One day Baba was sitting on a parapet by the roadside when a sadhu named Balak came and offered pranaam to him. Baba said to Balak, “What’s the trouble?” Balak told him that he had been suffering from stomach pain since the previous evening. Baba gave him some of the remaining water from the lota (metal pot) that he used when washing. Balak drank this, and then Baba made him run around. In a little while the pain subsided.

The same day Pandit Mama also had pain in his stomach. Baba immediately got him admitted to Ramsay Hospital in Nainital and sent his devotees to enquire about his health throughout the day. A devotee asked Baba the reason for according different treatment to Pandit Mama. In reference to Balak, Baba said, “God takes care of the person who has no one to look after him. Pandit is a well-to-do man. He wants good treatment and also expects others to express their sympathy for him.”

Excerpt from “The Divine Reality of Sri Baba Neeb Karori Ji Maharaj” by Ravi Prakash Pande “Rajida”

Original Article

Leaving aside physical suffering and mental torture, there was another kind of deeper and more painful suffering which Babaji could not neglect. Many times it was to rescue the helpless that he had to run away like a vagabond. Sometimes unimaginable calamities come to people — someone has died, someone has been thrown out of another’s heart, or a severe shock or disappointment from one’s near or dear ones has unhinged them totally. Pain of the body or the mind can often be tolerated, but pain of the heart becomes killing. Faced with such a disaster or disappointment, they are stranded; there is no one to whom they can look for support.

Very few of us are so devoted to God that we truly believe that the help we need will come from there. We need some tangible response to our cries. Our cries reached Baba and made him rush to us — seen or unseen by others. He came and talked to us, not quoting from scriptures, but in his own sweet way. He consoled us with pats on the head, whispered words of cheer accompanied by his infectious smile, trying to bring a smile to our face. We do not know how many tears of men, women and children he wiped away with his sweet words, compassionate touches, and soothing smiles. Only Babaji knows…

His goodness to his devotees also expressed itself in the way he would fulfill their fond expectations, trying to save them from disappointment. This was revealed during the opening ceremony of the temple in Panki, Kanpur. Babaji was at Allahabad for his winter stay. Devotees coming from Kanpur requested him to bless the occasion by his presence, which he did not agree to do. They went back feeling disappointed and sad that all their efforts had failed. On the day of the inauguration, Babaji finished his toilet, and changing his clothes early, went back to his room. It was seven o’clock. He told me that he was not feeling well, covered himself with a blanket and asked me to bolt the doors, not allowing anybody to disturb him or enter his room. Hours passed, and the people waiting outside for darshan started speculating about his trouble. At twelve he opened his eyes, asked me about the time and said, “Oh, it has been five hours that I have been asleep, but such a nice sleep that I feel refreshed.” The doors were opened, and people rushed in and had their darshan. Life began again as usual.

The next day, Babaji was sitting in the hall surrounded by his devotees when a person came with a basket of ladoos — prasad from the inauguration ceremony of the Panki temple the day before. Being handed a basket, I was told that Babaji had been there in the morning, but at twelve he suddenly disappeared. “We searched for him, but he was not there, so we brought the prasad for him.”

Mr. Jagati, an old devotee, asked, “What are you talking about? Babaji was here lying on his bed feeling unwell, and we were waiting for him outside. The door was opened at twelve and we all saw him. So how could he be at Panki when he was in his room all the time?” While they were all trying to convince each other, Babaji was sitting silently with his smile. This incident reveals so much about his invisible movements to fulfill the wishes and expectations of his devotees.

Excerpt from By His Grace by Dada Mukerjee

Original Article

It was 1970 in Washington, D.C. When friends played a tape recorded lecture in which Ram Dass described his journey to India and his transformation from Harvard professor to intrepid explorer of the mind to spiritual seeker and discoverer in terms, tenor and language that confirmed tenets i knew to be true, but had never heard anyone utter so convincingly.

The words were bright and clear, without artifice or guile, delivered free of personality through the heart of a being whose life had been profoundly opened to a mystic reality.

The words gave certainty to ideals long taught and believed but infrequently seen in a post-war western culture dominated by conspicuous consumption and separation from its underlying unity. They offered the possibility of attaining those ideals. They gave impetus to the search for realizing them.

