There are spiritual centers all over California (and the world), but what makes the ones in L.A. unique is that many of them hold imperfect pasts and urban realities, mirroring the city itself.
To live in L.A. is to be so inundated with the architecture of its spirituality (and quasi-spirituality) that you don’t even notice it’s there anymore. It’s baked into the foundation of the place, camouflaging as scaffolding as we go about our daily routines. The Church of Scientology becomes nothing but the place you pass by on your way to Found Oyster. The signs on the telephone poles in all caps — “SE LEEN LAS CARTAS” — are part of the neighborhood color. The smoke wafting out of the backdoors of botanicas down Pico becomes the base note to L.A.’s natural street aroma. Once you turn the dial, though, you’ll notice just how many monuments exist to the city’s collective obsession with knowing ourselves better.
To say that L.A. is a city of seekers is almost too crushing a stereotype, especially when you take into account our history with colonization, Midwestern transplants who hang out only in Culver City, and cults of personality. But when you start to chart the spiritual centers that punctuate our neighborhoods, there is no denying that we are built by the seekers or the sought after. It would be too easy and too inaccurate to write these places off as strange anomalies — one-off quirks in a city filled with so many quirks. They are part of L.A.’s history.
When spending time at an L.A. spiritual center like the Philosophical Research Society, the idea that “I can’t believe this exists in the middle of L.A.” may cross your mind.
There are spiritual centers all over California (and the world), but what makes the ones in L.A. unique is that many of them hold imperfect pasts and urban realities, mirroring the city itself, and maybe being misunderstood in the same way. That they are so prevalent, that they have such a history, has kept them cloaked in an overgrown mystery for many of us. We’ve driven past them dozens of times but don’t interact with them — don’t even know sometimes that we’re allowed to interact with them — taking their existence for granted. I wanted to peel back the layers and understand what it feels like to be in these spaces, why they exist and what has drawn people here in the past and the present.
I chose the Self-Realization Fellowship Hollywood Temple, the Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens in West Adams and the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz — three centers that represent the history of L.A.’s spiritual architecture in all of its grandiose, weird and beautiful glory. Each one is distinct in its teachings and philosophies and its architectural style seems to be a direct reflection of that. They feel rare to be inside of. The idea that “I can’t believe this exists in the middle of L.A.” may cross your mind. But where else would you find a gilded temple floating in the middle of one of the city’s most savage intersections? Or an Italian Renaissance villa just south of the 10 Freeway filled with Asian antiques and long-past cult allegations? Or a terracotta-hued philosophy center hidden on a hill in Los Feliz that’s stacked with rare spiritual texts from around the world and the lingering spirit of its founder, including rumors around his suspicious death?
L.A. is built on frequencies. The one you tap into carves your entire experience, colors your world so completely that it’s hard to see any other colors. In other words, what you’re seeking you will find. For me, in different moments, L.A. has been the lightest city in the world and the darkest. There are times when all I can see is the feces on the sidewalk, the housing crisis, environmental catastrophes, clout chasers, when all I can feel is the small daily heartbreaks of being stuck behind an orange bus down Western Avenue. There are other times when I’m driving east on the 10 at dusk with my windows open, the downtown skyline glowing pink to my left, and feel like happiness is my destiny, and that there’s no better place to will it into existence than here. L.A.’s spiritual architecture seems to hold this duality between four walls, all over town. To me, these spaces say: “It’s all here. You choose.”
Sitting with the contradictions
The Self-Realization Hollywood Temple.
To be inside the Self-Realization Hollywood Temple is to come to terms with the fact that L.A. contradicts itself every day, every minute. The structure sits next to the Kaiser Permanente hospital complex on Sunset Boulevard, less than half a mile east from an abandoned 99 Cents Store, and on the opposite side of the block from the Church of Scientology, glowing powdery blue in eye view. I am being guided around the space by Brother Keshavananda, a monk who has been with the fellowship for 51 years, living at this location for the last three. He has bright blue eyes and a perpetual smile, the kind of aura that makes it difficult to look at him directly for too long because it feels like staring into the sun. We are ensconced in a bright white structure with gilded trim and pops of deep blue throughout. It is punctuated by archways and windows inspired by the curves and points of a lotus flower — the flower that by lore grows out of the mud. (As New Age memes love to remind us: No mud, no lotus.) A recently installed waterfall runs over stones, creating a soundtrack to a tranquil courtyard that’s bursting with spring blooms in tangerine and magenta and mustard. There is stained glass all over the property, catching your reflection in glittering light.
