of green berries to give to Maharaji. They were kind of dirty, so I very carefully washed them and uh then I put them back into the bag. But you know how it is with Indian bags and it broke and um the berries fell uh all over the ground.
(1:52:22) So I carefully washed them again, berry by berry. It took a long time. Finally, I brought them uh to Maharaji. Everybody else of course had also brought fruits. But the minute I put them down, Maharaji appeared very excited. He spread them all out very carefully, studied them, ate many of them himself, and distributed the rest as something particularly precious.
(1:52:43) I felt that he sensed the love and care with which I had prepared the berries. For some time, Maharaji would eat only the food prepared by one particular ma. She told me that if one day she was too busy and someone had helped her with it, he would refuse to eat it. She said that she uh would sometimes lie to him uh just so he uh would eat the food.
(1:53:06) Uh she would say that she had uh cooked the food by herself uh without help. Still he would push it away. He seemed to be able to feel the difference. Um my Brahman grandfather took his food alone as was the tradition. Uh the food was uh uh specially prepared for him by my wife. He had started to eat when uh Maharaji arrived.
(1:53:29) So father ordered more food prepared. My wife wanted to give Maharaji a special item of food that she had made for grandfather. So she gave some to Maharaji. Father got angry. How can you give Maharaji other than freshly prepared food? He asked my wife. And then Maharaji called him and said the freshly prepared food was eaten by the sadu.
(1:53:47) The special food offered out of such pure love was eaten by God. Most of the time Maharaji ate alone and distributed all that we devotees brought to him. But it was each person's dearest desire uh when we brought the fruit or other food that Maharaji eat some of it himself. And when he did it, it felt like such a precious moment, one in which Maharaji had accepted uh a token of your love.
(1:54:19) Once when I brought a soft apple and peeled it and cut it up and held it up before him as I had seen the Indians do, he reached down and took a few pieces from my hand and I experienced that ecstasy you might feel if a wild bird or deer had come and eaten out of your hand. Rd Maharaji was sitting in the back in Caini by the showers late one afternoon.
(1:54:41) We were offering him pomegranate seeds, most of which he was eating one by one. Others he was handing out to the people around him. One of the Indians uh started giving him some of them back. Maharaji uh continued eating them obliviously and passing them out. The next thing you knew, it had developed into this great little game.
(1:55:04) People were passing the pomegranate seeds under the tucket, passing them back so that I could keep giving him more. He ended up eating all the seeds, though they had uh recirculated several times. We shared the delightful conspiracy of feeding and fooling him. And I purchased a dozen oranges to take to Maharaji. We arrived at the tiny temple where Maharaji was visiting and where many Indian devotees had already gathered and were crammed into his room.
(1:55:35) As soon as our presence was made known, we were pushed to the space just in front of the wooden table on which Maharaji sat. I offered the oranges to him. There was already much fruit and some sweets on the table. But then something happened that surprised me. Maharaji started to go at my oranges as if he had never seen food before.
(1:55:57) As each orange was opened, he would grab it and eat it very rapidly. And before my eyes, he consumed eight oranges. I was being fed the other four at Maharaji's insistence by the school principal. And later, I asked KK, a close Indian friend, about this peculiar behavior. KK explained that Maharaji was taking on karma from me and that this was uh a technique by which he often did that.
(1:56:24) RD the meaning of taking on karma is that a very high being such as Maharaji can work with subtle vibratory patterns and can take from devotees patterns with which they have been stuck for this lifetime or many lifetimes. For example, such a being could take away your sorrow or your ill fortune.
(1:56:48) This process, which is a familiar one among Indian saints as well as sorcerers and medicine men from many parts of the world, can be done in a variety of ways. Often the medicine man works with a lock of hair or other personal effects of the person suffering the effects of some uh negative forces either inside or outside themselves.
(1:57:08) And in India uh such karmic healers often work with things the devote gives them. Shiri Sai Bababa a very great saint of India would ask his devotees for Anna's small coins worth less than a penny. These he would handle continuously until he had extracted the negative condition from the devote into himself.
(1:57:26) This negative uh material he then could release from himself by other yogic processes. Another well-known guru in India asks his devotees for cigarettes and smokes from morning till night, year in year out, often three or four cigarettes at a time. And Maharaji's way was uh to uh eat the uh karma and he uh seemed to have you no limit to his capacity.
(1:57:55) One woman, a a long-standing devote told the following story. once in Bumyadar where Maharaji was staying the night. We had all taken our evening meal and had retired at 10:30. Around 1 in the morning, Maharaji started yelling that he was very hungry and that he uh must have uh dal uh lentils uh you know and and chapatis.
(1:58:20) I I awoke and reminded him that he had already eaten but he insisted that he must have uh dal and chapatis uh who can understand the ways of such a being. So I woke brahmachari baba the priest and he built a fire and uh prepared the food. It was ready about 2:00 in the morning and uh we watched Maharaji consume the food uh with great hunger and then we all retired again.
(1:58:46) And at about 11 the next morning a telegram arrived saying that one of Maharaj's old devotees had died down on the planes was about 150 miles away the previous night at 2 in the morning when the telegram was read to Maharaji he said you see that's why I needed uh chapatis and dal uh this uh aroused our curiosity because we didn't see at all we pressed him but he would say uh nothing more.
(1:59:14) Finally after 2 or 3 days of our persistence he said don't you see he uh the man who had died uh had been wishing for chapatis uh and and dah and and I didn't want him to carry that desire on through death for it would affect a future birth sometimes when visiting homes he would come to the door and say he was very hungry and ask if he could eat in very poor homes where there might not be any food.
(1:59:44) He would just say he was very thirsty and ask for water. In Lucknau, Maharaji took some public works officials in a car to the poorest part of town where these officials do not take proper care of the roads and sanitation from one of the shacks. He called forth a Muslim man and they embraced. And then Maharaji said, "I'm very hungry, but Maharaji, I have no food." wicked one.
(2:00:11) You have two roies flatbread hidden in the roof. So uh the man was surprised that Maharaji knew and and he got them. Even though Maharaji and the officials had just eaten, he ate one with relish and handed the other to the officials including the Hindu brahinss who would never eat food uh prepared by a Muslim and said take prasad.
(2:00:31) When Maharaji came to uh the Lucknow Temple for the last time, uh he would say to each person who came, if if he or she could afford to do so, go get sweets. And when they would return with sweets, he'd distribute them almost, 1500 rupees worth that day. One doctor bought a,000 rupees worth of sweets and the uh personal problem causing him concern was solved.
(2:01:01) And in the period between 1939 and uh 1949 uh when Maharaji would come into a town such as Ninal uh all the women would prepare food in the hope that he would come to their homes. They did it out of a mixture of loving service and the feeling that it was a blessing to feed such a saint. and KK who followed him from early morning until late at night once watched him consume 20 full meals in one day.
(2:01:34) Another reported um watching him take 10 meals in a row. And if you have been uh to India and understand the graciousness of the Indian home where the guest is treated as God, you will appreciate the immense portions and the persistence in feeding. An Indian meal is more than ample for a normal human being.
(2:01:53) But perhaps Maharaj's immense capacity represented something other than dietary requirements. One morning Maharaji said to the people at the ashram, "You people can't feed me or take care of me. I'm going to ma, she'll feed me." And he left for the ashram of a nandayi ma, a great woman saint of northern India. During the entire trip, he was saying, "She'll feed me.
(2:02:13) I'm going to see Ma. She'll feed me." Then he burst into the Darian room like a child of five with his blanket flying in all directions. And she was sitting there and uh he was saying, "Mike, ma, feed me, feed me, ma." She exploded in laughter. A huge meal was brought to him and the two of them passed it out to all the devotees.
(2:02:42) Again and again, Maharaji enjoined us to feed people. His concern was not merely for his own devotees, but with all people who hunger. He would say God comes to the hungry in the form of food and to the cooks. He would say making making food is a service to God. People need food to stay alive. He used to say that you should serve everything every creature.
(2:03:03) It is all God's creation. Serve everyone whether he be a decoy uh thief or anything else. If he comes to you hungry, give him food. So often he said everyone has a right to be fed. that Maharaji's own behavior set a dramatic example for us. Besides feeding all who came to have his daran, he was continually arranging for large bandaras uh celebrations consisting of mass-free feedings for all comers including the wealthy, the poor, the beggars, the lepers and the people were fed when they arrived for Maharaji instructed a starving person should not
(2:03:42) have to wait. Such a person should be fed when he is hungry. At these great bandaras uh which often served a thousand or more many devotees uh would vi to help uh in the preparation and distribution uh of uh of the food. And here, judge and and merchant, teacher and politician, uh could all be found peeling potatoes, uh stirring the huge pots or ladling out the halva, a grain dish made of wheat, ghee, uh and and and sweetener or rice with huge spoons.
(2:04:22) The Kumbha malas were even more festive occasions. These are gatherings of hundreds of thousands of sadhus saints and seekers who come from all over India in order to bathe in the confluence of three rivers. The Ganges, the Yamuna and the Sarasati, an underground spiritual river at an auspicious astrological moment. It is like a huge spiritual fair that goes on for a month or more at the Melas Maharaji's tent.
(2:04:53) Usually served 250 to 500 people a day for at least a month. That is a lot of potatoes to be peeled. During these celebrations, Maharaji uh demanded hard work of the devotees and many saw these experiences as as training and discipline. One devote describes the experience this way. At the mela uh they uh prepared kitri, a rice and dah mixture.
(2:05:16) But the serving spoon was very heavy and soon the servers growing tired began to serve only small portions. As a result, the beggars would stand in line again and again to get enough to eat. Finally one of Maharaji's devotees got very angry and just then Maharaji arrived from Chitrakoot a place sacred to uh devotees of Ram.
(2:05:42) He yelled at them all and said they could not serve food with anger and that they should give plenty to everyone. Another devote uh pointing out that the devotees were not even praised for working hard said no matter how hard people worked at uh at the mela um melas and uh pandaras uh Maharaji would say uh you people are playing and uh going about doing nothing.
(2:06:11) You are always sleeping. And although people were uh continually bringing food to Maharaji which he distributed, sometimes there were more to receive than there were givers. It was at these times that the discerning eye caught Maharaji manifesting what is known as the CCD power of Anaperna. Anaperna is the goddess of grain, the aspect of the divine mother that feeds the universe.
(2:06:40) One who has anapernais cidi can keep distributing from a store of food yet it will remain full. On a feast day at the temple when I was quite young they were giving out special sweets. Maharaji gave me a small uh leaf cup of these sweets that he had been keeping especially for me.
(2:06:59) Then he said you give those sweets back to me. So I gave them to him because I had such faith in him. He just put the leaf cup under his blanket and began distributing those sweets from under his blanket. I don't know how he did it, but he gave a handful to each person in that huge crowd of at least a thousand people. I was so surprised.
(2:07:24) I couldn't understand how he could be distributing so many more sweets than the number of sweets I had given to him. So being just a kid, I I stuck my hand under his blanket and uh took out the leaf cup to see. Maharaji turned to me and said, "Now the magic is finished." A man brought some oranges to Maharaji and put them in an empty basket by his side.
(2:07:56) And Maharaji started giving the oranges to the people in the room and then to others in the temple. The man had brought eight oranges and Maharaji gave out 48. At the mela many came to the tent and Maharaji told us to prepare tea for all those people. No one wanted to tell Maharaji that they had run out of milk. Finally someone did and Maharaji said uh go and get a container of water from the Ganga and keep it covered with cloth.
(2:08:25) All that day and until midnight that night there was plenty of good tea with milk. Maharaji called me over to sit with him while he was giving out prasad food offerings and uh and he was eating small biscuits from a small plate with only a few biscuits. Maharaji you started giving me biscuits taking them out of the biscuit plate um with uh his hand he kept taking more out um until both my hands were full and I couldn't separate them because of the amount of prasad earlier I had been upset uh observing Maharaji thinking prasad should be given not thrown
(2:09:02) he knew that and this is why he called me back and started giving me prasad into my hands Maharaji once called me in Alahabad to tell me he had come down to Vindaban. When I arrived at the Vindaban ashram, there were only a few people there. One woman came for Daron bringing a bag of wonderful apples. You can't imagine how big and uh luscious looking they were.
(2:09:27) Maharaji began distributing them and um I thought surely he would give me one as well but he didn't. He gave a few to the other devotees and the rest he gave back to the woman. She we wouldn't give me one either. Oh, how tightly. She tied them back up in her bag. And shortly afterward, Maharaji crossed the yard and went into a room alone and sat on the tucket in there.
(2:09:50) Then he called me in alone. I don't know from where it came, but he put his hand down beside him on the tucket and handed me an apple, even bigger and more luscious than those the woman had given him. And then he handed me another apple. I don't know where they had come from because I had seen for myself that he hadn't kept any from the woman.
(2:10:15) I was accompanying Maharaji from Alahaba to Vindaban by train when in the station before we boarded the train I saw the loveliest large juicy oranges. For a moment I was tempted to stop and uh and buy some but I passed by. Once we were in the train, my attention was diverted just for a short time. And when I looked again at Maharaji, he had beside him such a huge basket of oranges.
(2:10:43) I don't know where they had come from, but they were better than those I had seen in the station. And when Maharaji uh handed me one orange, I put it in the right breast pocket. The second orange I put in the left breast pocket. They created such bulges that I looked like a woman. Then he handed me a third which I put in one pants pocket and uh and a fourth in the other pocket.
(2:11:10) Uh and he kept on giving me more so that I had to catch them in my uh shirt tails front and back. He gave me so many oranges I could hardly move. I started giving these uh sweet uh oranges out to others saying this is the best prasad I have to offer today. To this day, I don't know how he came by those oranges.
(2:11:32) At the Kumba Mela in 1966, uh Maharaji was sitting on the bank of the Ganga with two or more sadas. He told us to bring him a lot of Ganga water. He held it for a few minutes and then told us to uh distribute it. It was milk to all but the closest devotees. uh Maharaji tended to mask these powers and would often use a cover story to make it appear as if he had nothing to do with the additional food.
(2:12:03) When Maharaji established a Hanuman temple on a site that had previously been a burial ground, a great bandara was held to set free the wandering spirits. Late at night, it was discovered that the ghee clarified butter had run out. The man in charge of stores went to Maharaji and told him that there was a shortage of ghee, although many people were still coming to be fed.
(2:12:26) How were they to provide? Maharaji replied, go there and check among the empty canisters. You'll find somewhere a full tin. Although the man knew that they were all empty uh as he himself had checked and and counted them, he went and indeed he found a full tin there among the empties. One man stayed with with Maharaji for many years uh as a sort of attendant.
(2:12:49) He'd keep Maharaji's clothes, help him bathe and fetch water and so forth. Um he performed much service and uh slept at Maharaji's feet to be always nearby. Uh his practice was to keep fast on Tuesday taking only milk. On one Tuesday, Maharaji offered him food but he refused saying he'd take milk. Uh the whole day passed and he wasn't given any milk.
(2:13:10) Late at night, Maharaji asked him if he'd eaten or drunk milk. He said, "No, he was fasting, but that he had had milk." Maharaji said, "You're kind, you're lying. Tell the truth. No one gave you milk." Maharaji shouting, "Woke woke shave for woke." Um, Maharaji uh questioned the cook and found that uh no one had remembered to give him his milk and by now none was in the ash.
(2:13:38) Maharaji got up and went to his room. Uh he called the man in and told him to lock the door. Maharaji asked the time. It was after midnight. Maharaji said, "You haven't eaten all day. It's after midnight. Can you eat now? It's Wednesday." The man said he could. Maharaji reached into his doi cloth used to cover the lower part of a man's body.
(2:14:01) A and took out five parathas, fried bread, and uh two types of vegetables. Maharaji said it's God's prasad, Rah's prasad. The man started to leave so he could eat it outside, but Maharaji stopped him and told him to eat it there. When he was finished, Maharaji produced uh an uh a small amount of kir, a sweet rice pudding.
(2:14:25) This the man also ate and then started out of the room to get water. Maharaji again stopped him. So, where are you going? Here's water. Water was kept near Maharaji's bed for his use in the night. But the man wouldn't use Maharaji's uh Maharaji's vessels. Maharaji poured the water into his mouth.
(2:14:46) Then Maharaji told him not to tell anyone about Fender. Often this process of disguise would involve tremendous yelling at devotees, shifting attention as any good magician would do, thus creating in them great guilt as if it were their own sloppiness that had led to the misplacement of the food. Later he would be very tender with them and they sensed that he had used them but not abused them.
(2:15:15) One time they ran out of ghee at at Hanamanar and Maharaji asked a devote in secret to get some water in a bucket and put it in the woods. Then he said in his usual direct manner, I have to go piss and he went out and when he returned he was yelling. He went over to Assadu and bered him for not watching the the the supply.