After reading Ram Dass’s book, Be Here Now, and the cookbook for a sacred life it contained, the path had become clear and the effort worthwhile. And so I embarked. I left an impending career in law in abeyance, to be resumed in a few years but from a much different perspective.

Later, after many months of meditation and yoga practice, I learned that Ram Dass was speaking one evening at a nearby university. As Is entered the auditorium there on the stage was a chair, a floral arrangement and a color photograph of Maharajji large enough for anyone to see his beaming presence from any place in the audience. The lecture was moving, almost as if Maharajji was delivering the meta-message through Ram Dass.

And after it ended, way beyond the scheduled time, many people lingered to hear more, myself included, but mostly to stay in the presence of that moment. Upon taking leave and thanking him, the same light emanating from Maharajji’s picture could be seen radiating from Ram Dass in a most impersonal yet transcendent manner that made his words seem superfluous. That was my first meeting in person with Ram Dass.

Many months later I saw him at the Lama Foundation after a retreat in which I had been advised to set out for India. I told him that story and asked what he thought of this advice. His reply was wise. I was exactly where I needed to be for the next step in the journey. After a lengthy pause in which he undoubtedly could see the disappointment in my face, he suggested that if I happened to find myself in India that summer I should seek out S.L. Sah and tell him that Ram Dass sent me.

So that’s what I did. And three weeks later I found myself facing Maharajji. It was like looking at the sun. Here was the source of what we all came to understand as the unconditional love that had transformed Ram Dass. And there I remained for months in a timeless state of bliss and discovery, and in the profound experience of being always in Maharajji’s presence.

All this is because of Ram Dass.

Excerpt from Remarkable Encounters with Ram Dass Enhanced Ebook – now available on iBooks, Kindle and Nook.

Original Article

Babaji could be so very affectionate, behaving just like a son to the Mothers. His great power, the miracles and such, no doubt were there, but the very soft, delicate, sweet and innocent impressions left by him provided a perennial source of joy—that human aspect.

At night in Allahabad, Baba would take his food in his small room and the Mothers would sit with him. Didi would be busy prepar­ing the chapatis and my duty was to carry them one by one to him. After he finished his food he would go on talking to those Mothers in a very relaxed mood. Sometimes he would take two spoons and begin to play on the head of one of the Mothers. Once Didi made some curd and gave quite a large tumbler of it to Babaji. He took a whole spoon­ful and put it on the head of one of the Mothers. Fortunately, her sari was over her head. Such kinds of things would go on.

One time when Babaji was at our house, he went for his toilet and gave me his blanket, “Here, you hold it.” I put it on the cot and was standing near him because he was talking. He began abusing me, “What have you done with my blanket? You have left it there. Look what they are doing!”

I turned and saw that Didi, my mother, my auntie, and Siddhi Didi had picked up that blanket and were actually smelling it. When I came to them they said, “Look here. It has the odor that comes from the body of a newborn child.”

Babaji shouted, “Where is my blanket!”

One day in the house, Baba stopped before a picture of himself as a younger man. “Whose photo is this?” he said. Since it was a photo of himself, of course, I did not reply. Then he whispered, “How did you recognize?” I suddenly realized that this photo was of Maharajji as I had first seen him so many years ago in Dakshineshwar.

One day when Maharajji was not in Allahabad, my mother prepared khir, a delicacy that is often offered to the gods or god­desses. My mother put it in a big bowl and said, “If Babaji comes today, it will be very good. I will have this khir to serve him.” Of course, she was not really expecting him.

Much later in the day after we had taken our food, Babaji suddenly came. “You have prepared khir? I have come for it.” Ma was so happy to see him eating it. When he was finished, he said, as if suddenly remembering, “Oh, what a mistake I have made! Today is ekadasi [a day of fasting], and here I am eating khir!” Now this was Babaji’s way, the sweetness that we remember.

Excerpt from The Near and the Dear

by Dada Mukerjee

Original Article

Babaji was known as a great saint — a highly realized soul with all the spiritual powers. Writing about Baba, Swami Vijayananda, a disciple of Anandamayi Ma, called him “a yogi whose name radi­ates an aura of mystery and miracle.” We saw many of his miracles coming one after another; they continue even now. They are excit­ing, often entertaining, but sometimes disturbing. Once at Kainchi, after what had been for me a very painful experience, I had to tell him that I was not interested in his miracles; he was Baba, and that was enough for me. His acceptance came in the form of one of his ineffable smiles. So far as the mysteries are concerned, not only have I not been able to solve any of them, but they have become more mysterious day-by-day.

