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.

[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.