Who’s the Guru Loved by Steve Jobs, Julia Roberts?

Bollywood superstar Anushka Sharma recently put out a heartfelt post for her spiritual guru ‘Neem Karoli Baba’ on Instagram. She and her husband, cricketer Virat Kohli are frequently observed at Karoli’s ashrams across the country. On the occasion of Holi, Anushka paid homage to her guru and shared some previously unseen photos from a recent ‘spiritual journey’.

Take a look at the post:

The celebrity couple visited the Nainital ashram with their daughter Vamika recently, where they meditated for a few hours, as per reports.

But who is Baba Neem Karoli? News18 Explains:

Some notable personalities who have visited Karoli’s ashram and are followers include late Steve Jobs, Julia Roberts, and Mark Zuckerberg.

According to a Mint report, Neem Karoli Baba was a Hindu Guru (1900 – 11 September 1973) and Lord Hanuman follower. His devotees referred to him as ‘Maharaj-ji’.

His real name was Lakshman Narayan Sharma, and he was born about 1900 in the Akbarpur hamlet of Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad area to an affluent Brahmin family. His parents wedded him when he was 11 years old. He left home, though, to become a travelling sadhu. He came home at his father’s desire to begin a settled married life. He had two boys and one daughter.

Outside of India, he is noted for being the spiritual master of a number of Americans who visited India in the 1960s and 1970s, the report said.

His ‘Bhakti Style’

He promoted service to others as the highest manifestation of unconstrained devotion to God and was a bhakti yoga practitioner for a lifetime, as per the Mint report.

He would declare that attachment and ego are the biggest impediments to realising God, and that “a knowledgeable man and a fool are similar as long as attachment and ego exist in the physical body.”

Steve Jobs, Julia Roberts’ Inspiration

Steve Jobs flew to India in 1974 with his buddy Dan Kottke to study Hinduism and Indian philosophy. They had also intended to meet Neem Karoli Baba, but he had died. Inspired by Steve Jobs, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg visited Baba Neem Karoli’s ashram in Kainchi in 2015 at a difficult period for the company, the report said.

The Baba is also reported to have impacted Hollywood actress Julia Roberts, who was attracted to Hinduism because of him. When asked about her interest in Hinduism in an interview, she stated, “It began from seeing a photograph of a guru called Neem Karoli Baba and I was so pulled to the picture of this person and I didn’t know who he was or what he was about, but I felt really intense interest,” the report said.

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