Jobs had taken a "spiritual retreat to India" and "traversing through the country had sparked Jobs' conversion to Buddhism," a CNN report said.
Jobs had travelled to India in the late 1970s, with money he had saved working as a technician at a video games manufacturer in the US.
He reportedly visited the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend Daniel Kottke in search of spiritual enlightenment.
Born in 1955 in San Francisco, Jobs grew up amid the rise of hippie counter-culture. Bob Dylan and the Beatles were his two favourite musical icons and he shared their political leanings and anti-establishment views.
"Like the Beatles, Jobs took a spiritual retreat to India and regularly walked around his neighbourhood and the office barefoot," the CNN report said.
Published 06 October 2011, 08:09 IST