Conscious Choice: Yogi Bares All in Memoirs

February 2005

Yogi Bares All in Memoirs

by Geoffrey Wallin

When Chicago-born 18-year-old William Gans left his Southern California home in 1969 to travel the world, he had no idea what he’d find. And, more importantly, he didn’t know what would find him.

Thirty-six years later he emerged with a new name, Rampuri; a new home, India; and a new occupation, guru. Rampuri is a Baba of Juna Akhara, the ancient order of the Renunciates of the Ten Names.

You can read the gripping memoir of how an American teen with wanderlust became heir to a 5,000-year-old Indian tradition in his book, Baba: Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Yogi, (Random House).

Or, if you’ve felt the pull of India yourself, and have wondered if the rumors of levitating ascetics are true, you can meet Rampuri in person, Feb. 24 at Bikram Yoga Chicago, 1344 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, where he will be sharing his story and signing copies of his book.

The Big Padukas

Rampuri’s book is more than just a memoir. It’s a story about a life of spiritual devotion; a story about cultures clashing as East meets West, sometimes in violent fashion. And it’s even a mystery story about shoes.

Shoes?

Yes, a thematic thread throughout the book is the disappearance of a pair of ancient wooden sandals, or padukas, that have been passed on from yogi to yogi, a sort-of “trying to fit into your master’s big padukas” tale.

“The padukas mark the meeting space between two worlds, where the body meets the earth,” said Rampuri. “If one places oneself in a meeting place between two worlds, that is where the action takes place. Our marker of the sublime is shoes; our marker of the highest is the lowest. It’s irony and contradiction where we find great knowledge.”

And Rampuri’s story is full of both. He was the first non-Indian disciple of his guru, Hari Puri Baba, and he is the first Westerner to have disciples himself.

“It happens very gradually,” he said. “At one point I just looked around me, and I had disciples.”

The Magical Mystic Tour

The book chronicles the journey of this Westerner embracing a totally foreign tradition, and being embraced by that tradition in turn. He tells of the obstacles he faced in his struggle to devote his life to spirit, and the wonders that resulted. “Magic happens anywhere worlds meet,” he wrote.

“It’s one thing to come to India as an imperial subject, to map the unknown,” Rampuri said in a telephone interview. “It’s a whole other thing to come as a student.” He said he didn’t mean to imply that one is better than the other. “What’s interesting is to see who is coming to India.”

Rampuri’s journey began when he was born at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Lincoln Park, where his father was a resident in surgery. He grew up in the Los Angeles area, and believes he “did a brief stint in Texas as an infant.”

Some have compared Rampuri’s journey to Ram Dass’ trip to India to find enlightenment, but there are several major differences. Rampuri, for one thing, went to India when he was still a teen and he stayed there.

Ram Dass went to India when he was in his 40s and already well established in the West as a Harvard professor who did extensive work with psychedelic drugs and their champion, Timothy Leary. He stayed in India for a couple of months in search of enlightenment, and then went home.

What the Hell is Enlightenment?

“I hate that word: enlightenment,” Rampuri said. “It’s a word like democracy. What the hell does it mean? What meaning is the speaker populating that word with? Words like democracy and freedom, do they mean the same thing that they did five years ago? How do we escape from superimposing on the world what is enlightenment? We assume that our point of view is the universal point of view and should be superimposed on the rest of the world to remove their ignorance.”

A big problem, said Rampuri, is that people in the West tend to think of enlightenment as some universal state. “That universal state doesn’t exist,” he said. “People don’t think in universal ways, they think in local ways.”

That is what makes the meeting of East and West such an elusive idea. For Rampuri, the meeting was serendipitous.

“I have been waiting for you,” he was told by his guru, Hari Puri Baba, “I knew you would come today.”

Some skeptics might ask: What business does a yogi have writing a book?

A Yogi’s Day is Never Done

“What yogis do at the end of the day is not put their legs behind their head and hold their breath,” said Rampuri. “They give people blessings.”

As often as not, those blessings come in the form of stories.

“Storytelling is not a transparent machine. It delivers something,” he said. “In my tradition, it delivers everything. There’s a tremendous power in that. I’ve seen it in an esoteric tradition [that is] 5,000 years old.”

Baba: Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Yogi, is a book that any spiritual seeker, or anyone even vaguely curious about India or the yogic tradition that emerged there, will find fascinating. It will challenge your assumptions about Hinduism, about yogis, about a country that enjoyed thousands of years of rich tradition before being colonized by a Western power.

If nothing else, Baba is a great introduction to a grand old tradition. Of course, Rampuri is one of the first to point out that some of the best learning comes from the experience outside of books. “We don’t sit down and learn these things — this isn’t studying; you don’t read,” said Rampuri, speaking of the yogic tradition. “When you reach critical mass in absorbing something, there is a presence in you, a presence that you can tap. And that is the guru.”

For more information, call Bikram Yoga Chicago, 773-395-9150; or visit www.bycic.com.

Geoffrey Wallin is a Conscious Choice editorial intern.

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