Being inside the temple, you wouldn’t know that we’re on the eastern edge of Hollywood. But then you hear sirens wailing, horns honking angrily or a lost soul on the street yelling profanities to no one in particular, and you’re jolted for a second back to reality.
The Self-Realization Fellowship’s Hollywood Temple is one of over 600 locations of guru Paramahansa Yogananda’s spiritual organization, which was founded more than 100 years ago and still has headquarters in L.A., teaching Kriya yoga to its followers. Yogananda’s spirit is felt throughout the temple. Brother Keshavananda talks about him like an ever-present friend and teacher — who, despite taking his last breath in 1952, lives on in the multiple physical dedications to him in the space.
This and other SRF L.A. locations — including one in the Pacific Palisades that holds a Chinese sarcophagus with some of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes and was miraculously spared during the L.A. fires earlier this year — were designed under Yogananda. They serve as a physical manifestation of his teachings, which have been described as a Hindu-Christian hybrid, a kind of “church of all religions.” Yogananda believed that the best spiritual practices integrated modern life, with all of its perils, instead of existing separately from it. The Self-Realization Hollywood Temple, specifically, feels like it’s in direct conversation with this idea.
As you sit in meditation on a wooden bench, the sunlight dappling across your face, life’s chaos exists just a hundred steps away on the other side of the temple walls. Brother Keshavananda reminds me about the importance of environment: the environment of the self, the environment of the temple and the environment that holds the temple. I ask if the contrast of having this sanctuary among the very real, very dark aspects of L.A. is an important part of self-realization or a meditation practice. If it gets you closer to yourself and God.
He asks me: “You’re a writer. When you’re writing, do you encounter resistance?”
Every single time, I say.
“And do you give up or do you push through?”
I have to push through. I have no other choice.
“Does that make you a better writer?”
I’d like to think so.
“That’s exactly the same thing with everything in civilization that’s going on,” Brother Keshavananda says. “It makes us go deeper. If everything was just really happy and we lived in a blissful place like the Shire in ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ then there wouldn’t be that motivation because meditation takes some work — there’s resistance there too. To push through, we need to have a motivational force behind us.”
The only way out is through
I’m a skeptic but I‘m open. There’s always been such a part of me that wants to believe that there is an answer for me, that there is a community or happiness waiting. I give knowing glances when people have metaphysical explanations for something going wrong (Mercury! The Eclipse! Of course). I can communicate in a vague esoteric dialect with the best of them, where you’re saying everything but nothing at all with a lot of affirmative humming peppered in. There’s the other part of me, too, that is deeply realistic about life’s limitations and particularly sensitive to the pain in the world around me. It has often felt like I’m living in many places at once.
To be at the Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens means to be in many places at once, too: Old Hollywood, the bamboo forests of Japan, the Italian Renaissance. It means to be in 1980s L.A., sunbathing in a solarium while you look out over a stretch of gardens to the south. Walking up to the historic villa requires you to constantly remind yourself that you are in the middle of a city in the 21st century. Since 1974, it’s been home to the Movement for Spiritual Inner Awareness, a storied spiritual organization that teaches soul transcendence and once boasted a star-studded following, including the likes of Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys and Arianna Huffington.
To be at the Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens means to be in many places at once, too: Old Hollywood, the bamboo forests of Japan, the Italian Renaissance.
These days, the organization is most closely associated with this house — what MSIA President Paul Kaye describes as a “place of peace” — the labyrinth and gardens becoming an IYKYK tourist destination. MSIA has spent years restoring the home close to its original glory. The frescos on the ceiling, the intricate wooden and stone carvings that punctuate the space, they’re all in perfect condition. MSIA is also at the beginning of a redecorating process for the first time in decades. Being inside of the home leaves you slightly breathless. The deeper you get in the gardens outside, the more the shade of the bamboo envelops you, and your breath comes back. “We’re offering almost a consciousness of peace and comfort in a world where there’s so many mental problems,” says Kaye. “We offer a meditative experience.”
In almost every room of the space, there are pictures of John-Roger, the controversial founder of MSIA. Once an English teacher whose original name was Roger Hinkins, lore goes that he fell into a coma in 1963 and woke up with a new spiritual consciousness inside of him, which was John-Roger, also known as the Mystical Traveler. In the ’80s, he faced allegations of financial and sexual misconduct from followers, who claimed the organization was a cult under his guidance (John-Roger and the organization denied these claims at the time). Some of the more casual images of him around the household have the distinct veneer of the ’90s, showing John-Roger petting a horse or looking out over a view on a mountain. His face appears on pamphlets in the foyer, and on the backs of books in a small library. His large, round eyes and curly hair cut an ever-present, chilling figure in the space, even 11 years after his death.
