Neeb Karori Baba was a spiritual guru and sage whose ashram in Nainital, India attracted many high-profile Western visitors including Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg visited the ashram in the early days of Facebook on the advice of Steve Jobs. The ashram, located in a picturesque valley, has several shrines dedicated to Neeb Karori Baba and Hanuman. It exudes a powerful spiritual atmosphere and the Baba's messages of service and unity across religions attracted many foreign followers.

1. The Baba Who's a Magnet
for Tech Babalog
Neeb Karori Baba's ashram near Nainital inspired Steve Jobs, Mark
Zuckerberg...and has a `White House'

2. Contd..
A few years ago, Vinod Joshi, the secretary of the trust that manages a small
temple and ashram nestled in a picture-postcard valley called Kainchi near
Nainital, got a call from Larry Brilliant, an American physician and former
director of Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. “Larry said some Mark
would be coming to the ashram for a day ,“ recalls the short, bubbly man
with twinkling eyes, who has spent his life in the service of his spiritual guru
Neeb Karori Baba at the ashram. Joshi doesn't remember exactly when
because he had no idea who Mark Zuckerberg was. Facebook was yet to
become a daily habit of about a billion and half people. But he does
remember that Zuckerberg flew down to Pantnagar, about 65 km from
Nainital, and then drove to the ashram of Neeb Karori (often called Neem
Karoli) Baba, who died in 1973 but continues to enchant several highprofile
Americans.

3. Contd..
The Baba's halo shined bright last week when Zuckerberg mentioned to
Narendra Modi during the Indian prime minister's US tour that he had visited
a temple in India during the early days of Facebook on the advice of Apple
founder Steve Jobs.
“...he (Jobs) told me that in order to reconnect with what I believed as the
mission of the company I should visit this temple that he had gone to in India
early on in his evolution of thinking about what he wanted Apple and his
vision of the future to be,“ Zuckerberg told Modi at a town hall meeting at
Facebook headquarters.
“So I went and I travelled for almost a month, and seeing people, seeing how
people connected, and having the opportunity to feel how much better the
world could be if everyone has a strong ability to connect reinforced for me
the importance of what we were doing and that is something I've always
remem bered over the last 10 years as we've built Facebook.“

4. Contd..
ZUCKERBERG SPENT 2 DAYS
Joshi says Zuckerberg landed up with just a book in his hand without even a
change of clothes. “He was wearing a trouser which was torn at one knee,“
he told ET. Zuckerberg was supposed to spend only one day, but stayed for
two because Pantnagar was hit by a storm and flights could not take off.
The ashram, located beside a bubbling brook and surrounded by tall pine-
forested mountains, itself is small for a saint who has an elite following that
includes Hollywood star Julia Roberts. It has five shrines, including one for his
favourite Hanuman. Many of the Baba's devotees believe he himself was the
monkey God incarnate.Opposite the shrines is a white building with square
columns where the sage used to live. “We call it the White House,“ Joshi
says.

5. Contd..
On its verandah, there is a small wooden platform covered with a dark woolen
blanket sprinkled with fresh flowers -the Baba used to spend most of his day seated
on it. All over the place there are pictures of the ever-smiling Baba sitting or half
lying down with his left palm supporting his head. He is always wearing a blanket.
Even in the shrine where the Baba lives on in a life-size marble statue, he wears a
Burberry-check blanket.
As the evening aarti (lamp service) winds down at the shrine, I tell Rameshwar Dass
standing at the back of a small crowd of worshippers that the statue is life-
like.“Well, almost,“ Dass replies with a mischievous smile, his eyes crinkling up
crows' feet on the edges. “He looked quite different.“
Dass, a former New Yorkbased photographer, was Jim until the sage gave him his
new name. When Jim first met Neeb Karori Baba in 1970, he stayed by his side for
two years.

6. Contd..
BABA SPOKE ABOUT CHRIST
“The atmosphere around him was very powerful. It was like a spiritual pressure
cooker,“ Dass says. I ask him what is it that attracts foreigners to the sage. Dass
thinks for a moment and then says, “He talked to us a lot about Christ. He used to
say that Christ and Hanuman are the same. That Christ never died.“
He says when the Baba talked about Christ it was as if he was seeing him. “Tears
used to flow from his eyes.“ Dass says the Baba never gave sermons or scriptural
lessons except urging them to be of service to others. “The idea of service appeals
to Christians like us.“
He remembers Ram Dass, one of the Baba's earliest disciples, joking with him
about a giant statue of Hanuman at another ashram of the Baba in Nainital. “Ram
Dass said, `What would my friends in the US say if they saw me worshipping a giant
concrete monkey',“ Dass says with a hearty laugh.

7. Contd..
It was Ram Dass or Richard Alpert who made Neeb Karori Baba famous among elite
Americans.
Alpert, an American psy chologist, met the Baba with fellow psychologist and psy chedelics
researcher Timothy Leary while on vacation from Harvard. He spent many years with the
sage and wrote an unusually designed book `Be Here Now' on him and Hindu philosophy.
The book, written like a graphic novel, influenced many readers in the US who began to
associate with a commune and foundation Alpert had established in New Mexico.
Alpert, Jim and Larry Brilliant's evangelism continues to draw followers to the Baba.As I
take Joshi's leave, he shows me an email from Brilliant about Steve Jobs. Brilliant, who is
also a science ad viser to Warner Bros. and president of Skoll Global Threats Fund
established by eBay founder Jeff Skoll, mentions that Jobs had kept pictures of the saint by
his bedside till his last.
“I met Steve when we were all young and the world was full of promise and so, of course,
we went to India as spiritual seekers,“ he writes in the email. “Girija [Brilliant's wife] gave
him our only blanket from Maharajji when Steve was very ill.“

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