Revealing the Threads: Connections between Buckminster Fuller and Neem Karoli Baba
On two interwoven legacies of love that continue to shape the fabric of our world
This essay is the beginning of an exploration. This is an invitation to others who feel a connection to both Bucky and Maharaji, or who have been influenced by their teachings. I’d love to hear from people who are living in this same space, who see the ways these legacies continue to shape the world today.
Last week, on the anniversary of Neem Karoli Baba’s Mahasamadhi, something unexpected happened. I had a conversation with Mirabai Bush that opened up a whole new perspective for me. She shared that after Buckminster Fuller’s death, his funeral reception was held at the Cambridge house where she and others from Neem Karoli Baba’s satsang were living at the time. Ram Dass visited that house often, and my father did as well. Hearing that absolutely blew my mind.
For years, I’ve been deeply connected to Buckminster Fuller’s work. His vision of a world that works for 100% of humanity without ecological offense or to the disadvantage of anyone has been a driving force in my life. His ideas have shaped how I see possibility and change in the world. At the same time, I’ve been connected to Neem Karoli Baba’s lineage for as long as I can remember—not just because I was born into a family devoted to him, but because I’ve witnessed how his legacy has truly shaped the world for the better.
One powerful example is how Neem Karoli Baba set Dr. Larry Brilliant on a path that made him instrumental in the eradication of smallpox, one of the greatest public health achievements in human history. And the work didn’t stop there—the SEVA Foundation, which Dr. Brilliant co-founded, has gone on to reverse blindness for countless people in India and Nepal. These are just a couple of the ways Maharaji’s legacy continues to reduce suffering and create meaningful change in the world. The more I reflect on this, the more I see how deeply connected this is to everything Buckminster Fuller taught and worked toward in his life.
What really brought it home was when I saw a photo of Bucky in front of a picture of Neem Karoli Baba in that same house. Seeing that image of these two figures—one whose mind was always reaching toward the future, and the other whose heart was fully present in the now—felt like a revelation. It sparked something in me that’s been unraveling ever since.
The more I sit with this, the more I see how these two have shaped my life, not just in different ways, but in ways that are starting to converge. One of the most powerful links between them is how both were deeply motivated by love—and how grief, in different ways, acted as a doorway to that love.
For Bucky, it was the death of his young daughter that cracked him open. He hit rock bottom and contemplated ending his life, which opened his mind to a profound realization: that his life wasn’t his to end, that his life belonged to the universe. From that moment forward, he devoted himself to the idea of making the world work for everyone. He referred to himself as “guinea pig B,” committing his life to this massive project of love for humanity. That love, born out of grief, became his driving force.
Neem Karoli Baba, on the other hand, lived in a constant state of love. His presence was love. There are many beautiful books written about the effect he had on people, both while he was alive in Miracle of Love and Love Everyone. And even since he died, he keeps showing up in peoples lives in astonishing ways. Many of these stories are recounted in Whisper in the Heart, and the stories continue to be written.
One thread of connection I am making, is how both of them have helped me to have a clearer and more empowered relationship with Jesus. As a young girl growing up on an Ashram surrounded by churches that demonized us and made us feel unsafe, my relationship with Jesus has not often been easy. (This, despite the fact that there is a beautiful Christ garden on our Ashram and my mother raised us with a deeply interactive and joyful Sunday School to learn both the stories of the Torah and of the New Testament.)
Maharaji would often tell people to go away. Sometimes he would tell them to go away and meditate like Christ, which seems to have confused the westerners who thought they were there for something different. So one day, a devotee asked him how to meditate like Christ. Maharaji stopped, got very still, and tears began to roll down his face. He simply said, “He lost himself in love.” That story has always stayed with me. For Maharaji, love wasn’t just an ideal or a feeling—it was a state of being, a total surrender to something greater than the self.
Buckminster Fuller had a continuous project of rewriting the Lord’s Prayer as a way to deepen into its wisdom. Many people often only learn one rigid version, many times translated by the church, but I learned in my Interspiritual Seminary training that the Lord’s Prayer emerged from a disciple asking Jesus how to pray, and he said, “Like this…“ and spontaneously spoke, in Aramaic, at the time, the original version of the prayer that so many know different versions of.
In Seminary we were given many different translations, as well as a transliteration and phonetic breakdown of what it would have been in the original Aramaic, which I practiced reciting aloud for some time to connect with it more deeply.
So Bucky’s project of continuously rewriting the Lord’s Prayer seems to me to be in the spirit of what Christ was instructing, and from that work came the phrase, Love is Metaphysical Gravity. That concept has become central in my life. It’s this idea that love is what holds everything together—it’s the force that binds us to one another, to the Earth, and to the future. And then there’s Maharaji, who in that moment of weeping over Christ’s love, showed a profound respect and connection to Jesus that’s helped me come into a more open-hearted relationship with him as well.
What’s even more interesting is that as I explore these connections, I’m starting to see how the people devoted to each of their legacies have so much in common. There’s this shared commitment to making the world better—not just through ideas or technology, but through love and service. I think there may be even more overlap between the two than I ever realized, and that’s something I’m just starting to uncover.
The more I reflect on all of this, the more I see these two legacies—Buckminster Fuller and Neem Karoli Baba—not just as separate influences, but as threads that are weaving together in my life. They both, in their own ways, acted as trim tabs—small but powerful forces that have steered the larger ship of humanity toward love and transformation.
This essay is really just the beginning of an exploration. I’m not trying to cover everything here, and I’m sure there’s so much more to uncover. I’m putting this out there as an invitation to others who feel a connection to both Bucky and Maharaji, or who have been influenced by their teachings. I’d love to hear from people who are living in this same space, who see the ways these legacies continue to shape the world today.
Their work isn’t over—it’s still unfolding. And by starting this conversation, I hope we can keep revealing the deeper connections between these two remarkable beings and the love that continues to ripple out through all of us.