One morning Babaji was in his small room in Kainchi. A sadhu with a half-dozen of his disciples came for Baba’s darshan. I took them to his room. After they had taken their seat, Babaji said, “This is Mahant Digvijaynath, a great saint. Bow at his feet.” When another person came, Babaji made him bow as well. Babaji smiled and asked people to bow low to the saint instead of touching his own feet. But when the third one came and Babaji repeated his words, the Mahant stood up and clasping Babaji’s feet, with tears in his eyes, said, “Baba, you are the saint of saints sitting before us, and you are making people touch my feet, taking me to be a saint.”

“A saint can be known only by one who himself is a saint.” That is what has been said by the wise. So we cannot have — at least speaking for myself — any pretension of knowing Babaji, the great saint. In the Bhagavat Gita we learn that a saint is a person with a dual personality — the divine and the human. Many of us have seen the human person in Babaji, but that doesn’t mean that we can claim to have seen the divine person in him.

In a saint, the divine person is encased in the human frame but is not entirely identical. The bottom of the human and the top of the divine stand far apart from each other. There is a co-mingling in the inner space, and in noble human beings, some of the divine qualities merge entirely with their human qualities, destroying all distinction between human and divine. I am saying this about Baba from my own experience of him. I have never seeing him wearing his divine crown, but I have always seen his divine qualities of love and compassion. He was always ready and alert to mitigate the sufferings of the helpless by taking their pains upon himself. His body became a honeycomb of diseases. This was the price he had to pay for his compassion and his readiness to help.

Every individual suffers from some kind of physical and men­tal pain. But with many, hunger or disease of body or mind become acute. One of Babaji’s visible methods of helping people was by feeding the hungry, arranging medical treatment for the sick, and giving money and materials to the helpless. The brief interlude of his life in the ashrams was spent in caring for the hungry and curing the sick, like the head of a household busy with his large family. Those who visited his ashrams, especially Kainchi, saw how prasad was being served throughout the day to all and sundry without any dis­crimination. For some it was prasad, an auspicious token of spiritual elevation, but for many more it was a whole meal for the stomach.

Seeing that food was being given in such large amounts, some persons complained that the food was being wasted. Babaji was un­relenting and continued to ask us to give in plenty. “Give more, give more, Dada.” No doubt Babaji would never allow food to be wasted or abused, but his idea of abuse and waste was different from ours, so the bhandara continued, giving food to the needy.

Some persons have suggested that one of the reasons for his - choice of Kainchi and Bhumiadhar for ashrams was to be in direct contact with the helpless — particularly the shilpakars, the forsaken ones. They fell easy victim to the allurements of the preachers who approached them with loaves of white bread, biscuits, etc. After sev­eral bhandaras at Bhumiadhar, he said one day, “Dada, the preachers do not come anymore because they have seen that their ‘double rotf (white bread) and biscuits cannot fight with your puri and halwa.”

There were also other methods of mitigating the sufferings and hardships of the people coming to him. They were seldom done in the public gaze, but they were going on every day. Some poor farmer would come and say, “Out of my one pair of bullocks, which is my only source of living, one has died and I have no money to purchase another.” An old woman would come and say, “My daugh­ter has reached marriageable age, but I have no money to pay for her marriage.” Another comes with his tale, “My brother is suffering from tuberculosis and I have no money for his treatment.” Such things would go on all the time. Few would leave disappointed. It was never publicized, but help was always coming from him in some form or other.

Excerpt from The Near and the Dear

by Dada Mukerjee

Original Article

As I have said before, when I first met Babaji I was not at all interested in sadhus or saints. It was out of sheer grace that he visited our house. Although many unusual things were happening, we failed to realize their importance or to see his hand in them. His visits meant some thrill and excitement and we looked forward to them, but I still looked at him as a kind and affec­tionate guest. A new process started, however, when we moved onto the larger stage of the new house. Many miracles occurred, acting as shock treatments on me. But no less important was the association with some of his oldest and most trusted devotees, whose love and devotion for Babaji were really my eye opener.

