Consciousness and Speech

“Your tool of knowledge is Speech, because its boundaries establish the possibilities of the world.” – Baba Rampuri

Baba Rampuri, author of “Autobiography of a Sadhu, a Journey into Mystic India,” and frequent commentator on Oral Tradition, Sacred Speech, and post colonial analysis, is an American expatriate,  the first foreigner to be initiated into India’s largest and most ancient order of yogis, the Naga Sannyasis of Juna Akhara.  He has lived in India since 1970, where he practices and teaches the oral tradition of the Sanatan Dharma, conducts sacred ceremony and rites, and hosts workshops and retreats.

He is now a guru with a number of disciples within the order.  At the Maha Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, 2010, he was honored with the title, “Shri Mahant,” for his 40 years of practice and service, and given a permanent seat in the Council of Juna Akhara.

During his long discipleship in the mystical and sometimes dangerous world of the wisdom tradition, he received oral teachings in sacred speech, mantra, tantra, ayurveda, logic, ritual, and, encompassing all the above, the way of the yogi in the Yoga Tradition.

Baba Rampuri was born in Chicago, the son of world renowned pediatric surgeon, Dr. Stephen L. Gans, who helped establish the field of pediatric surgery and was one of its greatest innovators.

Growing up in Beverly Hills, California, in the 50’s and 60’s, among the wealthy and famous, he became critical of the “culture of spectacle,” and began exploring other cultures, as well as counter-culture alternatives.  Influenced by teachers such as Alan Watts, and his reading of Indian philosophy, Baba migrated to India in 1969, and soon afterwards became a sadhu and disciple of the great yogi, Shri Hari Puri Maharaj.  After satsang tours in the United States in 1971 and 1973, and a year doing research with Prof. Frits Staal, at the University of California at Berkeley in 1974, Baba began teaching sacred speech in New Delhi in 1977.

Baba founded Hari Puri Ashram in the Himalayan foothill town of Haridwar in 1984. Baba has since become a member of the Council of Elders of Datt Akhara, Ujjain, Central India, and the special envoy of its Pir.  He divides his time between his ashram in Hardwar, Datta Akhara in Ujjain, and in Goa. He hosts an international camp at Kumbh Melas (the most recent being the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 2013), as well as retreats, teachings, and initiations in India.   He gives lectures and teachings throughout the world on consciousness and inner exploration, and conducts a bi monthly MasterClass in consciousness and speech on the internet.  An archive of these teachings is available in his “Consciousness and Speech Series.”

In 2005, Random House published Rampuri’s Baba, Autobiography of a Blue Eyed Yogi, which was then republished by Inner Traditions in 2010 as “Autobiography of a Sadhu, a Journey into Mystic India.”  Baba Rampuri’s autobiography has been published in German, Russian, Czech, Croatian, and Serbian Languages.

In his acclaimed 2008 lecture series, known as “The Edge of Indian Spirituality,” in Basel, Switzerland, as the guest of Dr. Albert Hofmann, Baba Rampuri countered the rapidly growing trend of “dumbing down” the treasure of Indian culture and its replacement by new age commercial clones.