How Neem Karoli Baba became a hit among Hippies and tech titans

Hindu spiritual leader and protagonist of Hanuman Ansh, Neem Karoli Baba, never travelled outside India. Yet he developed a significant following in the US, with everyone from hippies to Silicon Valley giants making pilgrimages to his ashram, Kainchi Dham, in Uttarakhand.

The runaway success of the film Hanuman Ansh has put its protagonist, Neem Karoli Baba, in the limelight. Born in the early 1900s in Uttar Pradesh, Neem Karoli Baba, also known as Maharaj-ji, was a Hindu spiritual leader and ardent devotee of Lord Hanuman. He is widely revered in India, but what is less known is that he also developed a significant following in the West, particularly in the US.

Known for his teachings centred on love, selfless service and devotion, Maharaj-ji never actually travelled outside India. He established the Kainchi Dham Ashram, also known as Neem Karori Ashram, in Uttarakhand's Nainital district, which went on to become an important pilgrimage site for his followers.

Neem Karoli Baba is a mystic with a mystery. Not much is known about his early life. At least, nothing much is available on the internet.

Today, September 11, is Neem Karoli Baba's death anniversary. He passed away on this day in 1973.

So if Neem Karoli Baba never actually journeyed to foreign shores, how did he manage to develop a following in the US? The answer lies in the counterculture movement that was developing in America in the 1960s and 1970s'.

THE HIPPIE MOVEMENT AND NEEM KAROLI BABA

The 1960s and the 1970s were a turbulent time in the US. While Americans were among the most prosperous in the world, they were also deeply divided on the issues of civil rights and racial inequalities. At the same time, the escalating Vietnam War, which sent thousands of young American troops into the jungles of South-East Asia, was fuelling a growing anti-war movement at home.

It was in this atmosphere, that an American counterculture movement — based around cities like San Francisco, later spreading to Europe — better known as the Hippie movement, took root. Its members, known as the Hippies, mostly highly educated and upper middle class youths, rejected what they called mainstream society and instead embraced an alternative lifestyle characterised by rock music, communal living and, increasingly, psychedelic (and illegal) drugs such as LSD.

For some, this rejection of conventional life in the West, also prompted a search for alternative forms of spirituality, including Eastern religions, meditation and yoga.

India thus became an important destination for many of these hippies. While interest in Indian spirituality and Hinduism had existed in the US well beforehand, the counterculture movement gave it a wider audience.

Against this backdrop, Richard Alpert, a Harvard psychologist who had worked with LSD researcher Timothy Leary, travelled to India in 1967. Here, he met Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass. In his writings, Ram Dass described Maharaj-ji as a deeply spiritual teacher whose message centred on love, service and devotion. One teaching he attributed to the Baba was, "Love everybody, serve everybody, and remember God."

Ram Dass returned to the US and became one of the most prominent Western teachers of Indian spirituality. His 1971 book, Be Here Now, which chronicled his experiences in India and with Maharaj-ji, became a counterculture classic, introducing millions of Western readers to meditation, yoga and Eastern spirituality.

The book also helped cement Maharaj-ji's reputation as a mystical figure. Ram Dass and other devotees recounted stories of the Baba seemingly reading people's thoughts, predicting events and performing miracles. In one famous account, Ram Dass recalled giving Maharaj-ji 900 micrograms of LSD. According to his account, the Baba appeared completely unaffected. "All day long I'm there," Ram Dass wrote, "and every now and then he twinkles at me and nothing—nothing happens!"

NEEM KAROLI BABA'S ASHRAM DREW AMERICAN TECH VISIONARIES, SILICON VALLEY GIANTS

Neem Karoli Baba's Kainchi Dham Ashram subsequently became a destination for American spiritual seekers, hippies and other counterculture figures. Curiously, it also attracted a number of people who would go on to become prominent figures in the technology industry.

The Washington Post reported in 2015, the "modest ashram" drew "a steady stream of American tech visionaries". Among them were Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Google's Larry Page and Jeffrey Skoll, the co-founder of eBay.

Larry Brilliant, a physician who once lived at the ashram and later headed Google's philanthropic arm, told the Post, "Everybody in the world wants to go and see this place." He described the experience as a combination of "Eat Pray Love", "know thyself" and "change the world". Brilliant, who later played a key role in the global eradication of smallpox, also credited Neem Karoli Baba with encouraging him to leave the ashram and work on the smallpox epidemic.

Among the best-known visitors was Steve Jobs, who travelled to India in 1974 hoping to meet Neem Karoli Baba, only to learn that the spiritual teacher had died the previous year. Decades later, in 2008, Zuckerberg visited Kainchi Dham while Facebook was going through a difficult period, reportedly following Jobs' advice.

Neem Karoli Baba died in September 1973, but his legend has continued to grow in both India and the US. What began as the following of a relatively little-known Indian guru among a group of Western spiritual seekers eventually reached the worlds of technology, philanthropy and popular culture.

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