The devotees who started coming to our house when it was built included Siddhi Didi and her husband, Tularam Dada, Hubbaji (Hira Lai Shah), and Umadatt Sukla. They were the earlier ones. We had already met Kehar Singh. Then came Mr. Sang, Inder, Thakur Jaidev Singh, and later Kishan Tewari, Jiban, Ram Narayan Singh, and Gurudat Sharma. When these persons started coming, we were un­known to each other. We were in different stations of life, with different professions and interests, but we were like different streams which come together, reach the ocean and become one.

The devotees would be in our house, not bothered by physical comforts or conveniences, but only interested in being close to Babaji, seeing him and hearing him. This did not mean that we were always trying to hang onto him. He might be in one room and we would be in another, talking about him. Whenever an opportunity came, we would sit together and compare notes—what everyone felt about him or whatever new experience anyone had attained.

After eleven o’clock at night we would be free. We would have finished our food and the whole floor would be covered with beds. Sometimes Maharajji would come out and take his seat on a bed. He would ask, “Are you having tea?” We would say no. “Why are you sitting here with no tea?” Then he would see the blankets on Sukla’s bed, and start counting how many were there. “You have got so many layers on your bed!”

Then Sukla would say, with tears in his eyes, “Baba, this is my Didi’s house, and she has given them to me.”

“Oh, your Didi is very generous to you, she gives you so much. But come and look at my bed and see how hard it is!” This was his way of talking. It used to be the most enjoyable time of the whole day—like the members of a family sitting around the loving and indulgent elder, talking and chatting freely, without any restrictions.

As far as these devotees were concerned, they had been with Babaji a long time and all their doubts, all their questions, had been completely answered. They were convinced and intoxicated. But I would not be intoxicated so soon. I was hearing them talking of Babaji as a saint and as God, but still I could not accept it in my heart of hearts. I would only say, “Yes, of course, it must be so,” but I was not believing that. He could not convince and convert me easily. I did not fall headlong like your Kishan Tewari or your Jiban Baba, saying that he is all in all, the divinity incarnate.

In January 1960, the Ardha Mela was taking place in Allahabad. The celebration spread over two months. Hundreds of thousands of sadhus came and set up camp in the area of the confluence of the Ganges and Jamuna Rivers. Babaji had arrived in the beginning of December. Some devotees, including Tularam Dada and Siddhi Didi came in December, but many more arrived in January.

One day in January he went out in the afternoon and got into a car, along with Tularam, Sukla, and a few more of us. We did not know where we were going. We crossed the bridge on the Ganges and reached the ashram of Prabhudatt Brahmachari, a celebrated saint. Babaji got down and I followed him; he asked the others to stay in the car.

Seeing Baba, Brahmachari came rushing over. “Baba, you are so kind to me. You have come!” He took Baba around and introduced him to many sadhus. Then he sat Baba down and brought various kinds of prasad from Vrindaban and Mathura and offered them to Babaji, who accepted them. “Baba, the Ras Lila party from Vrindaban has come, please do stay the night and enjoy the celebration.” Baba readily agreed, but Prabhudattji, who knew Babaji well, said, “Baba, I cannot accept your words so easily.” When he had to leave for a few minutes to take care of

something, he asked the people in the room not to allow Babaji to go. He warned them, “Be vigilant. He escapes very easily.” I did not understand fully what he meant.

Babaji sat talking to the people for some time and then told me that we would go out to urinate. I stood up with him. He told the people he knew where to go. Then he caught hold of my hand and began moving fast. Coming near the gate he asked me to run and get the car started.

When Baba got into it, Prabhudattji noticed and cried out, “He is running away, run after him!” The car started and we drove away.

It was a full moon night and the moonlight was reflected in the Ganges. The motor road was completely empty at the time and we stopped the car, got out and sat there. Babaji was sitting on the road with us around him. He said, “Look at this Ganga, this is not water, but milk. This is pure amrit [nectar].” None of us could actually believe that. After all, the saints and sages talk like that, a language we do not understand. The understanding was to come only after six years.

Babaji had a camp at the Kumbha Mela in 1966, feeding thou­sands of people every day. He stayed at our house and in the afternoon, after taking his food, would go to the camp. Many devotees were staying there.

