FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions. |
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There are 19 entries in the FAQ.
Pages: 1
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| What are the rules at Maharajji's ashrams? |
 | PARAM PUJYA BABA SRI NEEB KARORI
MAHARAJ ASHRAM KAINCHI
This ashram was set up by Sri Sri Param Pujya Maharaj-ji to give his devotees a place where they can seek spiritual upliftment in a troubled world. This place is intended to be a place of perennial bliss, All those who stay here can contribute to this by letting themselves (be) guided by the following rules.
Ashram inmates should get up early, with sufficient time in hand to quickly go through their morning routines for participating in the daily programmes for the ashram.
Please attend without fail the arti-prayer and routine of the ashram
Please Do Not use intoxicants inside the ashram premises. Also do not hear to or sing film songs etc. or indulge in card games and the like. The ashram should not give the impression of a tourist resort.
Everyone is duty bound to pay specific attention to cleanliness, purity and peace of the ashram.
Clean your room yourself.
(I) Morning and evening meals should be had at the alloted hours on the ringing of the bell for the purpose.
(II) Tea is served at the following hours: morning before and after arti. Evening 4 and 5 PM. Please note timings and cooperate.
Please maintain well, the ashram things supplied to you and return them duly cleaned, to the right person before leaving the ashram. It is your responsibility to take care to them, therefore. Keep your room locked whenever you go out.
Do not engage ashram workers for personal work. This hinders the smooth performance of ashram duties by them.
Make best of the time and do not waste it in gossip. You are advised to utilize your time in the service of the ashram or in prayer, kirtan or in talks about Maharajji's lilas.
Please follow these instructions carefully. It is in our own interest to abide by these with a sense of responsibility born of our devotion to Sri Sri Maharaj.
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| Do you have an email Newsletter? |
| Yes. Occasional emailings are sent regarding items that have been posted to the neemkarolibaba.com Web site or to other sites pertaining to Maharajji. Devotees can subscribe to or unsubscribe from these emails on any page. The neemkarolibaba.com Web site uses subscribers email addresses Only for this one purpose. |
| How can I make a contribution? |
| neemkarolibaba.com needs donations from devotees to continue to remain online
neemkarolibaba.com has continually grown since it was begun in 1999. The site has always been the principal global source of the Hindu religious practice materials for devotees. Now neemkarolibaba.com offers audio, video and hundreds of stories of Maharajji's lilas. neemkarolibaba.com connects devotees to a number of important ashrams and temples. neemkarolibaba.com is an act of pure goodness and love that has helped, guided, and inspired tens of thousands of people who love Maharajji.
Donations to operation of neemkarolibaba.com can be made through PayPal in the box at the lower left of the pages. Donations can be made with credit card or PayPal account with United States Dollars, Canadian Dollars, British Pound, Australian Dollars, Japanese Yen and Euros. Donation can be made once or can be set up to reoccur weekly, monthly or yearly.
Contributions of devotees make it possible for neemkarolibaba.com to remain online and, indeed, to grow, in service to those Maharajji has called to the site.
All contributions are greatly appreciated by the many devotees who visit neemkarolibaba.com. Contributions made to neemkarolibaba.com operation are NOT tax deductable.
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| I have a story about the influence of Maharaj-ji's lilas in my life. Will Maharaj-ji's Web site post letters from people with past or current experiences? |
| One of Maharaj-ji's western devotees said, "Maharaj-ji's greatest miracle of all just might be the miracles He has been doing in peoples lives since He left His body." The neemkarolibaba.com site accepts submission of some of these stories on a limited basis through the online contact form, here. Stories of the Maharajji in the dreams of devotees are not accepted for posting - there are several blogs at other sites where people can post those. |
| Did you change the photo gallery? |
| Yes The neemkarolibaba.com site is now using a photo database component called Zoom Media Gallery for the photographs of Maharajji and other photographs.
All devotees of Babaji will appreciate the huge photo site for pictures of Maharajji at imageevent.com. This valuable resource is a great boon to all devotees, thanks to the immense efforts of Mohan Baba. |
| When was neemkarolibaba.com started? When was the last upgrade? |
| The original site was published in very simple form on a geocities.com site in 1997. Printout of the site pages were carried to Mataji in India by Sadhu Ma in early 1998. Mata-ji sent a message back saying that for me to do this site work for Maharajji, I must "come from the source." That is exactly what happened.
We went to India from August 1998 to May 1999, took about 5,000 photographs, visited the ashrams and places associated with Maharajji, and gathered materials from several sources including Gurudat Sharmaji, Usha Bahadur, and Dr. (Mrs.) Saroj Pandey. We printed all the pages of the Web site files in Delhi in Winter 1999. The pages were given to Mataji for approval at Holi time in Vrindavan. After our return to America with Sharmaji in May 1999, some more work was done on the site. The materials at neemkarolibaba.com were first published on the Web in July, 1999. Materials were added to neemkarolibaba.com since 1999 - including video and audio of Maharaj-ji, many more photographs, additional stories and books. Many people came in America and brought materials or stories that were incorporated into the Web site.
