Faith … No Fear

ALL THE COLORFUL melodrama that transpired wherever Maharajji went; all the various ways the devotees thought of and reacted to Maharajji, and his many faces in response; the anger and abuse, the chiding, the tenderness—all of this filled the time and space when we were around him, and yet … we knew that this was a part, but not the essence, of the relationship. It was not acts or words or opinions, but something far more subtle that Maharajji was transmitting to us. It was deep within ourselves that Maharajji was gently transforming us.

There was no aspect of life that was not touched by him.

You know, you could go to Maharajji filled with many problems. You’d sit with him a while and they would all be solved.

He would create an entire situation just to teach you. He never gave lectures or taught from scriptures, but he taught through incidents and situations.

Maharajji guided us on all levels—spiritual, mental, and material. He gave instructions in how to raise children and in being a good marriage partner and in business. But these were not specific rules or instructions. He guided by changing the heart.

I was invited by a group of high-powered folks at Esalen to join them in studying with a Sufi teacher in South America. I was very uncertain about the whole matter, so I wrote to KK in India and asked him to find out from Maharajji whether I should go to Chile for these studies. Then the answer came back from KK: “Maharajji says that you can go and study with a Sufi saint if you desire.”

As I read the letter something happened in my heart and I suddenly felt absolutely certain that I didn’t want to go, and so I didn’t. On my next visit to India, when discussing this letter with KK, he told me, “When I asked Maharajji, he said, ‘If he wishes, let him go …’ And then he said, ‘Why would he want to go?’ But then quickly he added, ‘Don’t write that last part in the letter.’” (R.D.)

IT WAS AT THIS deeper level that we felt Maharajji to be the shepherd and ourselves to be a part of the flock. Through this unspoken process we developed faith where previously there had been fear. Our faith was that in the midst of the changing uncertainties of the universe, if we kept Maharajji in our hearts, if we just stayed under his blanket in trust, then it would be all right.

Devotees who had been with Maharajji for many years often reflected a fearlessness in the manner in which they lived, as the result of their faith in his protection. Some he specifically taught to be fearless.

Maharajji once called me over and said, “Ram Dass, you are to fear nothing.” (R.D.)

Once, when my finances were in disarray, Maharajji came to my place and said I should not have anxiety. I said to him I wasn’t calling for any anxiety— though I was indeed anxious. “No, no, no. You should not have any anxiety.”

It is strange. I am still that same person, but even in a crisis I feel it will be set right sooner or later. Maharajji does it: I have had no anxiety.

My wife says, “You are completely changed. Even serious matters you take lightly.”

He didn’t say that he would do so, but at that moment he took my anxiety.

Maharajji had taken all my responsibilities on his shoulders. He told me, “Don’t be afraid of anything. No one can do anything against you!” When he was physically before us, we were not so courageous, but now I am more courageous day by day. Now his power is working. Now I see him in dreams but only for a moment. I have faith that he is working for his devotees.

KK had much fear—suppression of the soul. Maharajji said, “You are afraid. You are so simple and they are clever and they fool you. You are afraid of Brahmins. But you will not be afraid of anybody.”

KK replied, “For this, I want the grace of your blessing.”

Then Maharajji patted him on the back two or three times, and after that everyone noticed a change in KK.

One time I was reported to the officials for packing underweight fruit boxes. I was innocent, but the charge had me worried. Maharajji chastised me:

“Coward! Never be a coward! Be brave! Coward! Why do you fear? Don’t you know me? I am with you!” Then he reminded me of how Ram protected his devotees. He said that he too would always protect his devotees. Even if they committed hundreds of murders, he would give them complete protection.

THERE WAS no dearth of examples, for those who needed them, to demonstrate that faith in Maharajji was well-placed.

I was staying in Kainchi. I went to Maharajji and said, “Now I have to go. It is my fruit season and I have to be there. Otherwise I will incur a great loss.”

I am a worldly man, you know. My fruit must be picked and sent off to Bombay and such places. Every day I remained in Kainchi, it was getting riper and would soon be too ripe to send away.

Maharajji said, “No, no you will stay here. You will go tomorrow.”

Fifteen days passed in this way. Then, finally, Maharajji said, “Tomorrow I will send you. Be sure about it.”

So the next day I came here and the fruit was all overripe. I thought, “Well, Maharajji has given me a loss.” All the fruit was overripe, and I could only send it off to the local markets at Kanpur or Allahabad—not to Bombay, where we got better prices.

And what happened? There was a great slump in the market! Those people who had sent their fruits to Bombay, Calcutta, or Madras couldn’t even make up the freight charges! And I, who had sent my fruit to local markets, got more than my expectations. I had been so very much annoyed with this Maharajji who had unnecessarily detained me in Kainchi. Who knows his works?

