Predicting the Global Eradication of Smallpox (Dr. Larry Brilliant & WHO)

In the early 1970s, a young American physician named Larry Brilliant (who later became the Director of Google.org and President of the Skoll Global Threats Fund) arrived at Kainchi Dham seeking spiritual enlightenment. Larry wanted nothing more than to meditate in a Himalayan cave and renounce worldly medicine. One afternoon, Maharaj Ji summoned Larry to his wooden bench and said bluntly in Hindi: "Doctor! Why are you sitting here doing nothing? Smallpox must be eradicated from the world! You must go to the World Health Organization in New Delhi and eradicate this disease!" Larry was stunned. At that time, smallpox had plagued humanity for thousands of years, killing hundreds of millions of people. Furthermore, Larry was an unlicensed foreign hippy doctor with no connections to the United Nations or the WHO. He tried to explain the impossibility: "Maharaj Ji, nobody will give me a job at WHO. I don't even have proper credentials in public health epidemiology." Baba Ji firmly insisted: "Go! You will go to Delhi, you will enter the WHO office, and you will wipe out smallpox. It is Hanuman Ji’s will. This disease will be completely eradicated by God’s grace!" Larry traveled to New Delhi and was repeatedly turned away by the WHO receptionist. Yet remembering Baba Ji’s words, he returned day after day. Miraculously, an emergency meeting occurred where a senior UN epidemiologist recognized Larry’s medical training. Larry was hired as a medical officer for the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme in India. Over the next several years, thousands of health workers waged the greatest public health campaign in human history. In 1980, the World Health Organization officially declared smallpox completely eradicated from planet Earth—exactly as Neem Karoli Baba had foretold.