Have you ever wondered what it would be like to know everything, to see right through people? Would you like to instantly know the past of those you meet, or accurately see their future? How would you feel if you could have a lifelong impact young men and women with just a few quiet words, with a single glance or smile?
A generation ago, in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the world beat a path to an old man on a blanket in the Kumoan foothills of the Himalayas. Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji) was known throughout India, yet most of the world had never even heard of him until Timothy Leary’s companion, Baba Ram Dass, turned the hippie generation on to him.
Neem Karoli, or Maharajji, had advised heads of state within India, yet continuously wandered from town-to-town and city-to-city, sleeping under the bridges and befriending thieves. He was welcomed everywhere he went and offered the best room in their homes, almost as if he were Santa Claus. A married householder early on, he had renounced the conventional life to wander about as a sadhu.
Maharajji’s Approach To Life and Miracles
Maharajji inspired 100 temples to be built around the monkey god, Hanuman, Son of the Wind, who helped the avatar, Lord Rama, win back his wife, Sita, in Sri Lanka. Maharajji's approach to life was supremely simple, encapsulated in the words, Love, Serve and Remember. Love everyone as if they were God. Serve everyone as if they were God. And Remember God in everyone and everything. He was the yoga of devotion or bhakti, and the yoga of service or karma.
He was known as the food guru, constantly feeding everyone he met, as he realized that eating was an expression of love, and people had an insatiable hunger for simple recognition, appreciation for their own divine nature.
Maharajji was constantly catalyzing miracles around him, but he never gave credit, attributing everything to God. With a flash of blue light, he would manifest gold coins in his hands. He would grow very heavy and very light at will. You could lovingly lock him in your bedroom and take the key away. The next morning, you would see the room empty, with monkey paws climbing up the walls, and not a door or window open.
On occasion, he was seen opening up a dozen doors at the same time, or being in two different locations when he didn’t have sufficient time to travel between them. This was only one of the inner powers that he had.
Maharajji saw, not just with his eyes, but also with his heart. He looked straight into the heart of everyone he met. He was totally focused on how he could serve them, how he could speak to their soul. Once someone opened up to him, he was constantly there for them throughout their lives, whether in the body or out of the body. That is how he managed to take care of his wife and children after he had left them to becoming a wandering saint.
Inner Power and Peace Triggered By Psychedelics
Now, Baba Ram Dass (American spiritual teacher) was initially a brilliant Harvard social psychologist and prominent professor who got caught up experimenting with psychedelics while they were still legal. He took hundreds and hundreds of trips, but found that he always came down, no matter how hard he tried to stay up.
Ram Dass was delighted at the state of unity that he achieved when stoned, such that he felt loving and one with everything. He began to doubt the traditional scientific model, that the world is really out there, and that to get what we want, we must learn to manipulate the world.
With Timothy Leary, he began to search other worldviews, including shamanism in Mexico and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This search led him to journey to the East, winding up in Nepal. Ram Dass wasn’t satisfied with anyone he met, including Sufi masters in Afghanistan. By then, he wanted to meet someone who really “knew.”
Ram Dass then ran into a tall, scruffy American 20-something in a café who seemed to “know,” named Bhagavan Das, and proceeded to follow him down the Himalayas. Bhagavan led him to his guru in the Kumoan hills, Maharajji.
When Supernatural Forces Meet
At first, Ram Dass was cranky and wholly put off by the scene. His supply of LSD was running out, his tourist visa was about to expire, and the lifestyle in India was uncomfortable.
One day, while driving around, Bhagavan jumped out of the Land Rover and ran up to the guru to do dunda pradeen, or full-length prostration, touching Maharajji’s feet. Ram Dass, while witnessing the moment from the car, felt such servile fawning of another human being was disgusting. Notwithstanding, Bhagavan dragged Ram Dass over to meet his guru.
Maharajji spoke very little English, but asked Ram Dass who he was, where he came from, and how much money he made. Ram Dass proudly talked about being worth $35,000 or so, which decades ago was a lot of money. Maharajji then asked Ram Dass to give him his Land Rover. Bhagavan Das then responded, “If you want it, you can have it.” In fact, neither of them owned the jeep. It was simply borrowed. Ram Dass was horrified, and now certain that the guru was a charlatan and a fraud.
Maharajji then got very personal with Ram Dass. He told Ram Dass that he had thought of his mother the previous night. Ram Dass had, indeed, wandered off alone under the stars and cried about his mom, who has passed away six months prior.