The enemies of a certain family had for some reason surrounded the family’s house and locked them inside for three days and nights. If they stayed inside any longer they would starve, and if they went outside they would be beaten by these wicked ones. While the family inside was discussing their dilemma, they heard some shouting at their door: “Open up! Open up! Come out and fight! Are you caste or are you cowards? Come on!” They peeked outside and saw Maharajji waving a stick and shouting. They all grabbed sticks and ran out to Maharajji. When the attackers saw the family armed with sticks and being led by this fat man, they ran away.

Maharajji then said, “Telephone so-and-so and so-and-so. Tell them that I am here.”

Within half an hour, police generals and government ministers were sitting in the living room of the man’s house. Thereafter the attacks on the family ceased.

A man’s eight-month-old child was standing on a thirty-foot balcony. A servant and the child’s brother were there playing with a kite when the child fell to the marble floor thirty feet below. The mother tried to catch the child but couldn’t. The child didn’t move, but still there seemed to be no broken bones. Suddenly the child laughed, and the doctors could find nothing wrong at all and said that this was impossible. Some days later, Maharajji came to their house and said, “You were worried. You still didn’t realize who you have on your shoulders, protecting you. The baby didn’t fall on the ground. It fell on my lap.”

While in Madras one day, Maharajji said, “I want to show my eyes to a good doctor. Who is a good doctor here?” I told him that there was a specialist nearby. Maharajji said, “All right. I’ll show my eyes to him.” That evening I found that this doctor was out of town, so I fixed an appointment with another specialist for 10:30 in the morning.

When I explained the situation to Maharajji, he asked who the other doctor was, and when I told him his name Maharajji said, “Nay, nay! I want to see the first doctor, not this other one.”

Maharajji told me to come to him after three days. This was a long time and I was impatient. After two days the first doctor had returned, so I made an appointment for Maharajji. I went immediately to the dharmashala (hostel) to tell him, but Maharajji’s luggage was just being carried out. When I told him the doctor had come, he laughed and said, “Today I’m going to Rameshwaram.” He refused to let me accompany him.

Nearly a month later, on my way to Bombay, I broke my spectacles. A specialist there made new spectacles for me, but within five minutes of putting them on I got a serious headache. The specialist checked everything and said they were all right but it would take a few days to get used to them.

I returned to Madras, but I still couldn’t put on those specs for more than a few moments. I decided to show them to a specialist in Madras and wondered which one I should go to—the first doctor or the second. Now, the second was very quick and always available, while the first was very busy and one had to wait for hours to see him. But I remembered what Maharajji had said, so I made an appointment with the first one. When I told my son, he asked to come along for a checkup. The doctor tested my eyes and found that the new specs the Bombay doctor had given were the wrong prescription. That was corrected. When he examined my son’s eyes he found the cornea was torn— serious enough for an immediate operation. Although he missed his final examinations at college, my son’s eyes were saved. This is what Maharajji’s lila (play) of a month earlier had been about.

A devotee from Allahabad said he had met Maharajji forty years before. He was traveling at night and he had become totally lost, when he suddenly saw a cave with a light in it. As he approached the cave, he discovered Maharajji sitting there. Maharajji gave him food and after the meal said, “You are lost. Go in that direction.” In about fifteen paces the devotee suddenly saw the village. But when he turned around, the cave and the terrain of the cave were no longer there.

Maharajji often called one devotee, a poor man, to accompany him on long pilgrimages. The devotee always agreed without a complaint, although he often had to borrow money to finance these trips. Once Maharajji asked him to come to Badrinath. Before leaving, the man pointed to the small picture of Maharajji on their puja table and told his wife that if for any reason she wanted to communicate with him while he was gone, she should address herself to Maharajji’s photo, since the two would be together. A few days later, high in the Himalayas, Maharajji suddenly turned to this devotee and said, “Why have you come here?”

The devotee replied that he had come at Maharajji’s request.

Maharajji said, “At your home there is no dal, no flour, nothing. Your wife is very worried because there is nothing to eat and you are far away. You should have at least provided bread for them to eat!”

But Maharajji’s presence had an intoxicating effect upon people. Their worries vanished and they felt that he was taking care of everything for the best. Half an hour after he had berated the devotee for leaving his wife without food, Maharajji shouted out, “Food has come! They have got food. The Kashmiri mother gave it to them. Don’t worry.”

When he returned, the devotee questioned his wife. She said that when the food had finally run out she had gone to Maharajji’s picture and told him that there was no more food in the house. Within a few minutes a rich neighbor, who treated her like a daughter, came to the house with bags of flour, rice, dal, and so forth. She went to the picture and thanked Maharajji.