(2:15:41) He said thieves were going to steal the ghee. Look, Maharaji said they have put a tin of ghee out here in the woods and they brought in the bucket filled with ghee. A devati was serving at uh Bandara at uh Kchi. They were starting to run out of malpas, sweet porus. As the feast had continued for 10 days, uh when the people came, they began to give them chapatis and dal but no malpas.
(2:16:09) Then 60 or 70 women arrived from distant villages not just to see Maharaji but because they desired Malpuas. Maharaji said give them Malpuas. Uh a devote told Maharaji that there were no more and Maharaji upgraded him saying you are a thief and there were plenty of Malpuas. You've stolen them. Take the keys from him.
(2:16:36) I don't want him in the temple anymore. He should not have the keys to the storoom. He has probably hidden the malpuas somewhere. When someone checked the storoom, there were there were plenty of malpuas. Later, Maharaji was so loving and tender to the accused devote. And I was in Alahabad with Maharaji at Mela time.
(2:17:00) Maharaji said there were some ma who had come from Natal and added let let's go to the meloss and find them. We took a taxi which Maharaji dismissed once we arrived. It was dark and uh and many thousands of people were crowded there. Maharaji sent me and a friend to look but we were fearful of losing him. So we made only a cursory inspection and rushed back saying that we could not find the moss.
(2:17:25) Finally, Maharaji said he would go in the third tent that he investigated. He found them just as they were finishing a puja to Maharaji. They had been doing this puja every day for 30 days hoping for for his dar. This was the final day. They had even made an image of Maharaji. Maharaji walked in and stood at the back of the tent.
(2:17:46) Then he brought the ma to another devotees house and sent us out for milk and sweets. We were students and did not want to spend all our money. So we said to each other, "After all, how much can a ma drink?" And we brought small amounts of sweets and milk for which Maharaji bered us and and threw us out. We sat on the porch repentant.
(2:18:05) Later he called us into his room and asked, "Do you think I needed you to get sweets?" And there in the room were buckets and buckets of sweets. And Maharaji made us eat and eat. and the retired superintendent of prisons of luck now a very old and respected devote uh tells of his experience with Maharaji and the story is very special in that it reflects the faith of his wife which was sufficient to allow her to let Maharaji's city of Anaperna work through her he would put you in the wrong catch you unprepared then help you yeah one
(2:18:40) night in ninal we had returned to our house for the evening meal um after having been with Maharaji uh much during the day and and there were four of us and uh uh my wife had prepared uh just enough food for our family and then my small daughter heard uh Maharaji passing by on his way from the government house and she went out and said Maharaji we live here come to our house I called her and said like don't bother Maharaji we have been with him much today also I realized iz that we had only a little food but Maharaji
(2:19:17) said no no I must go to your house and he came in bringing about 20 people after a very few minutes he said to me that the uh these people are hungry uh give them food um I wouldn't say no because I knew his strength so I went toward the kitchen Maharaji yelled and hurry up in the kitchen I whispered to my wife uh the dilemma we were in we had only enough vegetables in the small pot uh for the four of us and the market was far below and already closed.
(2:19:52) My wife who had more faith than I said don't worry Maharaji will take care of it. Here take this small pot which she had covered and don't remove the cover to look inside and there is a large serving spoon. Just serve the people and I will make the purists. I did as she said not looking inside. I knew it was going to be uh very odd. To each person I gave one or two large spoonfuls then asked each uh do you want more? Some said yes and I gave it to them.
(2:20:22) Everyone got as much vegetable and puri as they wanted. Maharaji was smiling. Then he said everyone has taken everyone is full. This is a very big feast. A number of stories of the early days have um filtered down about Maharaji. How much is fact and how much uh fiction is uncertain. Here is a delightful example. Uh the the village children of the area um often came to the lake um hurting their cows and goats.
(2:20:53) You know, one day seeing no one around, they hung their lunch bundles in the lowhanging branches of the trees and went off to play. They returned to find their their uh lunches missing and Maharaji sitting contentedly under the tree. He smiled at the children and in exchange for their food he pulled purus and and lattis uh a sweet particularly favored uh by Hanuman uh from under his garment.
(2:21:18) The children ate to their hearts content under Maharaji's blanket. The way in which guru and devote relate to one another varies immensely from devote to devote. In the holy books it is said that a devote might see the guru in the roles of father, mother, child, friend, master, lover or god. And there were devotees who saw Maharaji in each of these ways.
(2:21:44) But the essence of the way in which Maharaji's Indian devotees felt toward him is perhaps better captured by the word baba than by the term guru. Baba can mean grandfather or elder. It is a term of respect used with either an older person or a spiritual person. The sadhus or wandering renunciates of India are usually called baba and so is the old street cleaner.
(2:22:10) Its softness and familiarity better capture the quality of the play between Maharaji and and his uh devotees. And for some of them he was seen primarily as the grandfather of the family. um the fatherly uh affection he'd give can't be gotten from anyone else. And for others, their baba was their dear friend.
(2:22:31) When you love somebody, you play anything with them. That's what I did. I never thought differently. We we'd travel together uh often and just talk about this and that. And for many, he was a wise adviser. Like I'd just come ask him my questions and go. To some, he was just another saintly sadu. He was just an ordinary baba.
(2:22:51) He'd come often and we would give him a little uh sweet or a glass of water. He'd sit on a bare cot and we felt so much pride because we fed a baba today. Uh my family has always had saints like Maharaji uh connected with them and but for many he was a uh guardian angel as if from another realm while with him I always felt protection from anywhere from all things.
(2:23:14) Maharaji picks us from one spot and places us at another. Whenever we feel difficulty from any ordeal in our life, we always remember him. Then he always helps us either directly or by giving strength to others to help us. And for some God whoever had his uh his daron even from behind is saved. Uh Maharaji is the havan sacrificial fire accepting and burning my karma.
(2:23:40) You know, he's beyond anything you could say of him. You see, he is God. That's of course who he is. All these categories are too specific really for most devotees. He was now one and now another of these or he was uh he was all of them. Quite simply, he was their baba. I didn't care about, you know, his miracles.
(2:24:00) I only knew that he was my baba. One woman never thought of Maharaji as a great saint with powers. He said that he didn't have them. So, she believed him. She thought of him as a saintly, good and kind person who gave her love and affection and peace of mind. Her husband thought that Maharaji was God himself.
(2:24:22) In Maharaji's presence, both of them would forget their problems. I have never been afraid of him. Never. It was not out of fear of him that I was tense and alert around him, but out of fear for him. For instance, if you have a flower garden and are caring for it, you are not afraid of the flowers. uh but of the uh the horse and the cow who may trample or eat it or of the gardener who may forget to water it.
(2:24:51) I was afraid you see that someone's carelessness might cause him inconvenience or pain like your mother uh mother would feel if you came home from school and she was not there at you but she'd worry about who would feed and take care of you. It was like that among the westerners. There was also considerable variety in the ways of uh seeing Maharaji and being with him.
(2:25:09) Although many of us had extremely intimate relations with Maharaji, uh nevertheless, uh the more formal term guru uh with its emphasis as a vehicle for uh uh spiritual liberation uh would seem a more appropriate label than Baba. Uh because gurus were not commonplace in the culture uh from which we had come, we tended to invest more heavily uh in the guru mythos.
(2:25:38) uh we didn't particularly want a grandfather uh or another friend. We wanted God or at least a divine uh intermediary. Uh and that's how most of us saw Maharaji. In these quotations, some differences among us become apparent. One Western devote uh speaks to another. I didn't need to be around him a lot. It was okay for everyone else who had to be around him constantly.
(2:26:04) I think that my uh traveling with you was good because you were a perfect compliment to me. You had to be near Maharaji. You had to sit at his feet. You had to pick up every little detail, hear every little story. And I really loved that. It was really beautiful. But but for me, all of that got in the way.
(2:26:25) That was not what I needed. I just needed the essence, the seed, the feeling. I remember one day we had eaten very well as usual. And uh and we all napped afterward, but there was a feeling of what the Sufis call baraka blessing or or spiritual power. And when we woke up, we were disoriented. But it felt so delightful.
(2:26:47) Uh a lot of the real work for me was uh in that feeling I got after coming and taking prasad and relaxing. It was in this way that I experienced the actual baraka or blessing taking place. I was crying all the time because Maharaji wouldn't take me to him inside his arms into the temple and fly me up into the sky. After that first contact with him, I became um extremely eager almost crazy to be inside his blanket.
(2:27:15) So I always tried to bargain to find some way that I could get him to take me. And I realized very quickly that there was no way to do anything that could make him take me. I never felt that the words were really important. The true guru is within and Maharaji was a manifestation that I needed to see in order to understand that truth because of the longing for him and the sense of being in the presence of my own divine holy godmother.
(2:27:44) I always felt uh Maharaji to be as my as my mother. Maharaji was like the ma for me. Maharaji's relation to God was totally internal and subtle. It was just so fine to be who you are, to be yourself. The playfulness was so infinite, the heart opening so wide. In the following comparison between the behaviors of two of the devotees, another dimension of difference becomes clear.
(2:28:16) When devote a was in the temple, it was predictable that if any westerner were allowed near Maharaji, he would be the one. There was no limit to the ingenuity he employed to remain in Maharaji's presence for every possible second. If Maharaji told uh people uh to go away, A would be the last to leave and then might go immediately around the back of the building, pick a flower off a tree, and arrive from the other side as if he were just arriving for the first time.
(2:28:48) uh when uh others uh uh were being told to go, he would often hide so as to avoid being included in the expulsion edict. It developed into an elaborate game in which Maharaji was a participant. Uh why was um a a master of of his game. um he seemed to to have um a a special sense that told him where Maharaji would be any moment and he managed to be there waiting.
(2:29:16) Others tried to compete in this game but none approached A's totally onepointed uh or depending upon how you saw it totally selfish behavior. Others were uh hampered by guilt or compassion for others. feelings which if mentioned elicited only an uncomprehending look from a devote B was an entirely different story.
(2:29:41) If Maharaji sent us to help in the kitchen, B would remain uh peeling potatoes long after others had given up and drifted back to Maharaji. He would stay until the last potato was peeled um and then look for more work. Although he had been trained as an attorney in the United States, his service and and humility at the temple were so outstanding that soon he was in charge of kitchens and storooms.
(2:30:03) He remained uh in the temple uh performing the purest uh service for for 5 years until he was evicted by the government. No job was too menial and there was no evidence of personal pride about his his humility nor any effort to get attention for for his work. It was truly as if he came closest to God through his service.
(2:30:29) He hardly ever came near Maharaji and when he did it was usually only to touch his feet and then go back to his duties. Devotees like A often infuriated uh other devotees uh because they seemed to be monopolizing Maharaji while devotees like B aroused respect and sometimes guilt in others. Yet intuitively we knew that each in his own way was uh pure devotee and Maharaji uh obviously loved them both and as varied as were all the ways of seeing and being with Maharaji so were his reactions.
(2:31:08) He responded to each according to his or her capacity to absorb. In the infinitely changing nature of Maharaji's behavior, each person found what he or she needed because he stood nowhere. He was like a mirror showing each devote the Baba or guru that they projected. Often with one act, he fed simultaneously the desperate needs of a dozen devotees.
(2:31:35) Who can say with with these saints? They are like the sky. Maharaji's mind was completely clear. He would seem to have no thoughts. Only that which God w would come into his mind. Like a cloud it would come and then wh oh such action that that thought would produce and again like a cloud it would pass. His mind was always clear.
(2:31:58) Uh he used to speak to the devote uh according to the person's own depth uh according to what line of devotion the person was following. uh if you were clever or deceptive uh Maharaji ignored you but if you were simple and open he'd help you. Maharaji uh when he liked a person expressed it from from the heart and when he didn't want to see the face of a person he would cover his face with a blanket.
(2:32:29) Maharaji did not reveal himself to everybody. He could see into the soul of a person where we would see a nice sort of chap. He would see the person's inner workings. To some people, he would just give prasad and uh send uh send them away. Whether a person had been with Maharaji for 25 years uh or or was a ranked newcomer, all were given the same consideration.
(2:32:55) There were no favorites and and no one was indispensable. On one occasion, a caravan of army trucks stopped at the gate and hundreds of soldiers came and stood in line. Maharaji was talking to a farmer sitting beside him. One by one, the soldiers and officers came forward, bent over, and touched Maharaji's feet, looked at him for another moment, and then turned away.
(2:33:23) That experience was all most of them seemed to want. But every so often one would come forward who seemed different. Perhaps seeming to have a bit more light or perhaps seeming to suffer more. Many times I watched as such a person bent forward. Maharaji would hit him on the head or give him a flower or interrupt his conversation to say something to him such as um your mother will be all right or you shouldn't fight with your your superiors or you love God very much.
(2:33:54) We could see only the tiniest fraction of what Maharaji saw. The soldiers wanted pictures of Hanuman, the protecting deity of the Indian army and of Maharaji to carry as protection in war. Maharaji said the army has good and simple and spiritual men. And it was not as if Maharaji were deciding to do this or that.
(2:34:16) Rather, the nature of the seeker was eliciting from him as from a mirror this or that response. RD the first time I saw Maharaji was at a a mella and I was asked to come to Chitrakoot and the first thing that impressed me was that he was like a mirror. You know in Chitrakoot there were so many people and they were talking about um all his doings and I was never interested but said that I thought he was like a mirror.
(2:34:46) when they then uh told Maharaji, he was very happy to hear that I thought this. I would talk with uh with Maharaji about all matters um including such things as science or or humans going to the moon. He was like a mirror. He had nothing to do with any of it. But he showed interest and the next time you spoke of it, he would follow what you were saying.
(2:35:11) He used to say, "I remember everything." Maharaji did not seem to be deciding how to react to any devote and in fact advised others to see God in everyone. It is deception to teach by individual differences and karma. Nevertheless, when pressed, he could explain his behavior. Once I was chastising Maharaji for giving photos to people who were uh were worldly and and didn't care about him and he said, "You don't understand me.
(2:35:42) If I tell a man he is a great bakta uh devote, I am planting a seed. Um if if a person already has a seed planted and growing, why should I plant another? And I said, you are telling these drunkards, liars and dakoits that they are real baktas. They will just go home and carry on their old behaviors. Maharaji said some of them will remember what I said of them and it will make them want to develop this quality in themselves.
(2:36:12) If uh 10 out of a hundred are inspired in this way, it is a very good thing. A devote once said to Maharaji, Maharaji, why do you tell people to do something and then blame them for it? If I tell them to jump off a cliff, should they do it? I just tell them what is going on in their minds.
(2:36:30) All of this seemed to be a process whereby uh Maharaji was using devotees in the service of the awakening of one another. And when the Indians were feeling resentful of the westerners, Maharaji would say they are very sincere and very pure and that's why I love them. The westerners all test me. You Indians all have blind faith. Maharaji once said uh of the westerners uh for westerners just being in India is a form of renunciation.
(2:37:04) They have given up so much to be here once they believe they believe fully with their whole hearts and souls like children. Um not only did his response differ from person to person but it varied over time for each individual as well. It was as if each time you came before uh Maharaji were the first time and if the same conversation happened again and again which was often the case it was because the devote remained caught in the same place visit after visit but each time the devote would let go of the aspect of his thinking and behavior in which he or
(2:37:45) she was stuck then he or she would find a whole new Maharaji. One of Maharaji's favorite styles of dealing with devotees especially the Indians was abuse and he was a master of it. Most of the westerners did not understand Hindi well enough to appreciate the peppery language Maharaji used uh and uh most of uh of the translators took it upon themselves to to clean up his language for him.
(2:38:13) The Indians had become accustomed to his way of talking and actually interpreted it as a a form of endearment. Maharaji always hit the people he liked. And if he called you names like saying you were wicked or depraved, you knew he liked you. He he'd scold people uh the touful uh troublemakers uh telling them they danced naked uh drank too much were rowdies or sharabis uh winos a relative used to give me trouble all the time but I would say nothing troubled I I went to Maharaji and he knew right away saying that this man was bothering
(2:38:52) me he said it is good if somebody scolds you uh good in a spiritual way also uh a a person uh progresses if if someone challenges him uh don't be worried a day will come when this man will come and bow his head before you uh one day it happened he came to me saying I made all these mistakes I gave you unnecessary troubles besides the scolding there was a great deal of teasing and chiding dada Dada has his god today.
(2:39:27) Tea and cigarettes said Maharaji to Dada who only laughed. Dada used a corner of his own doti to wipe Maharaji's mouth. Someone criticized Dada and said he should not do this. Then a woman brought milk and there were a few drops around Maharaji's mouth after he drank. Maharaji turned to Dada and asked why why are you leaving this? and grabbed Dada's Dodie himself to wipe his mouth in front of everyone.