One day in the afternoon, Babaji, Sukla, a sadhu named Omkar Baba, and I went to the mela and came to the bank of the Ganges near the sangam. There was a very big barge which was empty except for the boatman’s wife, who was preparing food. Babaji got in the boat and I spread the blanket we had brought for him. Sukla had a lota and Baba told him to fill it with water and keep it there. We sat for some time until it was getting dark and Babaji said, “Chalo! When you people sit somewhere you forget everything. It is getting late, let us return.”

I took up the blanket and Sukla took his lota. We got down from the boat and Maharajji, pointing at the lota, told Sukla to offer us a drink. When we looked in the lota we saw that it was fresh milk! Sukla wanted to bring some of the milk home for Didi and the others, but Maharajji said, “No! Throw it away! You want to bring disgrace to me? Throw it!” Then he had Sukla wash the lota out. I then remembered the 1960 mela when Babaji had said, “This Ganga is not water, it is milk.”

Excerpt from By His Grace: A Devotee’s Story

by Dada Mukerjee

Original Article

Question:  How can I judge myself less harshly and appreciate myself more?

Ram Dass:  I think that part of it is observing oneself more impersonally.  I often use this image, which I think I have used already, but let me say it again.  That when you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees.  And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever.  And you look at the tree and you allow it.  You appreciate it.  You see why it is the way it is.  You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way.  And you don’t get all emotional about it.  You just allow it.  You appreciate the tree.  The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.  And you are constantly saying “You’re too this, or I’m too this.”  That judging mind comes in.  And so I practice turning people into trees.  Which means appreciating them just the way they are.  And, there was a period of time where I used to have a picture of myself on my puja table.  Later I had Caspar Weinberger, but earlier on I had me.  And people would come and say “My God, what an ego this guy has got.  He has got his own picture on his puja table.”   But really, what it was, was a chance for me to practice opening my heart to myself.  And to appreciate the predicament I am in.  I mean I could see the whole incarnation.  If I am quiet enough, I can see his story line.   I mean history is his story.  Or herstory.  And herstory is just the story line of our predicament.   And it’s finding a place from in yourself where you see the unfolding of law.  Dad did this; Mother did this; economics did this; education did this; opportunity did this; drugs did this; Maharajji did this.

All of this cause and effect, previous incarnations.  All of this is just an unfolding of a story line.  A drama.  The Ram Dass story.  There he is.  How will it come out?  How did it come out?  And you are just sort of watching this story unfold.  It has nothing to do with me.  Because I’m not that.  That’s just a set of phenomena happening.  And when you look at yourself as a set of phenomena, what is to judge?   I mean is that flower less than that?  It’s just different than that.  And you begin to appreciate your uniqueness without it being better or worse.  It’s just different.  And cultivating an appreciation of uniqueness, rather than preference, is a very good one.  It’s just when you get inside identification with your personality that you get into the judging mode, because then you are part of that lawful unfolding.  You are not stepping outside of it at all.  The witness or the spacious awareness is outside of it.  It is another contextual framework.

As you are more quiet inside so that you notice and you can see your own thoughts a little more clearly, you will see your father’s voice and your mother’s voice and all your education principles voices inside your head constantly saying things to you.  And you will see that — what Freud calls  the Super Ego.  You will see that that judge is inside.  And you keep giving it power by identifying with it.  And you feel yourself at war with yourself.  That there is a part of you that is doing it, and there is a part of you that is judging what you are doing.  And as you are quieter, you see the dynamics between the Super Ego, the Id, the ego.  And you see it all as just phenomena.  Because they are phenomena.   As a psychologist, I can study those phenomena in another person; why not study it in myself?   And part of what drugs did for me, and then mediation did for me, and all the spiritual things is it helps me stand back and get outside of it.  To see it for what it is.   As just stuff — phenomena.

Original Article

One morning, Babaji began talking about pujas and prayers and going on pilgrimages. “Prayer and worship should be done by everyone, every day, as the highest obligatory duty to God; visiting temples and pilgrimages should be undertaken only under favorable conditions and suitable times. They are not essential for your worship and religious duties, whereas prayers and pujas are, and must be done in some form or other.” When everyone was hearing him with full attention, he looked at me and said curiously, “Dada, you stay at home.” I did not understand what he meant by that, so I could only reply simply, “Thikhai, Baba.” (All right, Baba.)