Once Maharajji saved me from a snake bite. I was passing the winter in a tiny room in Haldwani, where I was talking with someone, when suddenly I left off in mid-sentence for no accountable reason. I turned around and looked into my room. It was very strange. A snake was crawling into the room, and once inside it crawled under a gunny sack. I thought: Why was it that I turned around just then? It must be Neem Karoli Baba’s doing (even though, physically, Maharajji was hundreds of miles away). I also thought that it must be a poisonous snake. Otherwise there would be no reason for Maharajji to show it to me. I very carefully put the snake in a canister and released it outside.

About five years later, I was complaining to Maharajji that he wasn’t helping me in any way or protecting me; I was having too many troubles. Maharajji said, “Why? I saved your life once. I saved you from the snake.” I had known in my mind that he had done it. Such things do not happen by accident.

One dark, rainy night at Kainchi, Maharajji woke up several devotees and said there was a jeep half a mile up the road that was stuck. He said to take tea to the passengers. The devotees went running because he told them to hurry. Maharajji wanted them to go up where there was no path. They found the jeep with four women and a man, stranded there with no blankets. Maharajji sent even more devotees up to the jeep, saying to them, “That tea will be cold. Bring them more tea.” When the people were finally brought to the temple, Maharajji said, “I used to visit the home of these women thirty years ago and they gave me a blanket and were kind.” He gave them blankets and they remembered him from before.

Normally when Maharajji was away, he would send his blessings from where he was. He wouldn’t go to the phone. But while I was away for six months in 1967, he visited my family in Kanpur practically once a month. While I was in Germany, my colleague and I were thinking of buying a car for the time and selling it later. We’d already decided on the car, which we were determined to buy on Sunday. On Saturday we didn’t normally get any mail delivery, but this day before the sale a letter came from my wife. She said,

“Maharajji has come today. He says that you are going to buy a car and that you shouldn’t do that. If you have any such intentions, Maharajji’s orders are to give them up.” I told my friend that the deal was off and that if he bought it I wouldn’t travel with him.

How did Maharajji do this? He came one morning to visit my family and he asked my wife to write that letter He said, “He’ll do something foolish! Forbid him!” He went away and after two hours came again and asked her if she had written the letter. She hadn’t. He said, “Well, I’m going to stay here until you write that letter and post it, otherwise it will be too late.” Only when it was posted did Maharajji leave. It could have reached us on Monday, but it came in time. That was the first and last time the mail came on Saturday afternoon. That was his grace. But why did he bother to come all the way from Kainchi to tell my wife? If he wanted, there were enough people right in front of him to bother with. Why did he think of me?

Once in Haridwar, a man was bathing in the river and lost his footing. The man was tossed about and carried in a whirlpool like a log. He was quite a bit older than his wife (he was fifty-two and she fifteen when they married), who was much devoted to him. After taking Maharajji’s name she jumped into the river and pulled her husband ashore. When they went to the place where Maharajji was, people there told them that Maharajji had been impossible and very abusive and would not let anyone near him. The woman went up and gently tapped at the door. He sweetly asked her in and inquired after her nose ring (which she had lost in the river). (The loss of a nose ring is a bad omen for an Indian woman, suggesting her husband’s death.) When her husband came along, Maharajji said, “You were going down the river like a piece of wood being whirled around.” Apparently the changes in Maharajji’s behavior, the abusiveness, had been involved in saving the man.

Maharajji takes care of all his devotees in so many ways. One day a devotee was on his way to Kainchi and en route stopped at a roadside food stand and ate some fried pakoras (fritters). (In those days, he ate pakoras every day.) When he arrived at Kainchi, the first thing Maharajji said was, “Do you eat pakoras? You’ve been eating those things for a long time now! Why do you eat them? You’ll ruin your stomach.” From that day onward, this devotee never again ate pakoras from the bazaar.

A woman devotee was sitting in the corner of the room near a strange man. Maharajji said to her, “Come sit here. The bad karma of other people can affect a person.”

A doctor from Bombay who attended many VIPs, including Nehru, was a somewhat stiff person (though he often gave massages to others). Another devotee was present when the doctor was visiting Maharajji. Maharajji saw the doctor coming and went into another room. He said, “I’ll not see him.” Then from the other room Maharajji yelled, “You couldn’t save Nehru. What’s wrong?”

The doctor said, “When I gave him the massage he got better, but then his nerves got very bad.” The other devotee asked the doctor if he had traveled outside India.

“Yes, for twelve months attending VIPs.”