(2:39:58) One woman laughingly uh remembered the intimate friendship she had with Maharaji. She told how he loved to tease and pull people's legs. She described how he would play in this way with the westerners before a large group of Indians. He would ask them some questions and they would give some reply.
(2:40:20) Then Maharaji would turn to the woman and wink saying in this way, see how naive these people are. They don't know anything. And the westerners would be taking everything he said as as deep mysterious truth while he laughed at their simple innocence. And a family came for the daron of Maharaji. They had bought a box of sweets for him in Ninal.
(2:40:43) And during the drive to Khi, they began saying to each other how much they would like to sample a suite or two. Finally, they did so and then rearranged what was left so it would not appear that one was missing before the box was presented to Maharaji. Immediately, Maharaji recoiled and refused even to touch the box.
(2:41:09) Take it away. Take it away. It is contaminated. Throw it out. Let the dogs eat it. No, the dogs wouldn't even touch this. It is polluted. Throw it out. There was a sweets maker who used to come to Maharaji full of devotion and and uh bring many sweets for all. Whenever he visited, Maharaji praised him and and rewarded him.
(2:41:29) And after some time, he began to become inflated with pride and selfimportance. One day in particular after an absence of some time he brought a prasad uh small box of sweets half the size of what people usually bring and this from a sweets maker. Maharaji looked at him a scance uh emptied out uh the sweets and uh gave the small box to uh a devote nearby and said don't give him a big box of purists here.
(2:42:05) Put some purists in this instead. would you like to drink this water? Maharaji asked me um it was unclean and and from a Muslim source. He knew I was a Brahman and uh would not drink it and he never forced me against my nature. Often he would say to people offer that to s knowing I would not take it then Maharaji would say no don't give it to him he won't take it.
(2:42:31) I had been in Bombay on a on a religious pilgrimage where I stayed with a family in their home. Um the the head of the family had to take a drink of alcohol every evening for his heart condition. He he offered me some and I ended up getting quite drunk on scotch. And later when I returned to Maharaji, he was talking to me about uh a sadhu who had gone to America.
(2:42:57) Maharaji asked what what do they feed him in America? Said I don't know Maharaji but I'm sure it's very pure food. They feed him milk said Maharaji. That's good. Do you know what they put in the milk? No. He leaned forward and and said to me in a mock conspiratorial voice liquor. No. Yes. Oh no, I exclaimed as though he had just described the most horrendous breach of behavior.
(2:43:26) To which Maharaji replied, "Oh yes." and looked at me significantly. I broke up. He had just nailed me to the wall says uh RD. One of the beauties of the relationships between the scolding chiding Maharaji and uh and the devotees was that many of them weren't afraid to sort of fight back and he seemed especially to enjoy those who stood up to him.
(2:43:52) I was able to speak in this uh uh direct way because knowing him since I was six, I never reflected about the respectable way to talk with him. There was no feeling of bigness or elderness um between us. Uh once for example he was just pulling on my nose and I said to him don't do that. If you can make it longer then you can do it otherwise don't touch my nose.
(2:44:13) uh Maharaji said okay I won't touch it but I can bless you on the top of your head I said to him that whatever he did with me he must do in the right way so he patted me on the head this was the way I could talk to him this is what I am missing these days uh since he left his body the last time I saw Maharaji was in Vindaban uh we had uh traveled uh since early morning to get there and arrived shortly before noon, but he didn't come out of his room until after 3:00 in the afternoon.
(2:44:54) When he emerged, he immediately began yelling at me, telling me to go away, saying that he didn't want to see my face. Jiao, go. I yelled right back at him, asking what had I done to him. I had traveled all morning and waited all day to see him. And this was his greeting. No, I said, I won't go. He kept on yelling and finally called the chocolar to throw me out.
(2:45:23) The chocolar came, handsfolded, speaking politely but persistently. I yelled at Maharaji, just let me see how this man will touch me, how he will throw me out. I won't go, you know. Finally, Maharaji called me to him. He patted me on the head and said a few mantras just as he had done the first time I saw him.
(2:45:42) Now he was smiling so beautifully. He told me that his uh shocki uh spiritual energy would always be with me and that now I should go. By then I was filled by him and I said that he didn't have to tell me to go. I was leaving on my own now because I had received his daron. My mother is a great devotey of Maharaji and she even rebuked Maharaji when she thought it proper.
(2:46:03) Maharaji said of her, "See, she can do this. Only people with a pure heart can do such things." Then again, sometimes Maharaji rebuked her for coming. Oh, why have you come? You should go home. You've come without the permission of your son. I never knew who Maharaji was. Once when I wouldn't leave, Maharaji said, "Uh, you have eaten my brain.
(2:46:23) Please go from here." And Maharaji would insult me. Go away. I won't talk to you. As I would reply, I'm I won't go until my work is done. I didn't want to go uh to uh Madras with Maharaji. Uh he asked me to go but I had no clothing. Uh Maharaji said uh he was going and I said I would only go to the station and say goodbye.
(2:46:45) So I went inside his railroad coach because I I wanted to the wanted to pranom but he just wouldn't talk to me. He turned away and wouldn't even look at me. I wouldn't get off and after the train started Maharaji began laughing. Then I had to go with him you know in those days uh Maharaji uh never stayed too long in in one place and seldom more than two or three days um uh so I wasn't able to get his daran more than a few times then I left Kpur for Kolkata for 20 years where I was very busy and had no connection with Maharaji and when I
(2:47:21) returned to Kpur I remembered Maharaji wondering where he was and growing annoyed at myself for not seeking him you know and I skipped my meals for two months my wife asked me why I was angry uh why uh I wouldn't eat grains but I never told her the reason I was deeply annoyed with myself and once in a while alahabad a man suggested that I have the daran of a very good saint without knowing the saint's name I was taken to dada's house and Maharaji saw me and said why have you not eaten your meals for two months
(2:47:57) I replied why not why have you not given me darian I may be mad but you shouldn't be mad. And like a child I spoke very rudely to him and someone asked me are you are you going to have a fight with Maharaji? I said yes of course why shouldn't I fight? He is like my father and I his son.
(2:48:14) Why shouldn't we fight? Don't interfere. Maharaji said please don't interfere. He is my very old devote. And the people went away. And Maharaji turned to me and said why now go home. I will come to your house uh tomorrow morning and I'll take my meal there. I said, 'All right. Uh, all right. We when you take your meal at my place, uh, only then will I start taking grains.
(2:48:39) Uh, if you don't come, I will not. Maharaji said, "Come, come tomorrow." I said, "Uh, no, Maharaji. I have no reliance on your words. You tell me to come for you. uh you know tomorrow uh you but you you may you may not be here then um then then what will my position be I won't go I'll sleep tonight uh here on the veranda or on the grass >> Maharaji said no there's no place for you to sleep here I said it doesn't matter Maharaji I'll sleep outside the gate on the public road with one or two bricks uh for a pillow then in the
(2:49:19) morning I'll catch hold of you. Maharaji said, "Oh no, you must rely on me. I will definitely go with you. You go." Uh, Maharaji insisted, giving me his firm word. He then sent someone after me to drive me home. This man asked me to wait for half an hour. I sat down. Several people who had overheard my discussion with Maharaji told me that Maharaji often gives a blank check that is never cashed. He may or may not come.
(2:49:48) I told them that I would come the following morning and if Maharaji didn't come with me, I would take the oath that I would not even drink water until he came. As I was saying this, Maharaji immediately came from inside. Wait, wait. I'll go with you just now. We climbed into uh into um two cars and drove to my house.
(2:50:12) Um uh arriving at about 11 at night. No fresh food was available but Maharaji ate of the leftovers from dinner taking a little of whatever was offered. He said I I've taken now you eat start eating grains and don't fast. Then he left. This is the story of Maharaji's blessing upon me. By and by it increased.
(2:50:40) Uh often the quality of the play between Maharaji and devotees was truly childlike. Maharaji would plead with me like a spoiled child. Oh ma please sing bajan devotional song. He would quote the song a well without water a cow without milk a temple without a lamp. So as a man without bhajan. It was the day of raandan the day of tying protection ribbons uh on the wrists of your brothers.
(2:51:06) Earlier I had bought ribbons for my brothers and for Maharaji as well. I left the ones for my brothers at home but had Maharajis in my purse. I'd never spent this day with Maharaji and I very much wanted to tie the ribbon around his wrist but I felt shy doing it in front of so many people. When we were alone for a moment he let me tie it on his wrist.
(2:51:31) Just then someone came into the room and Maharaji said to him very shyly, "Mother is tying the rababandan." Maharaji had been in his room all morning giving daran to many people. After many hours, Dada whispered to Maharaji as a father to a child, "Come Maharaji, you have been in here all morning and have never once gone to urinate.
(2:52:03) Maharaji put the blame squarely on on Dada's shoulders. It's all your fault. You didn't remind me. Maharaji once seemed to make a great effort to pick up a dead fly on a piece of paper. Finally, he held it out for Dada to take as Dada reached for it. The fly flew away and Maharaji said angrily, "I went to all that trouble and you let it go.
(2:52:24) " "Baba," said Dada. "It was it was in your hand, not mine." And Maharaji just laughed. My uh in 1968 at Kchi Maharaji would spend most of the day sitting on uh Dada's bed. He would say uh Dada keeps awake so I must stay up too. And at 3:00 in the morning he came to Dada's room knocking.
(2:52:47) You wake me so today I make you but it's 3:00 in the morning protested Dada. And I wake you at 3. Maharaji just laughed and came in. But once the ma came to Maharaji saying ma maharaji come take your bath now go away he replied I don't want to come k we'll go to vindaban maharaji was lying down sick with a cold Mrs. Sony who had never seen him lying sick like that rubbed his feet and said ah oh Maharaji your feet are so cold you know are they ma he was like a little child and it was a new moon which is auspicious to see so just as one would
(2:53:23) with a child she said maharaji come to the door and look at the new moon and you'll be better will I ma she helped him to the door coaxing him ma I don't see it there it is where ma finally oh I see it. And then she said, "You now you'll be all better tomorrow." She helped him back to bed and the next day he was better.
(2:53:46) One devote said that uh although she had a camera, she had never taken pictures of Maharaji. She would lend her camera to others. Uh one day it was loaded and in her possession. She was alone with Maharaji and decided to try to take pictures and he tried to pull my leg. You know, you know, Wafrina uh posing to this way and that turning his head to the to the right, the left, pretending to to meditate.
(2:54:15) It was such fun. She pointed out several photos of Maharaji now on the ashram walls which were taken at the time and only we were allowed to be with him at all times. I'd see while he was eating, bathing, or going to the latrine. And he was so delightful. Um, sometimes he was like a small child, like so playful and joyful.
(2:54:41) Sometimes he would seem so helpless. And a man would come to Kainchi dressed in his uh camouflage jungle clothes and tell Maharaji stories of his hunting exploits. Maharaji called the man hunter in English. The man once skillfully described crawling stealthily through the grass in search of a tiger, slowly parting the grass ahead of him as he crawled.
(2:55:04) As he related the incident, he acted out his part. All this time, Maharaji sat in seemingly wrapped attention with apprehension proper to the mood of the story. Then suddenly said the said the hunter, there wan there in front of me was a tiger. At this Maharaji leaped backward on his tucket just as a child would do. Maharaji was so gleeful at such a good story.
(2:55:28) Once when Westerners arrived, Maharaji yelled with childlike delight, "Here they come. They've come to see me." There's a long history of uh Maharaji's association with decoits or robbers to the extent that a person had a pure or spiritual spark. Maharaji would point to it and and fan it regardless of the person's social status.
(2:55:52) At the same time, um he he he uh did, you know, did did not condone uh thievery and he uh dealt harshly with it when it came to his attention. Besides meeting the lawless element of society in jails, uh which he often visited, he met them on the road in culverts. In his earlier days when he wandered the jungle, the huge ditches under the roads that were uh designed to hold the monsoon rain served well as shelter in the night.
(2:56:23) And here he found individuals who became in one way or another his devotees. And Maharaji slept in many culverts. Uh so did uh uh decoits. They would go in and um push aside the cobwebs and all. Uh there is one huge culvert near Mthura under a bridge where robbers go and await their prey. Maharaji would stay there and the dockits would say, "Baba, are we going to get any money tonight? You'd better say yes or we'll kill you.
(2:56:49) " Maharaji says that's why he knows all the bad guys. Uh that dites would get uh free education in Nanal. Uh the children would come to see Maharaji and Maharaji would say of their fathers, "Their hearts are pure sometimes." Um, someone showed Maharaji a picture of a dooty with rur uh sacred beads of Shiva.
(2:57:18) How sincere Maharaji commented say he did bad things but he was pure in his duty. And a policeman led uh a captive through town and was being very cruel to him. Maharaji said uh don't do that. Uh the policeman was very abusive to Maharaji but Maharaji replied you sorry you should be more kind you know you never know when you will be in the same position you know and the next day the policeman was arrested for bribery um and taken in chains through the town.
(2:57:45) Maharaji was visiting a jail during Ram Leela a festival during which the Ramayana is enacted daily and the inmates were acting out the Ramayana uh dressed in appropriate costumes. And the jail superintendent was was uh arrogantly telling Maharaji who uh was uh in prison for what and for how long. And even while the inmates were enacting characters from the Ramayana, the superintendent's old father came and uh Maharaji had him do arty to the fellow who was playing ram and also touch his feet. Uh this humbled the
(2:58:22) superintendent. uh a woman and her sister were taken by Maharaji uh to visit a juvenile jail in in Burlei. The convicts had constructed a disaraji to sit on but they were required to remain uh some distance from him. They sank curtain with folded hands. Maharaji gave some money to the superintendent for sweets for everyone but told him not to tell where the money had come from.
(2:58:51) And as they were leaving, they saw some young boys sitting in their cells. One of the women with Maharaji asked, "Maharaji, can't you do something for them?" And Maharaji was in tears. "Yeah, do you want to take that responsibility?" And once Maharaji was arrested as a loiterer and and put in jail three or four times during the night, he uh unlocked the cell to to go out and urinate uh much to the perturbation of the the jailer.
(2:59:18) And in the morning, the jailer told his superior of the trouble Maharaji had caused him. The superior realized who Maharaji was and apologized, brought him food and let him go. He became a great devote of Maharaji. Miracle of love. Chapter 3. Subtle is the path of love. Maharaji frequently used the expression central jail in reference to his body and to the ashams.
(2:59:47) Maharaji used this expression even before Jay became superintendent of police of the central jail. Maharaji used to visit an Anglo Indian devote who was in the Fatagar central jail. While visiting Jay's home, Maharaji would ask for prison food and they would serve him the prisoners fair. He would eat it then visit the prisoners.
(3:00:13) A few of these uh people uh who were uh from all walks of life uh even considered themselves devotees and Dada and and Gurudat Sharma uh were were with Maharaji in a jeep on their way to Bhumiad. And as they they drove up to the the temple, they saw some men apparently trying to break in. Maharaji grew very excited and said, "Uh, they're after Hanamanji. Let's go.
(3:00:39) Let's go." They sped down the road. Maharaji jumped out of the jeep, threw off his blanket, and took off down the road after them, running full speed. Dada and and Guru Dat Sharma tried to uh to keep up but kept getting in each other's way. And by the time they caught up with Maharaji, he was already returning.
(3:00:58) He was laughing and happy. I chased them, Dada. I scared them. I yelled so loud that they peed in their pants. I did good, Dada. Didn't I do good? Once an inspector who had been accused of taking a bribe, uh the central excise commissioner and Maharaji were sitting together. Maharaji asked the inspector, "You take bribes, don't you?" The man trembled and wept.
(3:01:24) Maharaji asked, you know, the commissioner, he will be thrown out and go to jail. The boss replied, I don't know. Uh Maharaji then said you know if he's thrown out his children and wife will die and the man was acquitted. Maharaji would get people to make confessions publicly and thereby clear their conscience and and then he would seek compassion for them.
(3:01:44) It was a hot summer night and Maharaji and some um devotees were were sitting outside on the lawn at De's house. Maharaji was sitting in the only chair. uh all the members of the top class gentry encircled him. I sat at a distance watching. Then two people came, one dressed in the in the traditional formal attire of an advocate and one in a doti uh both pranammed and took a seat beside me.
(3:02:14) But Maharaji ignored them and and talked to those in the circle. The two newcomers were uh very uh impatient and the advocate wanted to leave. I felt much trouble uh in them. For if you are before a saint, why run? The advocate pressed the man in white who stood up and got Maharaji's attention. He said he had a request. Maharaji said, Bar go on.