While we were sitting that night and talking, Tularam said that what Babaji said was not random, but had something to do with my sadhana, my spiritual endeavor. Staying at home meant avoiding pilgrimages to temples and religious centers. He said that they were not necessary for us, since we had secured shelter at Babaji’s feet; there was nothing rare or extraordinary we could get from pilgrim­ages that we could not get by staying with him.

However, most of the time in pilgrimage was spent in Babaji’s company, and that would not be possible for me if I were staying at home. Tularam had become so intoxicated in his love and devotion to Baba that there was no sense in trying to place before him my own differences and disagreements with his judgment. My silence was taken by him to be full concurrence with his opinion.

Two days later, our morning sitting with Babaji was interrupted by the visit of an old devotee. He wanted to say something in the presence of all of us, but Babaji prevented this, and took him alone to his room. After some time, Babaji asked me to give him prasad and arrange for a rickshaw. While I was going with him to the rickshaw, the man said he was from Madhya Pradesh. When he was young and working under a forest contractor, he had known Baba. Many miracles happened there at that time. He had been cut off from Babaji for all these years until some people said Babaji visited this place in winter, so he had come in search of him. He had wanted to talk before us all, but Babaji took him to his room and told him that he should not talk about those things. Babaji said that when people who had known him for so many years did not believe these legendary miracles, how could these people believe? It would be better if he did not talk at all.

We had been standing before the rickshaw talking for some time when Babaji shouted for me. He had shifted to the study room and was lying silently on the mat laid on the floor. There were several others with him — Tularam, Siddhi, Girish, and a few more of the house. Babaji asked Tularam to hand over his packet of cigarettes to a young man standing nearby. When that had been done, he said smoking was kharabhar (bad); Tularam must not smoke anymore. He asked the boy to destroy the cigarettes and throw them in the nearby basket. Then he pointed to Ram Prakash to bring his packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his silk kurta and to throw it in the basket. Then the boy came with my packet of cigarettes. Holding it in his hand, he said that this was Dada’s packet and he should destroy that also. Babaji stopped him saying, “Give Dada his cigarettes back. Let Dada smoke.”

No one could understand what he meant by allowing me to continue smoking. It was a mystery. Was it because smoking was not harmful for me? We were all left guessing. But when I was sitting with Tularam he said, “Did you understand what this meant? Smoking is not bad for you — at least not now. Babaji knows this, and there must be something deeper behind it.” He went on, saying that he knew that smoking was not good for him; everyone in his family also knew it, but they had not been able to stop him. Babaji knew how much we enjoyed our smoke when we were sitting together — it was actually the lubrication in our unceasing talks, and he would not stop that. But now because he (Tularam) was to go away, his smoking could be stopped. It was grace coming all the time, but in different forms. I did not understand him fully then, but after going over it for all these years, now I do.

Excerpt from The Near and the Dear: Stories of Neem Karoli Baba and His Devotees

by Dada Mukerjee

Original Article

A young Englishman named Lawrie once stayed in Babaji’s ashram at Hanumanghar for about a year. He had been interested in India’s spiritual heritage and had come to India to learn about it. He had met Babaji, secured his grace, and was allowed to stay in the ashram, studying with Haridas Baba.

One day some devotees were talking to Babaji about Lawrie and his spiritual practice. Babaji said he would soon be going away—his “maya ” was coming and would take him back to England. Some days later, Lawrie’s lady friend, Susan, arrived in Nainital. Babaji told Didi that they would be visiting Allahabad and would stay in the house for some days and she should arrange for them.

Didi arranged a small room for their use. When she had opened the door to fix up the room, she found that one wall was full of footprints. She was astonished to see them and was convinced that they were Babaji’s. Many devotees came to see the footprints and believed them to be Babaji’s, but could not understand what they indicated.

A few days later, Lawrie and Susan arrived. Every attempt was made to make their stay comfortable, but there were some difficulties about their food. Lawrie was used to pure vegetarian cooking, but Susan was not. She complained to Didi directly that she was losing her health because her food was being neglected. This was hard for Didi, who had taken so much care with all the arrangements. Tears came in her eyes.