She asked him how he knew Maharajji.

He replied, “I never believed in saints. In the Independence movement of 1942 I was a revolutionary and there were orders out to shoot me. I was in Kanprayag, near Badrinath. I was at a small dharmasalla, and while I was bathing Maharajji was upbraiding a swami nearby. As I passed by, Maharajji caught hold of me and said, ‘You are hungry. Go into that room.’ In the room there were two leaf plates of fresh puris and potatoes, which Maharajji told me to eat. When I finished all I could eat, Maharajji said, ‘Take more with you. Now run. Within an hour the police will be here. Go to Tibet. But don’t go by this route, go by that one.’ “But I had some doubts about Maharajji and left a friend behind to wait and see. In an hour a district superintendent of police who knew Maharajji came with a search party inquiring for me. Maharajji asked him, ‘Who would come at this hour?’ And as they started to proceed toward Tibet, Maharajji warned them not to: ‘This is the season for avalanches, and if you go on an avalanche will kill you. Go back.’ So they went back.”

One day, when Maharajji was at a village near Neeb Karori, a woman came to get water from the well. Maharajji laughed. When a devotee asked why he laughed, he said that the woman and her husband lived in a village three miles away and in six hours her husband was going to die from seeking this same water that she was fetching. “He is going to become thirsty and he is going to go to the water jug and be bitten by a cobra.” But, Maharajji added, if the devotee wanted to, he might be able to save him. The devotee immediately sent two or three men, who ran all the way and stopped the man just as he was going for the water. Indeed, there was a cobra there and the man was saved.

A forester from Agra came to Kainchi en route to Calcutta, and Maharajji told him, “Don’t leave today.”

“But Maharajji, I have to go. I have an interview.”

Maharajji insisted. The forester was sulky but didn’t go. The next day in the papers he read that India’s worst train accident in living memory had involved the train he would have been on.

In 1943 Maharajji came to Fatehgarh, where there was an old couple whose son was away fighting in Burma. When Maharajji came to their house they gave the little they had to him. They had only two cots. Maharajji said, “I’ll sleep now.” They gave him one of the cots and a blanket. The old couple stayed up the whole night watching Maharajji. He was groaning and moving in the bed until 4:00 A.M. At 4:30 Maharajji became quiet; then he took the bed sheet and wrapped something in it. He told the old man, “It’s very heavy. Don’t try to see what’s in it. You should throw it into the Ganga where it is deep. No one should see you or you’ll be arrested.” As he was taking it to the Ganga he felt it and it was full of bullets.

When he returned, the old man was told by Maharajji, “Don’t worry. Your son is coming in a month.” When the son came some weeks later, he said he had almost died. His company had been ambushed by the enemy and by chance he had fallen into a ditch. All night, bullets were flying left and right. At 4:00 A.M. the Japanese saw that they had killed everyone, and so they retreated. At 4:30 the Indian troops came. The son was the only survivor. (It was the same night Maharajji had visited the parents that this ambush occurred.)

One day Maharajji asked to be driven from the plains to the distant mountain town of Bhimtal. He went straight to a devotee’s house and told the people there to go to the old pilgrimage rest cabin at the Shiva temple and bring back whomever was staying there. For years no one had stayed in the dilapidated rest cabin, so the devotees thought it very unusual when they found the doors locked from within. They knocked and shouted but no one answered. Then they returned and reported to Maharajji.

Maharajji left that house and went to see another devotee, where he again sent people to the rest house with instructions not to return without its occupant. They caused a great commotion at the door until finally an old man opened the window. He tried to send the devotees away but they persisted, until finally the man and his wife were taken to Maharajji. Immediately Maharajji started shouting, “Do you think you can threaten God by starving yourselves? He won’t let his devotees die so easily. Take prasad!” He called for puris and sweets, but the man refused them. Maharajji insisted, and finally they both ate.

The couple had come from south India on a pilgrimage to Badrinath and other holy places. They were from a very rich family but had decided to leave home and family behind to devote their remaining years to prayer. They had resolved to pay their own way and never to beg. As they were returning from Badrinath, all their money and possessions had been stolen. They had only enough money for bus fare to Bhimtal, where they found the deserted rest cabin. They resolved to stay there and die, since that seemed to be the Lord’s will. They had been locked inside without food for three days before Maharajji forced them out. Maharajji insisted that they accept money for their trip back to Madras. They said that they would not beg. Maharajji said they were not begging and they could mail the money back when they reached home. They accepted the money and were sent off.

“O Kabir, why be afraid of anyone when the Lord himself protects you? What does it matter if a thousand dogs bark fiercely when you are seated on an elephant?”