(3:02:38) Uh he he continued, "All right, my friend, the advocate is in great trouble." So Maharaji said to the advocate, "You are not an advocate, are you?" And he replied, "Sir, true, I am not." U Maharaji asked what he what is your trouble and the man couldn't answer but his friend in white said he was involved in murder uh did you not commit murder asked Maharaji no was not the murder arranged by you yes Maharaji looked as if he were uh uh viewing a slide before his eyes Maharaji said what kind what harm did he do you was he not
(3:03:12) a simple and honest man yes but he was a hurdle in my way Maharaji said he had three or four children it is a heinous this crime. Are you not sorry? Yes, you will not do it again in your life. No, now you can go. Maharaji said, you know, the man in the doti asked, will will he be acquitted? Maharaji said, uh, yes, he will be pardoned.
(3:03:37) Um, Maharaji said to the murderer, uh, think of the man's wife and helpless children. Who will look after them? The man was trembling. Look after the children, Maharaji continued. and help them and you will realize later what you have done. The judge for the case uh had already written a decision but late at night he got up and change the judgment to a quiddle.
(3:04:02) During Maharaji's absence a number of uh bags of uh cement were uh stolen from the uh Vindaban ashram. As soon as he returned he called for the gardener. How many bags of cement did you steal? No, Maharaji, I didn't take them. Uh, tell me, Maharaji continued, how much uh how much money did you get for them? Nothing.
(3:04:28) Maharaji stood up and slapped the gardener on the face so hard that he fell to the ground. Then Maharaji walked away, leaving him there. 5 minutes later, Maharaji inquired of others, "How is he now? Call him." The gardener again came before Maharaji, "Did you steal them? How many rupees?" And the gardener confessed and said that he received 250 rupees for the cement.
(3:04:51) Maharaji turned to the man in charge of the ashram accounts and uh said to him give him uh another 250 rupees and uh and to the gardener now go and the gardener was fired and sent away. Sometime later, he returned and uh touched Maharaji's feet and begged to have his old job back again. Maharaji said, "You've come back.
(3:05:19) This time, I'll put you in central jail." The gardener was sent uh sent to the Luckno temple where Mahotra, a retired prison official, was uh was the manager. A policeman and a dhoit were both visiting um uh Maharaji. Uh each was massaging a leg. Maharaji said to the DOI, "There is a bounty out for you and anyone who brings you in gets a reward.
(3:05:44) Isn't that true?" "I don't know, Maharaji." The decoy replied, "Um then Maharaji turned to the policeman. Do you recognize him?" "No, Maharaji." Such was his play. Subtle is the path of love. uh when Maharaji gave one American devote the name of Chaititanya Maha Prabu he told him that his name meant consciousness of God within the heart.
(3:06:11) Later Chaitana wrote a poem that delicately suggests the precious moments and feelings we um shared uh in Maharaji's uh presence. You move through woods before you reach the temple and cross a flowing stream. a gentle so gentle perhaps he's there perhaps not either way you're sure of sweets and uh other nourishment that that promises so much and like your dreams and not even sleep is required and all is provided free the only limitation is doubt nothing else for here there is no need of you are free to come and go free to see all that
(3:06:52) was once relation wander in a place beyond your expectations How can anyone describe what happened? I never asked any questions. Didn't relax. It's not as if I suddenly became a child. When others sang, I'd catch my hands and watch. And if you asked, I'd have to say nothing happened. Nothing. Nothing at all.
(3:07:18) I don't know how much was prepared. Before I came, he merely looked at me and like the wind was everywhere. Suddenly, everything he was the edge of cliffs bidding me to leap. The leap itself, it's river sound and rock space. Fear he was and longing, the hesitation, trust, the standing still. And no matter where I fall, he holds me.
(3:07:39) True, it is strange. And to to inhabit the earth so lightly to have one's proper name drop away like a leaf you hid behind, to have a new name tremble awkwardly over your lips, and to find the voice behind the lips suddenly singing. It's hard being dead at first when the world no longer seems strong enough to hold you and you long to know the time what day it is in his name.
(3:08:04) He is tender with you then and and all doors are are open to you. He lets you go on wishing your own wishes. Nothing is required. You are free to test your world like a broken toy against his playful emptiness. Perhaps this is all you need. A contrast with your world. some sweets, a place to be, a show to watch, enough to be no longer who you used to be. Enough.
(3:08:29) But subtle is the path of love. Uh no answers and no questions. Each day with him has its own momentum. The only thing missing is a beginning. And the change can be total here where love is stronger than electricity. And candles burn more slowly than the candles. You know, I here where days neither begin nor end. Quiet days, neither inside nor out, neither with others nor alone.
(3:08:56) So simple, so strange. Being free to go, you're drawn to stay. Still, he may not look at you for months, uh, never ask your name or offer another to you. Your anxious hands may never catch the fruit he throws so quickly without seeing you. His feet may seem too close to the earth for you to kiss. No matter.
(3:09:16) As you remain with him, you grow used to the stars and rise dark mornings so you can hurry to him. Those things that combine to distract you will vanish in your readiness to be always in his presence. The shame it evokes and the hope are the lovers you first spy on. He lets you watch them create each other while he just lives there in such sweetness.
(3:09:40) uh that their differences co-mingle in his light and soon their power over you flies like fruit from his open hands and they close forever and over what you thought you were here in this orchard of the heart. He feeds you all. You bring him, though you may never realize how. So simple, so strange, and still you think, "Have I tricked myself again? What do I want? And why? What keeps me here? Is this his so-called power? If only I could leave, I would.
(3:10:12) Perhaps I've strayed among the cliffs too long. Perhaps I'm lost. What's happened to my future? This isn't what I want. Or is it so simple, so strange?" He sat upon a wooden bed and looked unreal and far away. When I first saw him, I looked at him. He didn't look at me. I made no difference in his world. And everything was new to me then.
(3:10:30) Even his elbows made me laugh. And his loving eyes gazed openly into my hidden world, asking nothing, being all. Those were the graceful day. We did nothing at all. And he used to say, "We were good for nothing." But the the five-limmed yoga, eating, drinking, uh sleep, gossip, and moving about alone among friends.
(3:10:51) We ate with our hands and tossed our leaf plates in the river. How like himself he was opening doors, sitting where he sat, walking here and there, saying what he pleased, laughing when he laughed, and we laughed with him, letting all distinctions like the future which before had moved u so restlessly ahead conform to the folds of his blanket and so much is being with him, his presence being all.
(3:11:17) Don't throw anyone out of your heart. He said, you know, love people and and feed them. Uh, so simple, you know, so strange. He he let us walk with him and hold his hand and put flowers on our heads and pulled our beards and he'd send us away and call us back, married us and named our children. Uh, who could he be? Oh, what a funny old man.
(3:11:37) His clothes were falling off and we came to be here now. And he said, "Come back tomorrow." What is it that touches the purest secret in us? Lets us enter where all is distance. Is it truth so familiar it seems to live alone? Uh the tense urge that lovers are resplessly forever turning us toward love's beginnings to where we no longer are.
(3:12:03) Only absence left to remind us. Thoughts arise and pass away. There is nothing I can do and no thoughts, no deeds can save me. And I sing. I dance with hands held high in adoration. And I play my part. all other roles and being taken of the unseen and the seen. So it has been so it will be a trusting heart when it consumes all lies.
(3:12:25) Oh beloved, there are no distinctions. The whole universe is strung upon you. This garland I place at your feet. I let me give you flowers. My child, my lover, you cold old stone monkey man. There's nothing I can do to touch you. Still I will. A brother among brothers. Sister, father, friend, why pull your blanket from my hands? to help me is such a trifling matter.
(3:12:49) The pain is too much to bear, but I bear it. I bear all. There is nothing else. Let me give you flowers forever. Let my love be unfulfilled. Forever. Let me yearn for you. Can I ever forget that I never remember you? Subtle is the path of love. So simple, so strange. Faith, no fear. All the colorful melodrama that that transpired wherever Maharaji went.
(3:13:12) all the various ways the devotees uh thought of and reacted to Maharaji and his many faces in response. The anger and abuse, the chiding, um the you know the tenderness, you know, uh all of all of this filled the time and space when we were around him and yet you knew that this was a part but not the essence of the relationship.
(3:13:36) It was not acts or words or opinions but you know but something far more subtle that you know Maharaji was uh transmitting to us. It was deep within ourselves that Maharaji was gently transforming us and there was no aspect of life that was not touched by him. You know you could go to Maharaji filled with many problems. You'd sit with him a while and they would all be solved and he would create an entire situation just to teach you.
(3:14:05) He never gave uh lectures or taught from scriptures but he taught through incidents and situations. Maharaji guided us on all levels spiritual, mental and material. He gave instructions in how to raise children and in being a good marriage partner and in business. These were not specific rules or instructions.
(3:14:30) He guided by changing the heart. I was invited by a group of high-powered folks at Eselin to join them in studying with a Sufi teacher in South America. I was very uncertain about the whole matter. So, uh I wrote to uh KK in India and asked him to find out from Maharaji uh whether I should go to Chile for these studies.
(3:14:51) Then the answer came back from KK. Maharaji says that you can go and study with a Sufi saint if you desire. As I read the letter, something happened in my heart and I suddenly felt absolutely certain that I didn't want to go and so I didn't. On my next visit to India when discussing this letter with KK he told me when I asked Maharaji he said if he wishes let him go and then he said why would he want to go but then quickly he added don't write that last part in the letter RD it was at this deeper level that we felt uh Maharaji to be the
(3:15:30) shepherd and and ourselves to be a part of the flock um through this unspoken process We we developed faith where uh previously there had been fear and our faith was that in the midst of um uh the changing uncertainties of the universe if we kept Maharaji in our hearts if we just stayed uh under his blanket in trust then it would be all right.
(3:15:55) Devotees who had been with uh Maharaji for many years often reflected a fearlessness in the manner in which they lived as as the result of their faith in his protection. Some he specifically taught to be fearless. Maharaji once called me over and said Ram uh Ramdas um you are to fear nothing. is C uh R D um once when my finances were in disarray Maharaji came to my place and said I should not have anxiety I said to him I wasn't calling for any anxiety though I was indeed anxious no no you should not have any anxiety and it is
(3:16:37) strange I am still that same person but even in a crisis I feel it will be set right sooner or later Maharaji does it I have had no anxiety my wife says you are completely changed. Even serious matters you take lightly. He didn't say that he would do so but at that moment he took my anxiety.
(3:16:56) Maharaji had taken all my responsibilities on his shoulders. He told me don't be afraid of anything. No one can do anything against you. When he was physically before us we were not so courageous. But now I am more courageous day by day. Now his power is working. Now I see him in dreams but only for a moment.
(3:17:23) I have faith that he is working for his devotees. KK had much fear and uh suppression of the soul. Maharaji said you are afraid. You are so simple and they are clever and they fool you. You are afraid of brahinss but you will not be afraid of anybody. KK replied, "For this I want the grace of your blessing." Then Maharaji patted him on the back two or three times and after that everyone noticed a change in KK.
(3:17:48) One time I was reported to the officials for packing underweight fruit boxes. I was innocent but the charge had me worried. Maharaji chastised me. Coward, never be a coward. Be brave, coward. Why do you fear? Don't you know me? I am with you. Then he reminded me of how Ram protected his um devotees.
(3:18:08) uh he said that he too would always protect his devotees even if they committed hundreds of murders he would give them complete protection. There was no shortage of examples for those who needed them to demonstrate that faith in Maharaji was well placed. While I was staying in Kchi, I went to Maharaji and said now I have to go.
(3:18:29) It is my fruit season and I have to be there otherwise I will incur a great loss. I am a worldly man. you know, my fruit must be picked and sent off to um Bombay and and uh such places. Uh every day I remained in Kaichi. It was getting riper and would soon be too ripe to send away. Maharaji said no, you you will stay here.
(3:18:55) You will go tomorrow. Uh 15 days passed in this way. Then finally Maharaji uh said uh tomorrow I will send you be sure about it. Uh so the next day I came here and the fruit was all overripe. I thought well Maharaji has given me a loss. All the fruit was overripe and I could only send it off to the local markets at Kpur or Alahabad not to Bombay where we got better prices.
(3:19:18) And what happened there was a great slump in the market. those people who had uh sent their fruits to Bombay, Kolkata or Madras and couldn't even make up the freight charges and I who had sent my fruit to local markets got more than my expectations. I had been so very much annoyed with this Maharaji who had unnecessarily detained me in kchi who knows his works.
(3:19:44) The enemies of a certain family had for some reason surrounded the family's house and locked them inside for three days and nights. If they stayed inside any longer, they would starve. And if they went outside, they would be beaten by these wicked ones. While the family inside was discussing their dilemma, they heard some shouting at their door. Open up.
(3:20:09) Open up. Come out and fight. Are you cast or are you cowards? Come on. They peaked outside and saw Maharaji waving a stick and shouting. They all grabbed sticks and ran out to Maharaji. When the attackers saw the family armed with sticks and being led by this fat man, they ran away. Maharaji then said, "Uh, telephone soando and so and so.
(3:20:33) Tell them that I am here." Um, within half an hour, police generals and government ministers were sitting in the living room of the man's house. Thereafter, the attacks on the family ceased. A man's eight-month-old child was standing on a 30-foot balcony. A servant and the child's brother were there playing with a kite when the child fell to the marble floor 30 ft below.
(3:20:54) The mother tried to catch the child, but couldn't. The child didn't move, but still there seemed to be no broken bones. Suddenly, the child laughed, and the doctors could find nothing wrong at all and said that this was impossible. Some days later, Maharaji came to their house and said, "You were worried. You still didn't realize uh who you have on your shoulders protecting you.
(3:21:17) The baby didn't fall on the ground. It fell on my lap. While in Madras one day uh Maharaji uh said, "I want to show my eyes to a good doctor. Who is a good doctor here?" I told him that there was uh a specialist nearby. Maharaji said, "All right, I'll show my eyes to him." That evening I I uh found uh that this this uh doctor um was out of town.
(3:21:46) So I fixed an appointment with another specialist for 10:30 in the morning. When I explained the uh situation to Maharaji, he asked who the other doctor was. And when I told him his name, Maharaji said, "No, no, I want to see the first doctor, not this other one." Uh Maharaji told me to come to him after 3 days.
(3:22:05) This was a long time and I was impatient. After two days, the first doctor had returned. So I made an appointment for Maharaji. I went immediately to the Dharmashala hostel to tell him. But Maharaji's luggage was just being carried out. When I told him the doctor had come, he laughed and said, "Today I'm going to Ramshwaram.
(3:22:27) " He refused to let me accompany him. Nearly a month later on my way to Bombay uh I broke my spectacles and a specialist there made new spectacles for me but uh and within 5 minutes of putting them on I got a serious headache. The specialist checked everything and uh said you know they were all right but it would take a few days to to get used to them.
(3:22:51) I returned to Madras but I still couldn't put on you know those spectacles for more than a few moments. And um I decided to show them uh to a specialist in Madras and and wondered which one I should go to. Uh the first doctor or or the second. The second uh was very quick and always available while the first was uh very busy and one had to wait for for hours uh to see him and but I remembered what uh Maharaji had said.
(3:23:20) So I made an appointment with the first one. When I told my son, he asked uh to uh come along for for a checkup. The doctor tested my eyes and and found that the uh the new spectacles the Bombay doctor had given were the wrong prescription that was corrected. And when he examined my son's eyes, he found the cornea uh the cornea was torn u uh serious enough uh for an immediate operation.
(3:23:50) uh although he missed his final examinations at college, my son's eyes were saved. This is what Maharaji's leela play game of a month earlier had been about. A devote from Alahhabad said he had met Maharaji 40 years before. He was traveling at night and had become totally lost. Uh when he suddenly suddenly saw a cave with a light in it.
(3:24:11) As he approached the cave, he discovered Maharaji sitting there. uh Maharaji uh gave him food and after the meal said you are lost go in that direction. In about 15 paces the devotees suddenly saw the village but when he turned around um the cave and the terrain of the cave were no longer there. Maharaji often called uh one devote u a poor man uh to accompany him on long pilgrimages.
(3:24:42) The devote always agreed without a complaint although he often had to borrow money to finance these trips. Once Maharaji asked him to come to Badronath before leaving the man pointed to the small picture of Maharaji on their puja table and told his wife that if for any reason she wanted to communicate with him while he was gone, she should address herself to Maharaji's photo since the two would be together.
(3:25:07) A few days later, high in the Himalayas, Maharaji suddenly turned to this devote and said, "Why have you come here?" The devote replied that he had come at Maharaji's request. And Maharaji said, "At your home there is no dah, no flour, nothing. Your wife is very worried because there is nothing to eat and you are far away.
(3:25:27) You should have at least provided bread for them to eat." Uh, but Maharaji's presence had a a an intoxicating effect upon people. uh and their worries vanished and they felt that he was taking care of everything for for the best. Half an hour after he had uh bered the devote for leaving his wife without food, Maharaji shouted out, "Food has come. They have got food.
