A celebration of one of the most influential spiritual leaders of our time: Neem Karoli Baba, the enlightened guru who inspired a generation of seekers—including Ram Dass, Daniel Goleman, and Larry Brilliant—on life-altering journeys that helped change the world.



In 1967, Ram Dass returned to the West from India and spread the teachings of his mysterious guru, Neem Karoli Baba



In September 1971, Ram Dass and I were standing together, leaning over the balcony of the Evelyn Hotel in the “hill station” town of Nainital, looking out over the verdant foothills of the Himalayas and watching the postmonsoon clouds roll across the picture-perfect lake.



Rowboats moved gracefully through the waters. Bells rang in the small temple across the lake. The sweet smell of incense wafted out from various rooms in the hotel, where some of the Westerners were meditating or doing devotional practices.





Others were writing in journals or reading mail from home—missives from the other side of the world, a place that seemed far less real than the one we were now occupying.



We had come back to the hotel after a long day spent at a Hindu temple in the Kainchi valley, amhalf-hour bus ride away on twisty mountain roads with blind hairpin curves, where we were spending time with a holy man named Neem Karoli Baba, whom we called Maharajji (a title ubiquitous throughout India meaning “great king”) or simply Baba. About twenty of us were living in the hotel as if it were an ashram. The hotel was owned by longtime devotees of Maharajji, and we were treated like family.





After a long silence, Ram Dass turned to me and said, “We are seeing Maharajji to bear witness.”



That comment stayed with me over the years, and I’ve thought often about what he meant. In being with Maharajji, we were bearing witness to the reality of enlightenment and all that implied, and to a greater love than we had ever known. We were bearing witness to the love within our own hearts and to the realization that, as Maharajji often repeated, Sub Ek (“All is One”). We were bearing witness to what it meant to surrender in service to others.



This book is meant to bear witness to how a disparate group of Westerners found their way to India and to Maharajji, what we experienced there, and how the seeds of Maharajji’s extraordinary love sprouted, grew, and blossomed in the West.