Bhagavan Das
The six-and-a-half-foot American sadhu who guided Ram Dass to Neem Karoli Baba in 1967 — and came home to become one of the very first Western voices of kirtan, chanting Sri Ram with his ektara decades before "yoga music" existed.
Life & Legacy
Bhagavan Das was born Kermit Michael Riggs in 1945 in Laguna Beach, California. At eighteen he left for Europe and overland to India, where he spent over six years as a barefoot wandering sadhu — learning temple songs, mantra, and Nada Yoga, the yoga of sound, and receiving the name Bhagavan Das from Neem Karoli Baba. In 1967 a young Harvard psychologist named Richard Alpert met the towering American sadhu in Kathmandu and followed him through the hills; Bhagavan Das led him to Neem Karoli Baba''s feet, a meeting that transformed Alpert into Ram Dass — who opens Be Here Now with the story.
Returning to America, Bhagavan Das recorded Ah in 1971 and chanted on Ram Dass''s box set Love Serve Remember, putting the sound of kirtan — droning ektara, one voice calling the divine name — before Western audiences years before the genre had a name. He told his own story in the 1997 memoir It''s Here Now (Are You?), and he continues to teach Nada Yoga and lead kirtan across the country, a living link between the first generation of Western seekers and today''s chant community.