(3:25:51) " The Kashmir mother gave it to them. Don't worry. When he returned, the devote questioned his wife. She said that when the food had finally run out, she had gone to Maharaji's picture and told him that there was no more food in the house. Within a few minutes, a rich neighbor um who treated her like a daughter came to the house uh with bags of flour, rice, dah, and so forth.
(3:26:20) She went to the picture and thanked Maharaji once Maharaji saved me from a snake bite. Uh I was passing uh the winter in a tiny room in Haldwani where I was talking with someone when suddenly I left off in mid-sentence for no accountable reason. I turned around and looked into my room. It was very strange.
(3:26:41) A snake was crawling into the room and once inside it crawled under a gunny sack. I thought why was it that I turned around just then? It must be Neim Karoli Baba's doing even though physically Maharaji was hundreds of miles away. I also thought that it must be a poisonous snake. Otherwise, there would be no reason for Maharaji to show it to me.
(3:26:58) I very carefully put the snake in a canister and released it outside. About 5 years later, I was complaining to Maharaji that he wasn't helping me in any way or protecting me. I was having too many troubles. Maharaji said, "Why? I saved your life once. I saved you from the snake." I had known in my mind that he had done it.
(3:27:18) Such things do not happen by accident. One dark rainy night uh at Kchi, Maharaji uh woke up several devotees and said there was a jeep half a mile up the road that was stuck. He said to take tea to the passengers. The devotees went running because he told them to hurry. Maharaji uh wanted them to go up where there was no path and they found the jeep with four women and a man stranded there with no blankets.
(3:27:46) Maharaji sent even more devotees up to the jeep saying to them that tea will be cold. Bring them more tea. When the people were finally brought to the temple, Maharaji said, "I used to visit the home uh of these women 30 years ago and they gave me a blanket and uh and were kind." He gave them blankets and they remembered him from before.
(3:28:11) And normally when Maharaji was away, he would send his blessings from where he was. But while I was away for 6 months in 1967, he visited my family in Kpur practically once a month. While I was in Germany, my colleague uh and uh I were thinking of buying a car for the time and selling it later. We'd already decided on the car, which we were determined to buy on Sunday.
(3:28:39) On Saturday, we didn't normally get any mail delivery, but this day before the sale, a letter came from my wife. She said, um, Maharaji has come today. He says that you are going to buy a car and that you shouldn't do that. If you have any such intentions, Maharaji's orders are to give them up.
(3:29:03) I told my friend that the deal was off and that if he bought it, I wouldn't travel with him. And how did Maharaji do this? He came one morning to to visit my family and he asked my wife to write that letter. He said he'll do something foolish. Forbid him. He went away and after two hours came again and asked her if she had written the letter. She hadn't.
(3:29:21) He said well I'm going to stay here until you write that letter and post it. Otherwise it will be too late. Only when it was posted did Maharaji leave. It could have reached us on Monday but it came in time. That was the first and last time the mail ever came on Saturday afternoon. That was his grace. But why did he bother to come all the way from Kchi to tell my wife if he wanted there were enough people right in front of him to bother with? Why did he think of me? Once in Haroir, um, a man was bathing in the river and lost his
(3:29:57) footing. The man was tossed about and and carried in a whirlpool like a log. He was quite a bit older than his wife. He he was 52 and she 15 when they married you know who was much devoted to him. After taking Maharaji's name she jumped into the river and pulled her husband ashore.
(3:30:16) When they went to the place where Maharaji was uh people there told them that Maharaji had been impossible and very abusive and would not let anyone near him. The woman went up and gently tapped at the door. He sweetly asked her in and inquired after her nose ring which she had lost in the river. The loss of a nose ring is a bad omen for an Indian woman.
(3:30:46) Uh suggesting her husband's death uh when her husband came along uh Maharaji said uh you were going down the river like a piece of wood being whirled around. Apparently the changes in Maharaji's behavior, the abusiveness had been involved in saving the man. Maharaji takes care of all his devotees in so many ways.
(3:31:09) You know, one day a devote uh was on his way to uh Kchi and on route uh stopped at a roadside food stand and ate some fried pakoras. Uh when he arrived at Kchi, uh the first thing Maharaji said was, "Do you eat pakoras? You've been eating those things for a long time now. Uh why do you eat them? You'll ruin your stomach. From that day onward, this devote never again ate pakoras from the bizaar.
(3:31:41) A woman devote was sitting in the corner of the room near a strange man. Maharaji said to her, "Come sit here. The bad karma of other people can affect a person." A doctor from Bombay who attended many VIPs including Nou uh was a somewhat stiff person though he often gave massages to others and uh another devote was present when the doctor was visiting Maharaji uh and Maharaji saw saw the he saw the doctor coming and went into another room he said I I'll not see him and then from the other room Maharaji yelled yach uh you couldn't save Nou uh
(3:32:19) what's wrong and the doctor said when I gave him the massage he got better but then his nerves got very bad the other devote asked the doctor if he had traveled outside India yes for 12 months attending VIPs and she asked him how he knew Maharaji and he replied uh I never believed in saints in the independence movement of 1942 I was a revolutionary and uh there were orders out to shoot me I was in K prag near Badronath I I was at a small dharmachala and while I was uh bathing Maharaji was up braiding a swami nearby. As I passed by Maharaji
(3:32:56) caught hold of me and said uh you are hungry go into that room and in the room there were uh two leaf plates of fresh purus and potatoes which Maharaji told me to eat. And when I finished all I could eat. Maharaji said take more with you. Now run within an hour the police will be here.
(3:33:14) Go to Tibet but don't go by this route go by that one. But I had some some doubts about Maharaji and uh left a fray a friend behind to to wait and see. Um in an hour uh a a district uh superintendent of police who knew Maharaji came with a search party inquiring for the doctor. Maharaji asked him who would come at this hour.
(3:33:38) And as as they started to proceed toward Tibet, Maharaji warned them not to. This is the season for avalanches and if you go on an avalanche will kill you. Go back. So they went back. One day when Maharaji was at a village near Nib Kari, a woman came to get water uh from the well. Maharaji laughed when a devote asked why he laughed.
(3:34:04) He said that the woman and her husband lived in a village three miles away and in 6 hours her husband was going to die from seeking this same water that she was fetching. He is going to become thirsty and he is going to go to the water jug and be bitten by a cobra. But Maharaji added if the devity there the devity wanted to he might be able to save him.
(3:34:30) The devity immediately sent uh two or three men who ran all the way and stopped the man just as he was going for the water. Indeed, there was a cobra there and the man was saved. A forester from Agra came to Kchi on on route to Kolkata and Maharaji told him don't leave today. But Maharaji, I have to go. I have an interview.
(3:34:53) Maharaji insisted. The forester was sulky but didn't go. The next day in the papers he read that India's worst train accident in living memory had involved the train he would have been on. In 1943 uh Maharaji came to uh Fadagar where there was an old couple uh whose son was away fighting in Burma.
(3:35:21) And when Maharaji came to their house, they gave the the little they had to Maharaji. They had only um two uh cotss. Um Maharaji said, "I'll sleep now." Uh and they gave him one of the cotss and a blanket. Um the old couple stayed up the whole night watching Maharaji. He was groaning and moving in the bed until 4 in the morning. At 4:30, Maharaji became uh quiet.
(3:35:48) Uh then he took the bed sheet and wrapped something in it. He told the old man, "It's very heavy. Don't try to see what's in it. You should throw it into the Ganga where it is deep. No one should see you or you'll be arrested." As he was taking it to the Ganga, he felt it and it was full of bullets. When he returned, the old man was told by Maharaji, "Don't worry, your son is coming in a month.
(3:36:15) When when the sun came some weeks later, he said he had almost died. His company had been ambushed by the enemy and by chance he he he had fallen into a ditch. All night bullets were flying left and right. At 4 in the morning, uh the the Japanese saw that they had killed everyone and uh and so they retreated.
(3:36:38) At 4:30, the Indian troops came. The sun was the only survivor. It was the same night Maharaji had visited the parents that this ambush occurred. And one day Maharaji asked to to be driven from um the plains to uh to the distant mountain town of uh Bimal. He went straight to a devotees house and told uh the people there to go to the old pilgrimage rest cabin at the Shiva temple and bring bring back whomever was staying there.
(3:37:11) For years, no one had stayed in the dilapidated rest cabin. So the devotees thought it very unusual when they found one of the doors locked from within. They knocked and shouted, but no one answered. Then they returned and reported to Maharaji. Maharaji left that house and went to see another uh devote uh where he again sent people to uh the rest house uh with instructions not to return without its occupant.
(3:37:44) They caused a great commotion at the door until finally an old man opened the window. He tried to send the devotees away but they persisted until finally the man and his wife were taken to Maharaji. Immediately Maharaji started shouting do you think you can threaten God by starving yourselves he won't let his devotees die so easily take prasad he called for purists and sweets but the man refused them Maharaji uh insisted and uh and finally they both ate and the couple had uh come from South India on uh a pilgrimage to Badranath and other holy
(3:38:26) places. They were from a very rich family but had decided to leave home and family behind to devote their remaining years to prayer. They had resolved always to pay their own way and never to beg. As they were returning from Badronoth, all their money and possessions had been stolen. They had only enough money for for busfair to Biml where they found the deserted rest cabin.
(3:38:57) They resolved uh to uh stay there and die since uh that seemed to be the Lord's will. Uh they had been locked inside without food for 3 days before Maharaji forced them out. And Maharaji insisted that they accept money for their trip back to Madras. They said that they would not beg. Maharaji said they were not begging and they could mail the money back when they reached home.
(3:39:21) They accepted the money and were sent off. Oh Kabir, why be afraid of anyone when the Lord himself protects you? What does it matter if a thousand dogs bark fiercely when you are seated on an elephant? Key to the mind. Stories showing Maharaji's deep concern for his uh devotees and his protectiveness of them also suggest awesome powers of mind.
(3:39:48) It seemed as if he knew everything about his uh devotees whether we were uh near to him or uh far away. It is little wonder that we could become fearless knowing that he was literally watching over us. I was with Maharaji during the time of the partition and there were so many refugees from Pakistan that there was hardly a space to place a foot.
(3:40:14) Maharaji and I were picking our way through the crowd and one woman came and bowed before him and requested that he come and bless a newborn baby some distance from where we were. Maharaji agreed. Further along, the same woman was complaining bitterly of the destruction of Lahore. Maharaji immediately chastised her with a rhetorical question.
(3:40:38) Didn't that saint in Lahore tell you six months ago that this was going to happen? Sometimes when many people came to him, he would relate each person's personal history, including what their forefathers uh had done as if he had been well acquainted with that person for a very long time. Since Maharaji would sometimes not let us uh westerners come to him until the afternoon.
(3:41:06) One morning a group of us went to visit the tiny ashram that at one time had been the residence of another great saint of that area some Maharaj and it was a good visit. Um on route back in the for noon we encountered a hill that um the VW bus just couldn't climb with all of us in it.
(3:41:26) So we got out to push or that is all of us except for the two young women in the party who didn't bother to get out. We we easily got the bus uh easily the bus up the hill but uh I was wrankled uh uh by the fact that the the young women had not helped us. I was too well bred to say anything inside though I I was angry and remained silent uh for the remainder of the drive um to to the temple.
(3:41:55) Um as we entered uh the temple, Maharaji said Ramdas is angry but I had hidden it well and everyone disagreed with Maharaji and said that on the contrary I had been very pleasant but Maharaji was to was see it was not it uh was was not to be deterred and um no uh he said Romer uh Ramdas is angry because the young women wouldn't get out and help push um RD once when Maharaji was sitting you know in a room with no windows he said uh oh so and so is coming just now uh within a few moments this person entered the room Maharaji told me all sorts of things he said you
(3:42:35) you have been playing hockey with the mother he was referring to the fact that I had been at Shriarindo's ashram for a while and had played hockey with the mother in the 1940s a uh Muslim ICS Indian civil service officer's son who was studying ing in England had had a heart attack and his mother had gone to see her son there.
(3:42:59) Maharaji was visiting the house of a a of a devote uh who never asked anything of of Maharaji but in this case he asked Maharaji about the boy as they were family friends and before he could uh put the question to to Maharaji Maharaji said what he's asking about that boy who who who who is studying in England what what do you want to ask the mother has gone there you've seen her off at the at the airport.
(3:43:31) Uh as soon as she uh arrived, the sun began to improve. Then Maharaji got up and said, "Let's go. This is how the mind travels and and it was confirmed later that the boy did begin to improve once his mother arrived. Maharaji asked a man if if he'd ever before seen such a place as as Kaini, you know, so beautiful and and peaceful and and ideal for meditation um with its mountains and and and river and and forests and and the swami replied that he'd once seen a serptor uh sir sim a similar place in Candi uh Sri Lanka uh Maharaji uh who had never been there uh surprised
(3:44:19) the man by describing that place down to the smallest details. Our eldest daughter had appeared uh in some uh competitive uh examinations for employment in the government of India. After the exams we went to see Maharaji in Vindaban as we were proning to him Maharaji addressed her and said ah you have spoiled five of your exam papers.
(3:44:41) She said yes. Maharaji said don't worry you don't worry you'll still come out successful and you'll get your job. and she did. Our family is large but not rich. Yet with his blessings, we've been, you know, carrying on quite well. I got my job in the bank by his grace. After I had my job interview, I went to see him.
(3:45:00) He told me all the questions I was asked and said, "You'll be selected." Um, in fact, I had, you know, I had come out at the top of the list. Maharaji turned to me uh one day and said uh do you still send money to you know that Bernare's uh pundit religious scholar? Yes Maharaji I do I replied. Maharaji had never met this pundit nor had I ever told Maharaji that I regularly sent money to him.
(3:45:31) This pundit was a recer of the Ramayana and he lived off donations from his listeners. Maharaji knew all things and he would look after people he'd never met. a devote who worked for the railroad brought a couple for the first time uh to see Maharaji. The wife was told by Maharaji in in private uh you have been supporting a poor 10-year-old child.
(3:45:53) That is very fine of you to do. When she came out of the room, she was quite astounded because no one, not even her husband, knew that she was supporting the child. Before we eat, we offer our food to a picture of Maharaji. Once my wife forgot to put salt in the curry. I forgot but Maharaji will forgive me.
(3:46:20) 15 days later, Maharaji came and my wife sat at his feet and the first thing he said to her was, "You gave me curry without salt." And one of the young men from a family in Kpur uh was uh in in the military fighting in the in the China war. The report came that he had died and the brother came to tell Maharaji. Maharaji said no he has not died.
(3:46:44) No one believed Maharaji uh and uh and the widow married again in 6 months and the file of the war department was closed. After some time the man returned in 1968 after uh I had been at the temple for some time I I had to go to Delhi. At that time I was trying to be a very pure yogi in Delhi. I did all my business with dispatch and then had time for a vegetarian lunch before returning to the mountains.
(3:47:09) At the end of the meal I was served two biscuits with tea. I didn't think they were proper yogi food but they were cream filled and I couldn't resist. But since I was barefoot and in my Ulfi sadhu clothing and was being treated as a sadhu even in the restaurant, I ate the cookies surreptitiously. Upon my return to Maharaji, his first words were, "How did you like the biscuits, RD?" since I was one of the few uh westerners who spoke uh Hindi, he'd talk with me and sometimes we'd gossip and he'd pull one or two dazzlers and he'd
(3:47:48) mentioned somebody that you know I'd never mentioned to anybody else and say like what was the story uh with the with this person like I'd do a double take and and he'd laugh and giggle and then you know look at me and and smile. Much of the time when I was sitting with Maharaji I would find myself turning into a giggling idiot.
(3:48:10) I'd roll around and uh sometimes virtually fall over and uh you know he'd give me a great big hug. Yeah, the guru must know everything about you. I know everything. Why do I know? Not only was Maharaji watching over us, but he could easily see within us as well. And that was quite a different matter. And to realize that um someone has access to the secret compartments of your mind is unnerving.
(3:48:39) It gives rise to a type of intimacy that is unparalleled in most of our human relationships. Those of us who are close to another person often sense what the other is feeling. When we have come to know the way another thinks, we may even be able to guess what is on his or her mind. But there are so many tiny subtle thoughts and many of these are censored almost the moment they come to mind because they would be socially unacceptable or even unacceptable to our own conscious image of ourselves.
(3:49:10) To realize that someone has access even to these thoughts immediately puts you at an extraordinary disadvantage as if your opponent had broken your code. You are so vulnerable. But of course it is also incredibly exciting to meet another consciousness in such an intimate way. And with Maharaji added to this was a quality of unconditional love coming from the other as if he were saying to you I know all about you and I love you.