I returned to India in 2001 and made a digital video movie of the pranapratishta (inauguration) of the temple at Maharajji's birthplace, Akbarpur, as well as visiting Didiji in Allahabad, and also visited at Maharajji's camp at the Maha Kumba Mela.
Radha and I returned again in 2003, with our grandson Ashutosh, visiting Kainchi, Rishikesh, and Vrindavan. After that trip a major upgrade was done on neemkarolibaba.com through early 2004. Static Version 2 was posted Hanuman Jayanti time, 2004. This included switching from the old "frames" based site, new left-side navigation menu, individual galleries opening in new window for slide show, and quite a bit of smoothing & polishing. That site can still be seen by clicking the "Old Site" menu item on the left side.
The dynamic version 3 site was launched in March 2006. The neemkarolibaba.com site continues to be updated, polished, corrected, formated, adjusted, and added to, here and there, bit by bit..., by Maharajji's Grace. |
| What about the "Old Site"? |
| The older static site of neemkarolibaba.com was replaced by a new dynamic engine March - April 2006. The old static site ("old site") was left in place online as a temporary archive of previous work. Just about all of the content on this static site has been moved to the dynamic site's database.
New Site |
Old Site |
The old site is left online for search engine and devotee bookmark reasons now, but at some time in the future these static pages may be removed. The old site opens in a different window and these pages are no longer maintained by neemkarolibaba.com's Webmaster. |
| Why is Maharaj-ji's site located at a dot-com address and does that mean that neemkarolibaba.com is commercial? |
| Maharaj-ji's global site can be found on the Web through the following United States URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) listed below:
neemkarolibaba.com
neemkarolibaba.net
neemkarolibaba.org
maharaj-ji.com
maharaj-ji.net
maharaj-ji.org
babaneebkarori.com
maharajji.com
While dot-com is used as the resident address and it is possible to buy some of the resources mentioned herein, the aim of Maharajji's Web site is not commercial, by any means. |
| What happened to the Resources section? |
| We were using a really nice Joomla component called "awesom" that works with amazoop. This was a very effective method of providing resource lists with links to the actual resources. In September 06, it started displaying the items pages as blank pages. I tried a lot of tech work-arounds without correcting the problem. The resource feature has been disabled until Maharajji provides some fix for this awesom technology or some other solution. |
| What is the technology used to run neemkarolibaba.com? |
| The current version of neemkarolibaba.com site operates using Joomla 1.0.8 Content Management System (CMS). This super powerful CMS uses the php scripting language and mySQL databases. Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License and supported by a very large global community of developers dedicated to open-source software.
Various components, modules and bots are used for calendars, contacts, contributions, links, random image, random quotes, FAQ, maps, digital video, and other CMS functions.
More information can be found at joomla.org. |
| Who is the site administrator of neemkarolibaba.com? |
| This site is administered "anonymously" by a devotee of Sri Neem Karoli Baba. The administrator uses the email pseudonym "gurubhai". "Anonymously" doesn't mean "secretly". Gurubhai's name is known, but not on Maharaj-ji's Web site. |
| Is information posted on this site in the listing for each of Maharaj-ji's ashrams official? |
| Yes and No. Information about Neem Karoli Baba's Ashrams on each page is sort of official because there are very few online sources. The listed information about schedules and policies is the best available information at the time it was posted. Policies and schedules of Maharaj-ji's ashrams are determined by each ashram. Maharaj-ji's global Web site can only reflect a broad overview of Maharaj-ji's Ashrams. Official information can be only be obtained directly from each of Maharaj-ji's Ashrams - via letter, telephone, or in some cases by eMail. The individual Ashram information pages on Maharaj-ji's global Web site can be viewed as simply a report by a devotee visiting Maharaj-ji's India Ashrams and Maharaj-ji's America Ashram. To be perfectly honest with you, this entire Web site could in one way be viewed as a "report." Site administrator and publisher, as well as friends, provides content to "devotees" of Maharaj-ji (in India, in America, and in many other countries) and those everywhere who love Maharaj-ji. Many persons devoted to Neem Karoli Baba do not visit Maharaj-ji's ashrams at all. They have their own relationship with Maharaj-ji. The hope of neemkarolibaba.com is to offer a repository for the archiving of all known materials relating to Sri Sri Sri Neem Karoli Baba Maharaj-ji. Maharaj-ji is still writing the story with His lilas and His appearances. This is not about photos, or ashrams, or even practise..., it is about Maharaj-ji..., only Maharaj-ji. We'll be gone..., Maharaj-ji remains. |
| Why is the pronoun "He" capitalized when referring to Sri Maharaj-ji? |
| This is because the publisher and administrator of Maharaj-ji's Web site believes it is appropriate to capitalize this pronoun in reference to Maharaj-ji. |
| I can't see the movie of Maharaj-ji. I can't hear the sound file of Maharaj-ji speaking or chanting RAM RAM. I can't see the virtual reality. What is wrong? What can I do? |