Shortly after, a devotee came with his car. He had received a phone call from Baba, asking him to take Lawrie and Susan to his house for a few days. They had been “transferred.” Babaji arrived after a few days and consoled Didi. He explained that Lawrie and Susan were old friends who were planning to marry. When Lawrie did not return from India, Susan came to bring him back. They had no money and didn’t know what to do.

They were given the passage money. On the day they were to leave, Babaji left for Chitrakut with some devotees. He told me to accompany Lawrie and Susan to the station that afternoon. With tears in his eyes, Lawrie begged to be excused for all their lapses.

The devotee in whose house they had been staying also came to the station and then gave me a ride home in his car. We sat on the porch and he told me about the strange behavior of his guests. They had stayed in their room all the time, bolting it from inside. This created some suspicion in his mind. It was the time of the Indo-Chinese
conflict and he thought they were spies, transmitting radio messages from the closed room. When he made that statement, I could not listen to him any longer. He had his tea and prasad and then left.

Soon after, another car pulled up with Babaji in it. He sent the people who had come along with him into the house, and he came and sat with me. He asked about the whole episode. “You went by rickshaw to the station? Did Didi accompany you? They went in the car? What did Lawrie say?” All these things he recounted to me, rather than asking. “How did you return? You came by car? It was good of him to bring you home. You-must have offered him tea and prasad.” These were all preliminaries. “You were talking? What was he saying about them? Why did he go away so early? Weren’t you talking to him?”
After repeated inquiries, I had to disclose that man’s suspicion about Lawrie and Susan being spies. “You became angry with him because you did not believe that? Why didn’t you believe him? Why?”

After that kind of hammering I said I was annoyed because I could not imagine how a person who claimed to be a devotee could think that Babaji would put him in such a dangerous situation. I said to Baba, “You knew everything about them and you could not do anything that would create trouble.”

He was stroking my head while I was talking. When I stopped he laughed and said, “Do you think that everyone is a fool like you? There are wise people who look at things differently.”

Original Article

My mother and aunt were deeply religious and accepted Babaji as the head of the family. Ma would often tell us that the family and the household belonged to Baba and we were all his children. Her whole treatment of him was based on the fact that Babaji knew what was in the minds of everyone and behaved accordingly. He treated them as his Ma and Maushi Ma, giving them all the freedom and indulgence and grace. They reported to him everything going on in the house and sought his advice and guidance for running it. The most important duty assigned to them was to prepare the food and feed everyone coming to him. “Ma khana khilao” [Ma, make food] was his pet method of asking them to feed the people. Often emphasizing the importance of their work, he would say, “Maushi Ma, this is the home of the deity. Here everyone gets his food, so I also get mine.”

My mother was from a very orthodox brahmin family and formerly she could not imagine that a lower caste person would enter the kitchen. None of the servants were allowed to dust or sweep there or bring in the drinking water from outside. Ma was like that and I could not have thought of changing her attitude. But with Maharajji around all those things eventually changed. West­erners came and were entering the kitchen. Ma also became recon­ciled to Muslims entering the house. Maharajji was not forcing her to do this; her whole outlook had changed. She began feeling that all were her sons and daughters. If she is not keeping me away from her kitchen, how could she go on keeping others away? Now, from where had this wider outlook come? Of course, Maharajji had done that, but all he had said was, “Ma, give food to all.”

Ma and Maushi Ma had become accustomed to treating Babaji as their near and dear one, and would talk to him without any formal­ity. Babaji enjoyed that. Whenever he left for any place, they would invariably ask him where he was going, when he would come again, and sometimes they asked him to extend his stay in the house.

Once Babaji came and left two days later. Ma asked him to stay for a few days more. He said, “Ma, let me go now. I have some important work to attend to. I shall return soon.”

Ma said, “You have no work as such—the only work that you have is to run away.”

He laughed and said again that he would return soon. Three months passed and he had not come back. Ma said, “Look, so much time has passed. This is low. He goes on bluffing us.” Babaji arrived a few days later. When they came to see him in his room, the first thing they said was, “Baba, you speak so many lies. You promised you would return soon. Now you have come after three months!”

Babaji replied in his inimitable way, “Ma, where do I go? I am always here. Believe me, Ma, I never speak lies to you. I am always here.”

By Dada Mukerjee from By His Grace

Original Article