(3:49:40) The most precious things about Maharaji cannot be described in stories like massaging his legs. And if I had a useless thought as I was massaging him, he'd pull my hand away and then when I would reenter my mind, he'd um put my hand back in those subtle ways. He would teach you.
(3:50:03) And the first time my wife met Maharaji was among a crowd at the India hotel. Maharaji had not spoken to her. And after some time she was thinking that she should be home uh preparing tea for me which she did every gave every day at that time. Uh Maharaji was distributing sweets and suddenly he turned to her and said uh you go home now your husband is waiting for his tea.
(3:50:30) When I first was new to him, he had just had his head shaved and I thought how I'd love to kiss him right on the top of his head. And one Daron shortly after that he took me into his room giggling and laughing. He sort of doubled over and in so doing presented me the top of his head. There was nothing I could do but to kiss it and I recognized at that moment that my desire was being granted.
(3:50:55) I always talked to Maharaji in my mind when he was embarrassing somebody. I'd think, "Oh, Maharaji, don't do that." Then he'd look at me and and respond. So, I knew he was hearing me. Chapter 4. God does everything. One day, when I was sitting by the tucket waiting for him to come out and give Daron, the thought occurred to me that I would like to have my heart beat at exactly the same rate and same time as Maharaj's.
(3:51:21) Just as soon as I thought that, there was a great commotion from within the building, a slamming of doors, and suddenly Maharaji burst through the outer doors onto the porch. He briskly took his seat on the tucket and sat directly in front of me, his chest only some 6 in away. I could feel my heartbeat and remained in constant consciousness of my heart beating in tune with his for some time.
(3:51:44) Although Maharaji was lively and talked with many people, he kept his body uh turned uh and in this uh uh in this this position close to me. Then my mind uh began to wander and uh immediately Maharaji flipped around so that he was sitting on the far side of the tucket facing away from me. Uh stunned the thought flashed through my mind.
(3:52:07) Maharaji if if that really happened look at me quick as a flash he glanced directly at me and then away once more he didn't look at me again for the rest of the daron where Maharaji played with my desires so subtly I I might spy an apple on his bench before he would appear for Daron and I'd think how much I'd like that apple and and how long it was since I'd had an apple.
(3:52:34) Then Maharaji would appear and he'd seem to make a point of throwing me that very apple. But of course, he would be uh throwing other devotees other pieces of fruit, so you could never be sure. And I'd always just think uh uh isn't that interesting? Once when I was uh living high up in the hills behind the temple, um where it was very cold, um I heard from some newly arrived devotees about a space blanket used by the astronauts that was very warm and weighed only a few ounces.
(3:53:03) you know in my cold hut. I kept I kept thinking about how nice it would be to have such a blanket. And the next morning I came to the temple and and was having tea with another devote uh who was cleaning out uh uh his rucks sack and and he threw this thing at me and said here why don't you take this? It's a space blanket that I never use.
(3:53:26) When such things kept happening to me, I thought that if Maharaji was going to gratify all my desires, I ought to start asking for you know more important things like a little compassion in uh burlli Maharaji said to come to the station in the morning to meet him. There was a large flood and I thought Maharaji won't come but I'll go to the station anyway.
(3:53:51) Maharaji came however and the first thing he said was you were thinking I couldn't come because of the flood. If I would think to myself that that a fellow a fellow devote was was less of a saint than than he thought himself to be Maharaji would immediately ask me so and so isn't as much of a saint as he thinks he is he? I told my wife I didn't want to go see Maharaji because he'd only say to take Prasad and go, but she insisted.
(3:54:20) That day he didn't ask me to go. I hadn't taken food, but he let me stay until 11 at night. As everyone stood up, uh Maharaji said, "From today, don't tell anyone I don't allow you to sit here." I was sitting there praying for an opportunity to get away from the satsang to do some sadhana. spiritual practice when Maharaji said um go to Nepal and it turned out that my visa had expired the day before sometimes you'd be sitting behind him and he would appear unconcerned with you.
(3:54:59) Then some thought would arise in your mind and he would answer you directly or make some gesture or say something to someone else that would be an answer to the thought. Sometimes he would be in the room with you talking seriously and in mid-sentence he'd turn around, open the window and begin to talk to another person outside about what was on his mind.
(3:55:20) Maharaji could give you a whole teaching just in a glance. You'd be sitting there going through some incredible suffering in your mind. He would just look at you and your whole being would change. I don't know if he was actually doing anything or whether it was just the way he looked at you, but you knew that the universe was right and that you were taken care of.
(3:55:41) At other times, you'd be going off on some mental tangent when with with just the slightest glance from Maharaj, you would be totally demolished. A husband and wife tell the following story. husband. Uh I was working in Kolkata in the smallox program and it was one of those times when I was having a tiny pang of remorse and I went through the the streets of Kolkata and I saw all the beggars uh thought about their suffering and as usual got into uh my argument with with God about suffering. It's really not necessary.
(3:56:13) I kept telling him at that time I was reading the Fedo Plato's account of Socrates death which ends with Socrates and his disciples discussing whether Socrates should postpone taking the hemlock and Socrates says to bring it in because it doesn't make any difference. The disciples are all crying and he tells them listen there are only two possibilities either there is something after death or there is nothing after death.
(3:56:38) If there is nothing after death then thank God at last I'm going to get a good sleep. And if there is something after death, then at least I have the chance of having a good conversation. Then they brought the hemlock which he took and died. So I reason that if Socrates in all his wisdom at the time of his death didn't know the nature of life, then I really shouldn't feel so despondent that a simple soul like me didn't understand.
(3:57:07) Thus I was consoled a wife. At the same time my husband was in Kolkata. I was in Delhi looking for Maharaji. We finally found him at the at the home of the barmans in New Delhi. This was his last visit to New Delhi before he left his his body. We we were sitting with him in the afternoon on the same day he had arrived.
(3:57:30) Maharaji looked at me and simply said Socrates. Later on that same day, he looked at me again and said Socrates. some you know I discussed this with the devotees accompanying me trying to figure out what he had meant uh perhaps it was that I looked or thought like Socrates but we couldn't quite figure it out uh my husband came home from Kolkata and after telling him that uh I had seen Maharaji I said you know he said the strangest thing to me and we still don't understand what it means he looked at me and called me Socrates
(3:58:05) what do you think it means. Then my husband told me what uh what he'd been thinking and and we we figured out that it was exactly the same day my husband just described and Dada said uh mind readading and telling the future and knowing who was coming and so forth. Such things were always happening around Maharaji.
(3:58:25) There was nothing special about them. This awesome capability of knowing the human mind uh allowed Maharaji not only to know the thoughts and acts of others but to be able to enter into the mind of another person and bring about change from within. Maharaji once told me uh the key to the mind is in my hand and I can turn it in any direction.
(3:58:48) uh during the English occupation an Englishman had reserved a first class compartment on the train and when he went to his compartment he found Maharaji there. He went to the conductor and said that there was a very disreputable uh looking uh man in his uh compartment and would they please uh remove him? Uh you know the conductor came and looked and said I'm sorry that's a saint and I can't remove him.
(3:59:17) So the Englishman, you know, now even more upset, sent for the chief conductor. When the chief conductor came, he said the same thing. So at the next major station, the Englishman decided to to remove the man himself. But the minute he went into the compartment, he forgot his anger and mission and sat quietly and peacefully for the rest of the trip.
(3:59:36) Finally, Maharaji said, "This is my village." And the train was stopped and he and his party got off. I think it was he who made me go with him. I used to go with him but I never wanted to go. Uh the moss as they were called were women whose greatest pleasure was in taking care of Maharaji. Once a doctor had said uh Maharaji should take certain pills at 10 in the morning.
(4:00:03) On this particular morning the moss brought the uh medicine uh 10 minutes late. Maharaji said fiercely, "If you people don't take better care of me, I'll turn your minds against me." Which was the worst threat he could make. I was the uh the station master at um Mount Abu and Maharaji had promised to come there sometime and when I was off duty, it was my policy never to go into the station.
(4:00:34) But this one day, I'd been in a long conversation with a friend, and as I left, I wanted somehow to break my policy by cutting through the station in order to save time getting home. Just as I got into the station and uh was rushing through, uh the Bombay Mail arrived and there was Maharaji tapping at the window.
(4:00:58) A number of us westerners were meditating together at a at a Buddhist ashram in in Baghda. After a time, some of us were ready to take a break and go on to Delhi, several hundred miles away to celebrate Shiva's birthday. One of the women in the group who had who had come to India overland by charter bus reported that the bus driver wanted to you know hang out with us too.
(4:01:23) So 34 of us left Bodhga Gaya and met the bus in Bernares and started to drive to Delhi. And one of the men in the group, Danny had left the courses briefly in the middle to visit Alahabad in order to experience a Kumba Mela. He had returned deeply impressed and bringing us each small medallions depicting the the monkey uh Hanuman uh which he had purchased on the uh on the Mela grounds.
(4:01:55) And when it turned out that the bus route uh went right by Alahhabad, Danny pressed us to visit the Mela grounds. And I protested that the mella was now over and it would just be an empty piece of riverbank. But he pointed out that it was one of the most sacred spots in India. Some of us were tired for it was only our first day out in the world after such sustained meditation practice and all we really wanted was to get to the dharma where we planned to stay overnight.
(4:02:28) The thought of even driving the few miles out of our way to get to the river was was not appealing. And yet, it was a very holy place. I weighed the merits of the alternatives and finally agreed that we should go to the river for a brief stop to watch the sunset. And as we approached and drove down into the meloss, which were now quite deserted, the driver asked where uh uh yeah, where he should parks.
(4:02:54) He'd say that Danny pointed to a place uh that he said was near a uh Hanaman temple and also was the spot where he had purchased the small medallions. As the bus was pulling up to that spot, someone yelled, "There's Maharaji." Sure enough, walking right by the bus with Dada, there he was. We all scrambled off the bus and rushed to his feet.
(4:03:15) I was having a hysterical crying laughing fit. I remember kissing his feet in bliss and at the same moment my mind u being aware that the spot of sand on which he was standing smelled strongly of urine. Dada later told us that as the bus came into view, Maharaji had said, "Well, they've come.
(4:03:38) " Maharaji instructed us uh to follow them and and uh the bus uh followed um the bicycle rickshaw to to Dada's house on the suburban street of this great university city and um within minutes we were given food and uh arrangements were made for us to lodge at a nearby estate with another devote. I was told that since morning the servants had been preparing food under Maharaji's orders in anticipation of our coming.
(4:04:11) But if that were so, which of us thought he uh was making uh making a decision uh in the bus about whether uh to visit uh the melods, apparently all was not as as I thought it was. RD only uh Maharaji knew why he remembered whom he did uh when he did. Apparently however it was uh not all in his hands for many devotees found that by thinking about him they drew his attention or even his physical presence said one ma if the devotion is strong enough the guru is drawn by the devote.
(4:04:51) uh a Frenchman was staying in Anandima's ashram and asked HRJ about this uh nim karoli baba wanting his daron HRJ said that if he were to remember Maharaji for only 10 minutes Maharaji could be there the Frenchman closed his eyes and repeated neem karoliba nim karoli baba and after 10 minutes unexpectedly Maharaji came to ma ashram and he went over to the Frenchman and asked why are you remembering me I I've come what do who want um I was in the habit of arising at around uh 2:00 in the morning and sitting up a
(4:05:29) while in meditation. I told no one of this activity. One morning as I came for Darian, the moss rushed over to me in great glee, all talking at once. What they were telling me was that in the middle of the night as they were sitting with Maharaji, he had turned to them and said, "S has just awakened.
(4:05:46) She is thinking of me very much. One day I came from Snow View to Talatl hoping to see Maharaji. I was wondering how I could find him since sometimes he stayed in one house, sometimes in another. Just as I passed by the house in which he was staying, uh, someone came out and caught hold of me.
(4:06:06) Maharaji knew that I was coming and sent this person to intercept me and bring me to him. One Tuesday morning, I planned to uh, visit Maharaji at Kai, but a call came for me and I had to go to Ninatal for business. I figured I could still take the last bus to Cai, but when the time came, I missed the bus.
(4:06:25) At about 8:00 in the evening, I got a lift to Bowi, but by that time, there was no way to get to Cai. I felt some depression and went home. I was thinking in this way when there was a knocking at my door. I told my son to tell whomever it was that I was tired and to ask their name. Just then, I heard some shouting. I am Babaim Karoli and this was about nine at night.
(4:06:50) Maharaji told me you always bother about this and that. Why? Why are you bothering? It's very um he uh took uh his uh his dinner at my home and then you know got into the jeep and returned to uh to Ki and the acting superintendent of police uh hearing that he was not going to be confirmed was very upset and decided to resign.
(4:07:13) At about 8 in the evening, he was with his wife when an orderly came and said, "Um, there is a man outside sitting on the road calling for you." He knew it was Maharaji. Maharaji said to him, "You were crying. You were thinking of resigning. How foolish." An old man who for years worked as a prison guard became uh extremely ill.
(4:07:34) At one point, his doctor gave him only 24 hours to live. But the man remembered Maharaji, meditated on him, and refused to die. On the on the third day, Maharaji arrived in the city and went to the home of another devote. He said to him, "There's an old man living near here. He's thinking of me very much and he's very sick. We must visit him.
(4:07:56) " Upon entering the sick man's room, they found him in very grave condition. Maharaji placed his foot near the man's head. The dying man pranam to Maharaji and then left his body. Maharaji said to the other devote he was remembering me very much. Darian was given then finished. The end. I am here and I am in America.
(4:08:19) Whoever remembers me I go to. Chaos and confusion. Wherever Maharaji was there was chaos and confusion. Sometimes two people were sent to do the same task. Other times one was sent to undo what the first was in the process of doing. Maharaji would tell one person one thing and another something opposite. When confronted with such inconsistencies, he would deny all.
(4:08:43) Such confusion served a number of um obvious purposes. Uh first, it it veiled his powers so that no one could be quite certain what had just happened. Um and the confusion you know also allowed each person to hear what he or she needed to hear from among the conflicting bits of information. You know such inconsistencies served to uh loosen the minds of those devotees with problems of rigid thinking.
(4:09:14) From another point of view, one could understand the confusion as a reflection of the fact that Maharaji was not just one person as a mirror. He was the reflection of whomever was thinking upon him and he was conscious on many planes at once. Thus, one statement such as I can do nothing might be followed moments later by the statement uh I hold the keys to the mind.
(4:09:41) Everyone is my puppet. Appreciating this dimension of Maharaji made one delight in the confusion. Two longtime devotees were told that they would be able to uh find Maharaji at a certain temple on the banks of the Ganga and they went there immediately and found him. He acted as if he'd never seen them before.
(4:10:07) Well, who are you? Where do you come from? What work do you do? Why have you come here? He inquired of of each of them. They patiently answered him until finally he said, "Sit down." Uh Maharaji was never in bondage to anything. He wouldn't follow suggestions and would do the unexpected. If I asked to stay longer, for example, he would get up and go.
(4:10:30) Maharaji uh would make predictions or say something of personal import uh in an off-hand manner in the middle of a political uh uh discussion. Often his predictions wouldn't come true. If you wanted a specific prediction from from Maharaji, uh he would often be vague and he'd never give an explanation for his predictions.
(4:10:50) And anything you can say about him, you can also say the opposite. And one time in in Vindaban, Maharaji had called us all over and I was at the front of the pack as we ran across and entering the room ahead of everyone else. I felt as if I, you know, I'd caught him unawares. He saw me and got embarrassed. It was as if he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have and as if he were in the cookie jar.
(4:11:12) He was looking so guilty. And I was trying to figure out uh what it was I had uh caught him doing. Finally, I just gave up. He must have been pulling another of his tricks. Once some devotees were with uh Maharaji at the Ganga and they proposed to Maharaji that he bathe there. He protested but they urged him and finally succeeded in lowering him into the water from their boat.
(4:11:38) Maharaji at first acted like he was drowning. Then suddenly he began to swim around the boat. Later in recounting the incident, Maharaji told everyone that they had tried to drown him. Once in the middle of the night at the ashram, we were awakened by shouts and the sounds of footsteps. People were running to and fro and lights were going on all over the place.
(4:12:08) We stuck our heads out the door to discover that Maharaji was up. He wanted rods. Then he screamed, "There's there's a snake in the mother's room." And when they went to uh check it out, what they found there was a rope. at Kchi, he had had this simple uh uh little room which we used to call his uh office.
(4:12:28) You know, there was a window with shutters on the inside that he could open where he'd often sit uh looking out and giving daria. And sometimes he would jump around um in that room like um a monkey in a cage or um press his face to the bars. At other times, someone would come um to the window to see him and he'd just slam the shutters closed.
