The monastery was originally developed in 1942 during WWII by Gerald Heard,[1][2][3][4] a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda of the Vedanta Society of Southern California an American branch of the Ramakrishna Order of India.[5] Established as Trabuco College, it was originally meant to be a religious, non-sectarian, co-ed monastery, unaffiliated with any particular religious organization.[6] Aldous Huxley, a close friend of Heard, spent 6 weeks there working on his book The Perennial Philosophy.[7]
However, the experiment failed and Heard donated the land and buildings to the Vedanta Society of Southern California as a male-only monastery.[8] It was consecrated on September 7, 1949, by Swami Prabhavananda, as the Ramakrishna Monastery. It is located on a 40-acre property in the rolling hills of Trabuco Canyon, California. It bears the name of the great Indian mystic, Sri Ramakrishna, founder of the Ramakrishna Order of India.[9][10]
References
- ^ Jackson, Carl (1994). Vedanta for the West. Indiana University Press. p. 117. ISBN 0-253-33098-X.
- ^ Sawyer, Dana (2002). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Crossroads Publishing Company. p. 116. ISBN 0-8245-1987-6.
- ^ Murray, Nicholas (2002). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. St. Martin' Press. p. 333. ISBN 0-312-30237-1.
- ^ Orange County Register January 28, 2015
- ^ Jackson, Carl (1994). Vedanta for the West. Indiana University Press. p. 117. ISBN 0-253-33098-X.
- ^ Sawyer, Dana (2002). Huston Smith: Wisdom Keeper. Fons Vital. p. 46. ISBN 978-1891785-290.
- ^ Western Admirers of Ramakrishna & His Disciples Book, Page 146
- ^ Isherwood, Christopher (1980). My Guru and His Disciple. Farrar Straus Giroux. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-374-21702-0.
- ^ Brazil, Ben (15 February 2018). "Daily Pilot News Daily Pilot The monastery amid O.C.'s mania". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 10 July 2019.
- ^ Orange County Register January 28, 2015
External links