| This site uses QuickTime 6. You can get this software by going to Apple Computers web site at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download. Thank you for Apple, Maharaj-ji. |
| I sent an email to this site, but nobody ever replied to me. Why? |
| It's About What's On The Site. This site is not about email interactivity. This site is about interconnectivity. Maharaj-ji's Web site supplies the information and Maharaj-ji's ashrams and temples care for the needs of the people with feeding and puja and singing. Some individual questions receive individual replies. These usually have to do with submission requests for photos, stories, or other materials about Sri Neem Karoli Baba. |
| Will neemkarolibaba.com site send me emailed information about daily activities and schedules at Maharaj-ji's ashrams in India and America? |
| No. The information contained on the Web pages for the ashrams is the best information currently available globally. While neemkarolibaba.com presents information on Maharaj-ji's Ashrams and Temples in America and India, the most important part of neemkarolibaba.com is Sri Neem Karoli Baba Himself. Follow the information given within Maharaj-ji's Web site. All information currently available is posted on Maharaj-ji's Web site and can be easily downloaded using standard browser downloading techniques. neemkarolibaba.com is about to impliment a very efficient email application for an opt-in, opt-out mailing list. |
| How can I go about getting a letter of introduction to Maharaj-ji's ashram's in India? |
| There is no one way to Maharaj-ji's ashrams. The principal reason that you would want a letter of introduction is so the people who run the ashrams in India know that you are aware of the etiquette, customs, and practices within these ashrams, if you wanted to actually stay within the walls of the ashram at night. At this time there is no official answer to this question. It is all the lila of Maharaj-ji.
Perhaps you might check with some of the ashram managers and people mentioned on this Web site. Each ashram varies to some degree in the acceptance of Maharaj-ji's Western Devotees staying at the ashrams and under what conditions. Some of Maharaj-ji's ashrams are more open than others. Westerners aren't permitted to stay in several of the ashrams. All of the ashrams are to some extent "seasonal" for Maharaj-ji's westerner devotees. Some of Maharaj-ji's ashrams become very cold in winter and actually close the doors to visitors; even shutting the doors to the temples during such time. Some of the ashrams become very hot. Some of the ashrams have very strict rules while some seem to give more latitude to Western devotees.
Ashrams are not for sightseeing and sightseers. Ashrams are not hotels. There is a different purpose to ashrams. In general, one would want to stay at an ashram for darshan of Maharaj-ji or another saint, practice such as arati, practical service to the ashram, austerities, and to remove oneself from the world to re-center and "re-charge one's batteries", so to speak. There are some important rules to observe at Maharajji's ashrams. There are people who have spent some time in some of these ashrams in both the recent and distant past. These people will help you get there, with letters or whatever, if you really want to go there.
Thanks to Durga for her help in writing this.
If you came to Maharaj-ji with an objective, He would not accept you. But if you were innocent and open and loving, He took you right in. - Gurudat Sharmaji |
| Will Maharaj-ji's Web site provide outgoing links to other Web sites? |
| While neemkarolibaba.com is a "destination point" Web site - Once you have reached here..., you've reached "here". However, when neemkarolibaba.com was upgraded to dynamic operation links to some saints and teachers have been listed, much like the "cookbook" of the timeless "Be Here Now" book. Also some links have been made to sites of satsang who were in India with Maharajji, including RD, KD, Sita's company and several others. Email addresses (if any) for Maharaj-ji's ashram are listed on that ashrams page.
Of Maharaj-ji's ashrams only Taos, Vrindavan/Agra and Lucknow have their own Web sites, at this time. As other ashrams listed on this site post official Web sites, links will be provided.
Because of Maharaj-ji's insistence that we Feed Everyone, links are provided to feeding sites such as The Hunger Site. where you can contribute food with an on-screen click and All Faiths Pantry's effort to deliver groceries, free of charge, to financially limited Cleveland area Seniors who are physically unable to get to a neighborhood hunger center.
There is link to an awesome image gallery of photos of Maharajji that was posted by a devotee.
Check the links section for more information.
Linking from neemkarolibaba.com is limited, but if you have found a site that you believe is missing here, please use the contact form to send in the link for possible inclusion. That's how we found out about The Hunger Site in the first place. |
| What About Copyrights? |
| Site: ©1999 - 2007 Neem Karoli Baba Website(s)
Items on this reporting / directory / portal site may never be used for commercial purposes. Items on this web site contain book report materials for materials copyrighted by others - excerpts have been provided as a guide to the books and experiences. Text materials on this site that are unique to this site are as copyright notice above. Photographs of Maharaj-ji have been taken by Balaram Das, Rameshwardas, Mohan Baba and others. Most of the very fine photographs were scanned by Mohan Baba. Early site gallery photos scanned by Gurubhai. Most photos of ashrams have been taken by Jai Ram. |
FAQ 