(4:12:52) You know, he'd start off uh a conversation uh saying one thing and uh and then by the end of the conversation, he'd be making the opposite point. He once told one western devote about smoking uh sharas, hashish. He said to him, "You like smoking charas? That's good. Shiva smokes charas that means you like Shiva. We were all really thrilled to hear this but then he started to turn it around saying uh what's better that you do smoke chars or eat food? About 5 minutes later he said don't don't smoke.
(4:13:30) Once he said oh it's very nice and and peaceful here in in Kchi. Uh uh when you come here you can really get peace. Shanti miltahai. Peace is found. Uh and then a few weeks later some truck went by on the road and he said, "Oh, this ki so noisy. No peace here. Ashanti, not peaceful. Uh he'd gone from Shanti to Ashanti in the same place.
(4:14:02) It was sometimes very hard to figure out what Maharaji was saying. Often he'd repeat the same word about five times. You know, one of his favorite things was saying the same thought over and over again, just rewarding it different ways, drilling it into your head. If it was something about someone getting married, for example, he'd say, "You got married, didn't you?" "No, you didn't.
(4:14:22) Did you? You did." He'd go on like that back and forth. It was the same way uh he he um would, you know, he he'd play uh with things. He'd pick up something, turn it over, flip it back over, then flip it over again. And uh he'd do the same thing with words. He'd take a sentence and turn it around and your head with it.
(4:14:45) One morning um Maharaji greeted his devotees with complaints of a very sore knee and some devotees took him seriously and they suggested various cures. Others took the complaint lightly and told Maharaji to cure himself since he was the cause of his complaints. Nevertheless, oils and balms and compresses were applied to the area of pain all to no avail.
(4:15:05) Maharaji insisted that these remedies wouldn't work and uh what was needed was a certain medicine he'd once uh seen um in Dada's home. He called it the mustache man uh medicine and twirled his mustache to indicate it. He said it was the only medicine that would work. All this meant nothing to this uh devote who couldn't recall any mustache related medicine in his home.
(4:15:29) Later in the day, the devote went to the bazaar to buy supplies for the ashram. While in the pharmacy, he noticed a picture of a uh a mustachioed man on a small box containing Sloan's balm, a uh your your heat heat producing medicine. He purchased it and gave it to Maharaji. Maharaji shouted, "That's it, the mustache medicine. Put it on.
(4:15:56) " Moments after the bomb was rubbed onto his knee, Maharaji announced that that that that sea that the pain had vein had vanished and that he was now he was fine and Janaki and Dropi were sitting before Maharaji and Maharaji turned to Janaki and asked who do I like better you or Dropi? Janaki said sweetly why Maharaji you love us all the same? came out of Maharaji replied, "Nah, nah, no, I like Draati better.
(4:16:25) " Which of course upset her a great deal. She got up and walked out heading for the Vindaban bazaar in order to run away. What kind of guru has preferences? While she was in in the Dree uh the bazaar, uh she realiz she realized that she she couldn't run away after all. and wanting to do something nice for someone.
(4:16:44) She bought a little uh brass my hanaman and returned to the temple and put it in her room. And immediately afterward, Maharaji caught her and asked her, "Where have you been? What have you been doing? What did you buy?" Uh she told him about the little Morty. He told her to bring it to him. And u when she did, he he um handled it uh handled it a while and looked it over and then told her to give it to me.
(4:17:09) I I I I don't know if she had meant it for me or if if Maharaji initiated that. And the very day after I'd privately wished for a little Hanuman Merty, I was given this one. I'd be alone with Maharaji in his room and I'd want everybody to share this experience. So I'd say Maharaji, they'd really love to come in.
(4:17:29) He'd say, should I let them in? I'd say yes, let them in. He'd say, you know, go bring them in. You know, sometimes he'd say, nah, you just be here. or he'd say something uh about all of them being bad mash rascals and and I'd argue with him that they uh they were not all bad mash that some of them were confused just like me he'd say that that was true then add nah hin they're all bad mash at the time of the big havan uh fire ceremony and many people said they were going to fast but after two days they ended up not fasting and all of those who said
(4:18:05) they weren't going to fast ended up fasting. One time he in in the Alahabad uh a a seek family had arranged to feed all of the satsang at their home and entertain us for the afternoon. I wanted to stay behind with Maharaji. So I went and hit up on the roof where nobody ever went.
(4:18:33) Everyone was uh rounded up to uh to leave for the outing. And after they were all gone, I was really afraid. Oh, what's Maharaji going to do when he finds I'm still here? I thought I asked Dei, Dada's wife, um, what Maharaji would do when he found this out. And she said, oh, you better talk to Dada. So, I went to Dada.
(4:18:52) Dada, I don't know what Maharaji is going to do. He replied, who does? God does everything. In the tradition of the great yogis of India, Maharaji's powers extended far beyond the realm of knowing the minds of others. A profusion of miracles poured out of him. And though he threw dust in our eyes with denials and confusion, we were still allowed to sense this extraordinary process.
(4:19:17) But as astonishing and uh dramatic as as such phenomena were, they were not in the eyes of uh the close devotees of Maharaji. The essence of the matter. Maharaji himself is the miracle. Just being around him made the common place seem miraculous and conversely the miraculous came to seem quite ordinary. Yet when devotees gather, it is still the miracle stories that come most readily to their lips.
(4:19:50) Perhaps this is because such stories are tellable. While the ocean of love, the tenderness and the healing compassion with which Maharaji like Christ worked his true wonders upon us, these are ineffable. What were these miraculous powers about? Perhaps they served the function that the great saint shiri Sai Bababa who used miracles in an outrageous fashion um attributed to them.
(4:20:15) I give them what they want so they will want what I give. All the miracles concern the physical universe, the world, the material plane. But the essence of the business that we have with such beings as Maharaji is of the spirit you know which is far beyond such miracles any miracles are only the d uh the unexpected and in the spirit there is no uh expected.
(4:20:45) So there is no unexpected and this is how Maharaji became known as neem kari baba which means the sadhu from neem kari or nee karori. This was many years ago perhaps when Maharaji was in his late 20s or early 30s. For several days, no one had given him any food and hunger drove him uh to board a train for the nearest city.
(4:21:09) When the conductor discovered uh Maharaji uh seated in the first class coach without a ticket, he pulled the emergency brake and the train ground uh to a halt. After some verbal debate, uh, Maharaji was unceremoniously uh, put off the train. Um, the train had stopped near the village of Neeb Kurori where Maharaji had been living.
(4:21:34) Maharaji sat down under the shade of a tree while the conductor blew his whistle and the engineer opened the throttle, but the train didn't move. For some time, the train sat there while every attempt was made to get it. Shuv uh, to then to move. Another engine was uh kami uh called in to push it but all to no avail.
(4:21:59) A local magistrate with one arm who knew of Maharaji suggested to the officials that they coax that young sadu back onto the train. Initially the officials were appalled by such superstition. But after many frustrating attempts to move the train, they decided to give it a try. Many passengers and uh railway officials approached Maharaji carrying with them food and sweets as as offerings to him.
(4:22:29) They requested that he board the train. He agreed on two conditions. First, the railway officials must promise to have a station built for the village of Neeb Curori. And uh at at the time the villagers had to walk many miles uh to to the nearest nearest station. And uh second the railroad must henceforth treat Sadus better.
(4:22:51) And the officials promised to do whatever was in their power. And Maharaji finally reboarded uh reboarded the train. And then they asked Maharaji to start the train. He got very abusive and said what uh what is it up to me to start trains? Um the engineer started the train. Uh the train traveled a few yards and then the engineer stopped it and said unless the sadu orders me I will not go forward.
(4:23:15) Maharaji said let him go and they proceeded. Maharaji said that the officials kept their word and soon afterward a train station was built at at nee karori and sadus received more respect. Whenever Maharaji left uh Alahabad to go to Vindaban, there was always such a procession, sometimes as many as 18 rickshaws full of people going to the train station.
(4:23:39) One time we were all lined up and and the procession began. Um I directed the drivers to go the shortest route, but Maharaji intervened and insisted they go the long route. Many devotees um were gathered along that route. All of them hoping for one glimpse of Daron as he was leaving. Uh these last uh Darons delayed uh Maharaji and Sidima and the mothers uh with whom he was to travel were all on the train.
(4:24:13) It was my pleasure in those days to attend to such matters as reservations. So I was busy seating the maus and seeing to their needs. Maharaji was still outside of the station uh with the devotees when the engineer and the conductor signaled for the train to start. I thought oh my god what will happen? I myself will stay on the train with the mothers.
(4:24:34) I can't let them go on alone. But for a full four minutes the engineer struggled with the train but couldn't make it budge. Strolling slowly with his devotees Maharaji came onto the platform. As he boarded the train, he shouted at me in English, "Get out." As soon as Maharaji took his seat, the train began to pull away.
(4:24:55) One time, Maharaji asked me to make reservations for two first class air conditioned places on the train leaving that very day. All the officials told me it was completely booked from Kolkata to Kala, the east to west coast of of uh um India. And um still to be prepared, I I bought two unreserved tickets. I was sure that I was um wasting our time and we'd have to to cash them in.
(4:25:21) Uh Maharaji walked into the station, walked slowly along the platform and stopped solid at one spot. When the train pulled in, a firstass air conditioned car was stopped directly in front of Maharaji. I had watched how he chose that very spot to stand in. So I asked the conductor who happened to be standing right there for two births in that car and he said what are you crazy this train is full from Kolkata to Kala.
(4:25:49) At that moment I I I I lost my assurance and looked over to to Maharaji. He merely raised one finger and said quietly attendant. So I went over to the car attendant and and uh asked again for two births and he said yes yes there is room for you. You see a party who was reserved clear through had to get off at Mogul Sarai to attend to unexpected business.
(4:26:15) There are two births vacant in this car. It was the car directly in front of uh of Maharaji. One day Maharaji and his driver were going from uh uh Berlli to Kchi. They arrived at Kchi and a little later uh others arrived and said uh you can't have come that way. The road has been washed out for 4 days and uh there's been no traffic, not even trucks and the road continued to be uh impassible for for two more days.
(4:26:47) Um Maharaji was going to Kashmir in a car when the clutch started to slip and we were in a small village with no repair facility and the driver was afraid to go on because of the the mountainous road and a supposed mechanic was found. But uh the more he tried the the worse the the clutch got uh until it wasn't working at all.
(4:27:10) Uh and I asked Maharaji what to do and he said to uh stop a truck and have the uh the truck tow the car. All the trucks however were going, you know, in the opposite direction. I reported this to Maharaji who replied, "Oh, these brahinss are so stingy. They won't put up enough money to hire a truck to pull the car. I had a,000 rupees to put up which was enough.
(4:27:30) Finally, I got a bus that would pull the car. I bought a rope and we were just leaving when a bus came from the other direction uh warning that there was a bus checkpoint ahead so that the bus shouldn't try um towing the car. It was dark by now and there were no hotels. So, I went to Maharaji and said, "Here are the choices.
(4:27:58) We can sit in the car all night long like this with no blankets. We can get a truck to tow us back or we can go on. Uh this last choice implying that we would have to depend on Maharaji's powers since the clutch was now gone. Maharaji said, "Let's go on all the way to Shinagar. There was no occasion to stop or use the clutch and uh and we never even needed gas.
(4:28:21) " And this of course was impossible by normal means. Um at aa Maharaji kept telling people that the ganga was not really water but milk. One day Maharaji and several others were out on the river in a boat and the devotees were eager to experience the truth of Maharaji's words. They said nothing. However, Maharaji told them to get a lot of water pot of Ganga water and cover it.
(4:28:48) when he poured it into glasses for them, it was the sweetest milk since there were other devotees back at the camp. Uh, one of Pin Ovad u the um one of the people in the boat thought he he'd take some back for them, but Maharaji grabbed the the devotees glass and threw it angrily into the uh the Ganga. uh Maharaji once strengthened the faith of an Indian sadu who also was called Ram Das uh by demonstrating his powers for him.
(4:29:23) Maharaji said look here Ramdas I'm disappearing. See he took a small stone and uh struck it uh against his body. Ramdas couldn't see Maharaji anymore. Then Maharaji said now see I am reappearing. and Ramdas could again see him there. Maharaji repeated this three or four times. Once a party of 50 or 60 uh Congress politicians were going to see Maharaji, he was staying at Hanumanar.
(4:29:51) From there the road could be seen for a long way. So he knew they were coming. Maharaji suddenly got up and went down the hillside. Accompanied by an Indian sadu Ramdas, he walked to a small devi temple. When the party arrived, they inquired about Maharaji's whereabouts. They were directed down the path. Maharaji and Ram Ram Sam had uh sat you know uh sat down in front of the temple.
(4:30:20) The congressman uh uh also came to the small temple and though they stood in open land about six feet away, they couldn't see him or Rahm Da. The men were standing practically in front of them saying to themselves, "Where is Nim Karoli Baba?" Maharaji had become invisible and he had made Ramdas invisible.
(4:30:44) Now Ramdas was habituated to hashish and um and had the cough that naturally accompanies this. He had a spasm and wanted to cough. He couldn't stop it, but he feared that if he coughed, these people would hear and naturally guess that uh Maharaji uh was there. Maharaji said, "Don't mind. Cough as much as you like." So Ramdas coughed loudly and got relief.
(4:31:05) But these men heard uh neither the talking nor Ramdas's coughing. The congressmen gave up their search and went away. And only then did Maharaji reappear. And during a journey, a horse started acting up, endangering its riders. Maharaji went up to the horse and spoke to it. Look here, brother. Let them get down now. Let them down.
(4:31:25) Do you understand? The horse immediately became quiet. The devotees stepped down and the journey was continued on foot. An army colonel approached the gate of uh the army camp and found Maharaji lying on the ground directly in front of the gate. When ordered to move, Maharaji replied that it was God's land and he was with the CID, Central Intelligence Department.
(4:31:52) The colonel became outraged and told the guards to move Maharaji and jail him in the army stockade. Some hours later, the colonel after having been out once again approached the gate. Again, he found Maharaji lying before the gate. The colonel started to yell at the guards for failing to carry out his orders, but they assured him that they had done as he had directed.
(4:32:22) A check of the stockade revealed that Maharaji was still there. After that, the colonel became a devote. Maharaji and and some devotees spent the night in a dharmasala on the way to Badranath. Maharaji sent the entire group out of his room and forbade them to enter during the night. They had seen a big cobra on you know Maharaji's bed.
(4:32:45) In the morning, Maharaji came out with a cobra and shooted away. Sometime later in Kchi, Maharaji was told that a cobra was in the ashram. He made a hue and cry, "Cobra is here. Cobra is here." Um, a devote remarked to him, "But what is this? So much concern for a cobra now. What happened when you slept the whole night with a cobra? Now you're making such a commotion, you wicked person.
(4:33:09) Go away, Maharaji replied. Maharaji was in Bari's with the police uh superintendent, a devote. They were going over to a uh sadu camp uh on an island uh in uh the middle of the Ganga. Um and and uh the superintendent said um we'll take a boat in Bernare. The Ganga is over a mile across. Uh Maharaji countered, "No, we'll go in the water.
(4:33:35) " And the superintendent couldn't swim and protested, "Mahar, Maharaji, it's over our heads." Maharaji replied, "Uh, just put your hand on my shoulder." So, they waited into the river. And the next thing the superintendent knew, they were on the island. They returned the same way. at our house.
(4:33:54) Um after the third or fourth day uh following Maharaji's visit, my wife heard uh keep some water for me in the night coming from near the picture of Maharaji. One night she forgot but later she awoke very thirsty and then remembered to put some water by the picture. In the morning the glass which she had covered was nearly empty.
(4:34:17) There was a party going to Vasudara near Badrinath where the ganga starts but one ma was sick so the group wouldn't take her and as the party left to go uh the ma was bewailing her fate and uh yeah maharaji came and said you want you want to see vasudhara hear he touched her hand and said now now walk out on the porch she did so and what she saw was vasudhara she was in ecstasy it turned out later that the party couldn't reach Vasudhara because of a um road block.
(4:34:54) Um when they returned um she told them that uh she had been there but of course they didn't believe her. She described it in detail and an old guide who had been there before corroborated her description. Word reached Maharaji from um the Pujari priest in Kpur that the new Morty um not yet consecrated had been broken. Maharaji and some of us immediately set out for Kpur driving all night.
(4:35:27) I felt that by this intensity uh Maharaji uh was uh teaching the the discipline of sticking to something there was to be no sleep until Ram's uh work was uh done. Uh and I uh tried to slow Maharaji down however by quoting the proverb u don't travel at night and don't be idle at noon. Maharaji said the the same principle doesn't apply in every situation.
(4:35:55) When we arrived we found that the morti was no longer broken. Then Maharaji told a story of the saint Ramach Krishna in which the dura morti an aspect of the divine mother had been broken and Ramachrishna did puja to it and sang to it and soon it was all fixed. A man was trying unsuccessfully to dig a well on his property and finally sent his son to Maharaji for help.
