Vedanta Society Of Southern California, Ramakrishna Monastery
The monastery was originally developed in 1942 during WWII by Gerald Heard, a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. Established as Trabuco College, it was meant to be a religious, non-sectarian, co-ed monastery, unaffiliated with any particular religious organization. Aldous Huxley, a close friend of Heard, spent 6 weeks there working on his book The Perennial Philosophy. However, the experiment failed and Heard donated the land and buildings to the Vedanta Society of Southern California as a male-only monastery. 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. The Ramakrishna Monastery is part of the Vedanta Society of Southern California and is an American branch of the Ramakrishna Order of India.