Maharajji continued, “She died of ‘Spleen,’ which he said in English. Ram Dass was totally shocked, as no one around, not even Bhagavan Das, had any idea about what had happened to his mother. This was his mother’s actual diagnosis.
Ram Dass stood there stunned for minutes. He then fell at Maharajji's feet and sobbed. The guru lifted him up and hugged him. The guru had Ram Dass taken to a private room and offered a sumptuous dinner. As Ram Dass interpreted it in his classic book, Remember, Be Here Now, all his years of wandering were finally over… he found himself at home.
Experience of Inner and Outer Consciousness Without Drugs
Ram Dass realized that there was another way of knowing that this guru was privy to, which did not accord with his earlier framework of reality. It was like the experience of psychedelics, but without the drugs. To demonstrate this, Maharajji, knowing that Ram Dass was addicted to the high of psychedelics, asked him to offer his maximum dose. Maharajji then took what would be a generous dose for three young men in their prime, and carefully swallowed every pill. For an hour, nothing happened.
Maharajji informed Ram Dass that psychedelics of the strength of LSD had been discovered thousands of years before in India, but had long been forgotten. He warned Ram Dass that a spiritual master had to be intensely focused on God to have no reaction to them, as he had just demonstrated.
Ram Dass went back and forth from India to America evangelizing a generation of youth, such that Maharajji had people flocking to him. Ram Dass’s book was distributed all over the U.S., discussing the process of enlightenment and going into the nature of the sat guru, or inner guru, who was the true teacher corresponding with the outer teacher.
Ram Dass and Maharajji’s Influence on Steve Jobs
In the mid-1970’s, a young Steve Jobs, several years before he founded Apple, was sitting in on classes at Reed College in Oregon, minimally supported by his family. To survive, he crashed people’s rooms and bummed off food. Every Sunday, he would go to the ALL IS ONE commune, where he was fed veggies from the Hare Krishna people, those who followed Swami A.C. Bhaktidevanta.
There he picked up Ram Dass’s book, and read it cover to cover. He also picked up Autobiography of a Yogi. Steve then decided to go to India to meet Maharajji in person back in 1973 while he was still alive. With his friend, Daniel Kottke, Steve traveled all across North India, shaving off all his hair, until he got to Maharajji’s ashram, only to hear that he had passed away on September 11th.
While being at the ashram didn’t do it for Steve Jobs, he never forgot his time in India. Steve came back six months later to found Apple Computer, which eventually became Apple, Inc., the most successful company and brand the world has ever known.
By the time of Steve Job’s passing in 2011, he was widely considered the greatest CEO the world had ever seen, even though he had experienced a couple of business failures, actually being thrown out of his original company by a board maneuver. When Steve came back in the late 1990’s, he took on the title of Acting CEO, as he didn’t quite feel up to the job, given his earlier failures. Steve then began the most successful comeback in the entire history of business.
People were always intrigued by the mature Steve’s coolness and sophistication. He was a master of poise and exerted what has been described as a “reality force field.” Few people knew that he had consistently meditated a couple of hours a day since his time in India, and had become a vegan. Even though a billionaire, Steve chose to live in a simple house in Palo Alto with his wife and kids, and often walked around the streets barefoot, as he did in his youth in Cupertino.
At Steve Job’s memorial service, everyone there was given a copy of The Autobiography of a Yogi. Paramahansa Yogananda, like Maharajji, had spectacular yogic powers, and had come to the United States in the 1920’s to unify Hinduism and Christianity.
As for Ram Dass, he kept up his devotion to Maharajji long after his master’s passing, and has become, in recent years, a true saint, even though surviving a nearly fatal stroke. Ram Dass became a true Hindu, despite his Jewish-American roots, and now radiates love and presence, just like his master.
It is interesting though, that Maharajji had to disclose his natural powers (seeing Ram Dass’ past and describing his pain in detail) in order for Ram Dass to believe, experience and heal himself from within. Is that what it takes to be a believer? Is that what it takes to begin our own healing process? Most of us are not as lucky to meet such a powerful teacher like Maharajji… so, my point is – why wait?
As for a final note…
If we follow Maharajji’s injunction to never put someone out of our heart and to see only God in others, we may or may not channel stunning psychic powers, but we will gain that inner knowledge which sees through to the core of the Universe. He or she will realize Jesus Christ’s promise in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Feel free to share your experience, as well as comment on this or other ‘supernatural power series’ articles, like Blindfold Reading Using Inner Eye.
Supernatural Power: The Man Who Saw The Past and Future appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.
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