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The monastery was originally developed in 1942 during WWII by Gerald Heard, a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda of the Vedanta Society of Southern California an American branch of the Ramakrishna Order of India. Established as Trabuco College, it was originally 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.
References
- ↑ http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2011-articles-faith/chasing-divine UC Berkeley: California Magazine, Spring 2011 . accessed 7/13/2015
- ↑ Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Jeffrey J. Kripal (2007) p. 91.
- ↑ http://www.vedanta.org/vssc/centers/trabuco.html Vedanta Society: Trabuco Canyon. accessed 8/20/2010