(4:36:22) Maharaji came to uh to the farm, urinated and and left saying uh tell your father to try again. And indeed, a well was found which is still gushing today. At a certain mea, a flood destroyed a bridge which kept collapsing every time they tried to rebuild it. The organizer of the mella came to Maharaji for help and Maharaji said he would bless the bridge.
(4:36:48) But the man insisted that Maharaji come to the site of the bridge itself. Maharaji stood there for a while and the floodwaters began to recede. Soon the bridge was reconstructed and the mella turned out to be one of the most peaceful ever. People often gave Maharaji blankets. One time when he was through with a blanket, it suddenly became much smaller and he said, "Why are you giving me these blankets that are too small?" uh Maharaji and and a devote uh had uh settled in for a journey in the first class compartment of a train. The devote
(4:37:23) felt it would be safer if Maharaji uh held the tickets until the conductor came. So he gave them to Maharaji. Maharaji looked at them and said, "What is this for?" And threw them out of the window of the moving train. And the devote was uh shocked but said nothing. As Maharaji continued his conversation, the devote was worrying about the tickets and the conductor.
(4:37:51) Finally, the conductor knocked on the door and asked to see their tickets. The devote hesitated a moment and then told Maharaji that the conductor wanted to see the tickets. Maharaji reached out toward the window and then handed the tickets to the devote. He laughed and said, "Is this what you were worried about? In 1958, I was acting as the leader of the landless people movement.
(4:38:13) I was arrested and charged with four counts inciting a riot, trespassing, attempted murder, and obstructing a government servant from dishonest duties. I was assured by Maharaji not to worry that it would turn out all right. But in 1964, I was convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment. I immediately appealed the decision.
(4:38:35) I was not worried but my relatives were quite upset and insisted I again go to Maharaji about the case. Maharaji assured me once more that all would turn out okay and added that when a particular judge whom he named was in office then the decision would be reversed. The name given was not that of the present judge.
(4:39:01) The present judge was in fact soon transferred, but the replacement was also not the one Maharaji uh foretold. The case was being argued and was to be completed by the end of a particular day. I thought to myself, how could this be? It was a cold, drizzly day and the sun had set and there were still several hours of arguing left.
(4:39:21) So, the judge postponed the case until the next day. On that day, one very important paper was inexplicably missing without a trace so that the case could not be finished. The judge ordered a further postponement until the paper could be reconstructed and the reconstruction took three years. By that time, now 1968, uh the judge whom Maharaji had named had been put in that office.
(4:39:45) The case was dropped under his decision. I was visiting a saint uh in the south of India who was known for uh manifesting many things. And as I was getting ready to leave, uh, he said to me, "Uh, do you want something, Ramdas?" And, "No, Baba G, I don't want anything here," he said, and held out his hand, palm upward, and started to move it in in a in a slow circular motion.
(4:40:08) I was still sitting at his feet so that my eyes were close to his hand, and I watched like a hawk for the least trickery, careful not to blink. But uh much to my amazement, there appeared to be a a bluish light on his hand which turned into a medallion. The whole business was confusing to me. Why did he do this? And I later heard that Maharaji said of such miracles there are those sides uh powers but was but they shouldn't be used much.
(4:40:38) They reduce spirit to magic. And he said of such saints, let them play. Some saints of the south are very much after miracles. RD once in Vindaban before guru perima day uh a day honoring the guru Maharaji was feeding us by hand. Uh one by one uh he would feed us each a para a sweet and I tried to feed him one too but of course he didn't eat sugar but I was insisting with uh the thought that uh this was also prasad.
(4:41:12) You must eat it. Please eat it. So he pretended to eat it. But Naima caught him. You didn't eat it, Maharaji. He looked guilty uh as as if to say, "Oh, you caught me." There it was in his hand. He'd palmed it. That precipitated wonderful play as he went into his whole magician act. Which hand is it in? Ha, you're wrong.
(4:41:36) It's in this hand. I don't think he was even using his powers for this game. He really was palming it, hiding it in his blanket and using slight of hand. All tricks that any magician can do. But he was saying, "See, see, I'm like Sai Baba. I can make it appear. I can make it disappear. I can do anything. Magic.
(4:41:56) It's magic." And you and we were in a car, you know, uh with Maharaji um in Bombay. He was directing us to uh drive through small streets until finally we came to a house. A ma ran out and touched Maharaji's feet. It so happened that one of my colleagues had been urging me to ask Maharaji about the Satcha Sai Bababa miracles and Maharaji had been ignoring the question.
(4:42:20) Now sometime later in this house, Maharaji said, "Mother, they think manifesting things is so great. Give us a mus." And uh in her hand uh suddenly there were these little merus of Krishna. Sid Ma wrapped two of them in her sari and uh when she got home she discovered three of them there about the miracle Baba's Maharaji would say what is this this is all foolishness you know he could do miracles but the greatest miracle was that he could turn one's heart and mind toward God as he did for me I have no powers like I don't know
(4:42:55) anything like Maharaji was actually the biggest saint he had done all the yogic austerities there are saints in India uh very aged ones who almost never give daron to people except for the few to whom they are kind. These saints cannot be seen. Sometimes they take the shape of a tiger or a monkey or a beggar.
(4:43:16) You can only have daron if they want to give it to you. Not otherwise. The true devotees of God never wear saffron, carry malice, um prayer beads, you know, or put on sandalwood. You can't know them unless they want it and then you can only know them as as much as they allow. May what am I to do? There is no eye that can follow me.
(4:43:41) No one knows me. No one understands me. What am I to do? Said four days before he left his body. There was still another group of devotees, many of them among the longestterm associates who didn't conjecture about Maharaji's identity at all. You can't try to understand Maharaji. You can only put him on as you would a pair of shoes or a piece of clothing and feel him.
(4:44:08) I asked a devote, "Wasn't your wife surprised when you didn't stop and talk to her?" "No, never. When we are with Maharaji, we never think rationally about things. She just knew I was with Maharaji." It is extremely difficult to catch hold of him. I know nothing about such things. I only know that he is my baba.
(4:44:27) Although miracles were commonplace uh around Maharaji uh they were rarely discussed during his lifetime. The devotees knew in no uncertain terms that he did not like these things talked about. When various devotees would sit around uh uh and discuss his miracles, Maharaji would call them over and berate them and say you are all talking lies.
(4:44:52) Maharaji and said that God loves everything and he Maharaji does nothing and if people wrote about him millions of people would come to bother him drawn only by rumors of miracles and in 1963 a man collected stories about Maharaji Maharaji said you want to bring disgrace burn them he burned them another devote wrote an article and um Maharaji tore up the the manuscript and someone asked Maharaji if he'd allow some pictures to be taken Maharaji said know and expressed his disapproval.
(4:45:24) The man pressed Maharaji until finally he ceased to resist. The man snapped three or four photos. When the role of film was developed, these three or four frames were completely blank. If you happen to see him perform some miracle such as producing purist, he would tell you not to tell anyone. I tell you it will be bad for you.
(4:45:41) Don't tell anyone. One time the car in in which Maharaji was riding ran out of gas in a place where there was none to be had nearby. Maharaji instructed the driver to put water in the tank and continue. Then he firmly warned the driver never to tell of of this incident for as long as Maharaji was alive. Maharaji said that if the man told he would contract leprosy.
(4:46:12) It was some three years after Maharaji left his body that the man first told this story. You should not talk about your wealthwife or sadhana or they will go away. Maharaji's strategy obviously worked for he was known to those he chose to be known to yet unknown to the population at large. As an example, the Illustrated Weekly of India did an entire issue concerning Indian saints past and present.
(4:46:37) Hundreds were listed yet in the entire magazine he was not even mentioned. Perhaps that was the greatest sign of his power. When the westerners uh started to come to Maharaji, he changed and he began to allow photographs to be taken and even gave his blessings for a book be here now which allowed millions of seekers in the western world to hear of Maharaji and his powers.
(4:47:04) Why he changed is not known. Perhaps he was preparing his legacy. Apparently, Maharaji did not transmit to his devotees any of the powers that he manifested. Perhaps he felt similar to Shardi Sai Baba who said, "I don't give them powers because I don't want them to lose their way." Rather than any sedus or yogic powers, Maharaji gave us more basic things, faith, loving hearts, and an acceptance of the reality of the divine.
(4:47:32) And at the same time he recognized that some of the devotees had desire for such powers and he enjoyed playing with those people. And in 1967 Maharaji asked me you want to fly and I had a pilot's license at the time and though I knew that this wasn't what he meant I said somewhat facitiously I already can fly Maharaji.
(4:47:53) Maharaji ignored my response and said you want to fly you'll fly. It was not until 1972 over four years later while working with a mantra under the direction of a swami that I experienced astral flying uh RD and one of the first things he said to me in 1967 was you know Gandhi I know of him Maharaji you should be like him just by saying that he started in me a train of righteous power fantasies that went on for ears.
(4:48:29) Only recently have I come to see Gandhi in terms of compassion rather than power. Maharaji's statement made me do much work on myself. And to add a bit more fuel to the fire of these uh attachments of mine, one day Maharaji asked, "Did you have tea at Nixon's house?" I was puzzled for the question was without a context. But then I remembered that the Englishman uh who uh had uh settled uh in Almora many years before who was known as Krishna Prem and was uh considered by many Indians to be a saint had originally been named Nixon.
(4:49:04) I asked Maharaji if it was this Nixon to whom he referred. No, the one with the the big white house in America, the one with the house bigger than Maktanandanda's. And there was no mistaking it now. He meant the president. And no, I never did. Then thinking maybe there was a a confusion of of generations, I added helpfully.
(4:49:24) But my father has. Weren't you in Mr. Nixon's house and he gave you tea and was very nice to you? No. Oh, nothing more. Just another little suggestion that perhaps I was to play in the halls of worldly power. And another day he spoke again about the presidency. This time he said you know Lincoln was a very good president. Yes.
(4:49:52) Yes. He was a good president because he knew Christ was the real president. He was only acting president. Oh yes he was very good. He helped the poor and and suffering. He never forgot Christ. Ah then he asked did he know did you know Lincoln? There was an embarrassed silence for everyone present knew of that impossibility and then dada told Maharaji that I couldn't have since Lincoln died in 1865.
(4:50:21) It was explained as if to a child but all of us knew that Maharaji never said things idally rd at the head of the state police of Utar Pradesh the largest state in India had come for Daran and was sitting at Maharaji's feet and rubbing his legs with obvious devotion I was called to join them and Maharaj I introduced him to me and asked me whether the police in America were like the police in India.
(4:50:56) As I looked at this superintendent of state police rubbing Maharaji's legs, I could only laugh at the comparison. I said that that the police uh in America had great power and and often forgot they were the servants of the people. And I added that it would be unlikely for the head of any state police to kneel and rub the feet of a holy man.
(4:51:20) Maharaji then introduced me to the policeman saying this this is Rahm Das. He is going to bring the police of America to God. I had to laugh. Now he was implying uh future powers even greater than my fantasies. It was also around this time that uh Maharaji started calling me Samarth Guru Ram Das. And in the past he had called me by one name or another uh Issha meaning Jesus or Kabir each for a few weeks.
(4:51:49) Each time a new name appeared albeit briefly I would make inquiries as to the nature of the person who had become uh my namesake and would try it on for size. Jesus I already knew about. Kabir was a great saint, a very poor weaver who preached the unity of all religions and was legendary for his outspoken beliefs in God.
(4:52:11) His poetry was already much revered in my heart. At first it seemed that Samarth guru Ramdas must refer to the seek guru Ramdas. But then I found a book that described a samarth guru Ramdas who was guru to king saji in the 1600s and had constructed many hanaman temples. The name samarth meant all powerful and there are many stories of his miraculous powers.
(4:52:36) Uh he lived in a mud hut next to the king's palace. The king was highly regarded for his concern for his subjects and for his generous feeding of the poor. But apparently now and then his ego got the best of him. When this happened, the guru would do things like uh splitting a rock uh in which there were many tiny bugs and asking the king how who was feeding these bugs.
(4:53:00) Uh this realization of the you know triviality of his own efforts would again humble the king. I like this name. And while I wanted all the powers Maharaji seemed to be alluding to, I knew that if he gave me those powers, I would indeed get lost in them. Now and then, however, Maharaji would set me up for a experience that by allowing me to help him showed me that the true powers uh poured forth when one realized I can do nothing. God does everything.
(4:53:32) Um on one occasion Maharaji said to me Hari Das is in America you keep him there for 5 years. I knew that Hari Das had only a threemonth visa and that to get a permanent visa uh that is to become a registered alien in the United States is no easy matter. So I said to Maharaji I can't do that.
(4:53:53) I have no political power in the United States. But Maharaji would not hear my reply. He just repeated you keep Hari Das in America for 5 years. I kept Bavand Das here for seven years. Uh the implications of this made me laugh. Here was Maharaji who had all kinds of powers uh making this absurd uh comparison. My power uh within the United States government was absolutely zero.
(4:54:21) So again I protested but he was equally adamant. So I said that I would certainly work on it. Uh a few days prior to that conversation, a westerner from Los Angeles whom I had never met before came to Ninatal to see me. I explained to him that uh my guru was nearby and took him to see Maharaji who gave him the name Badranath Das. The fellow was very taken with Maharaji and genuinely uh appreciative that I had arranged the meeting.
(4:54:50) uh on his last day in Ninal uh which was the day after the Haridas conversation with Maharaji Badgerath Das thanked me again and asked me if there was anything he could do for me in the states. I asked him for instance what and he told me that he was a successful lawyer in Los Angeles. At the moment I could not think of any friends who were in trouble but I thanked him for the offer.
(4:55:18) Then as an afterthought I said I have a family full of lawyers but the only legal thing I need now is to get Harid Das Baba a long-term visa in America and um I explained to him Maharaj's orders and Badgerath Da said me gee it's funny you should need that the my brother-in-law happens to be the director of the uh western United States office of immigration and we should be able to arrange it with one uh letter And so it was done.
(4:55:50) When Haridas came to the immigration department for an interview, his folder had special VIP stickers on it and his alien visa was granted with no difficulty. Obviously Maharaji had known how it all would happen. But instead of bringing it out uh with Badrinath Das himself, he let me help him. But while with one hand uh Maharaji played with my uh desires for worldly power with the other he subtly uprooted them.
(4:56:23) uh one day while I was sitting with uh Maharaji and KK many CID Indian intelligence agency men came to have Maharaji's uh dar daran they were uh uh in attendance upon Indira Gandhi who was visiting nearby after they left Maharaji said what good is all that a king can only order his men to obey but a saint can order wild beasts and animals to obey and they would do so also Between this uh belittlement of a worldly king, the Samarth Guru Ramda stories and Lincoln's appreciation of who the real president was. Maharaji impressed upon me the very
(4:57:04) real limits of the worldly power that uh most most humans seek. These teachings have continued to work upon me since that time. R D among the thousands of seekers who came to Maharaji's feet were many men and women of of worldly power either political or economic even though Maharaji made light of worldly power.
(4:57:29) Sometimes Maharaji avoided them and at other times he seemed to go out of his way to help or or guide them. Maharaji was staying at the home of the superintendent of the Agra Central Jail when he unexpectedly got up and left for another place. He told them that a wealthy importer was coming to to bother him. A few minutes after Maharaji had left, a limousine uh drove up and a large man approached the house laden with prasad.
(4:57:57) Maharaji tried to avoid at least two or three governors who wanted to see him. But one of the governors arrived unannounced. Maharaji said, "If he is that keen to see me, how can I stop him?" uh Maharaji uh was uh was involved in in in politics to the extent that it served his devotees he would say uh yes you'll become governor or uh you'll become vice president of India and so forth uh once the wife of uh vice president Giri came and Maharaji refused to see her uh although he had announced that she was coming before she actually arrived and give her precise He
(4:58:37) said the governor came along with his son and and and though Maharaji was resting, they bothered him anyway. When Maharaji spoke with them, the governor asked if Giri should contest the election for president. Later, Giri himself came with four other men. Maharaji saw him alone for 15 minutes. After that, Giri left, went back to Delhi and announced his retirement as vice president.
(4:59:06) when asked why he said uh it's is the soul's voice telling me. He then entered the the race for president of India. Uh before the votes for the presidential election were counted, Maharaji exclaimed, "Giri has won and he had." Maharaji never wanted any publicity and he always tried to avoid VIPs uh and he kept away from uh devotees who uh became important.
(4:59:38) They would often tell me he used to visit us often but now that he has placed us on the throne he has forsaken us. He he won't come anymore. I wish he hadn't put us there. At least we would be able to have his uh his Daron.