You can feel while walking through the home that its history is dense. (It was built by an Italian winemaker in the early 1910s and was once owned by director Busby Berkeley.) The energy is serene, but viscous, especially when you focus on the allegations. These days, the home and gardens host architectural tours, one-day urban retreats, sound baths, “open heart” mic nights or guided meditations with Kaye, who is also an ordained minister. (There are still events, like an “Introduction to Soul Transcendence,” or the “Soul Awareness Seminar” where John-Roger’s teachings are at the forefront.)
The hand-cut travertine labyrinth outside was built in 2001 as a walking meditation. This particular one was modeled after the labyrinth in the Chartres Cathedral and dedicated to John-Roger after his death. When I visit on a smoldering Tuesday, I’m instructed that I shouldn’t walk on the labyrinth without walking through the labyrinth, being that it’s holy ground for the organization. I’m guided that I should begin the walk with a problem that I need to work out, with an intention, mantra or prayer. I’m told it will take roughly 12 minutes. I start with a problem because I have plenty. As I walk into a looping pattern, one foot in front of the other, I begin to repeat these words to myself: “How do I take my agency back? How do I know, how do I trust that I am a truly and enduringly good person?”
The hand-cut travertine labyrinth outside was built in 2001 as a walking meditation.
Around minute three, it becomes: “How do I trust that what makes me different is what makes me a truly and enduringly good person?”
Around minute five, I answer my own question, summoning the spirit and words of the late poet Nikki Giovanni: “Once you know who you are, you don’t have to worry anymore.”
It continues: “Isn’t this just what life is? Feeling like you’re going in circles, but somehow making your way out? The turns are really sharp. I’m getting impatient. I trust the process. Because what other choice do I have? I can’t back out. So I trust the process.”
Stepping into the vortex
The spiritual centers in Los Angeles prove that we can make mountains of worship out of anything and anyone. We become devotees before we even hear the end of the deal if we think it will get us closer to spirits or ourselves. I empathize with this urge. The rush when you finally feel like you found the ideology, meditation or exercise that will make life less painful. L.A. has a buffet table of options to choose from, some left over from the early 20th century, or the ’70s and ’80s, when the New Age Movement took crop here, or even the early 2000s, when spiritual L.A. moms inspired by Madonna were obsessed with Kabbalah and running around town in Hard Tail yoga pants, prayer beads, gauzy white tops and Dolce & Gabbana wraparound sunglasses.
The thing about a place like the Philosophical Research Society is that there is no one agenda, no one teaching. Hidden on a hill at the corner of Griffith Park and Los Feliz boulevards, the Mayan Revival campus is now home to a bustling nonprofit, attracting artists, seekers and teachers of all kinds. It hosts readings, full moon sound baths and somatic workshops on a weekly basis. There were recently events on Buddhism, sacred geometry and the importance of design.
But its campus, chock-full of hidden symbolism, has a long history. Founded by famed philosopher and author Manly P. Hall in 1934 — and built with architect Robert Stacy-Judd in 1935 — PRS was first intended to be a resource center and place of study for all things metaphysical. For its followers, the intake of knowledge itself seems to be a kind of religion, and this is the church. PRS has gone through transitions over the years, but information on any esoteric teaching you might want to learn about can still likely be found here.
When PRS was being built, Hall wanted it to be even grander than it is now. In the early sketches, there was a water feature, and the buildings were supposed to be taller. He had a vision of what a spiritual center should look and feel like — which was majestic and ornate, says my architectural tour guide Amanda Brass, who has worked with PRS for six years. But the grandness is in the details here, each one more thoughtful than the last. PRS was built by Masons using sacred geometry. Some of the carvings in the structure are interlocking spirals meant to represent the snake, a symbol of protection and inner wisdom, along with four dots that represent the foundation of life. The spiral patterns were inspired by the waters of the Temple of Kukulcán in Chichen Itza. There are decorative patterns at the archway entrance of the library that were modeled after Labna, a Mesoamerican archaeological site that’s known as a portal.
This space, like the others, is adorned with the likeness of its founder throughout. Hall authored hundreds of books, most famous among them, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages.” He famously gave 90-minute lectures without pausing or having to reference any notes to crowds of people. But he had no interest in being worshiped. In a 1942 essay, Hall wrote: “All followers who offer to adorn and deify their teachers set up a false condition. Human beings, experience has proved, make better humans than they do gods.” Still, his energy is felt through the knowledge he acquired and shared here over the years. Hall died in 1990, six days after signing his estate over to his assistant, and decomposed for 72 hours before being reported to the police. For a time his death was being investigated as a homicide.
The library was the first part of PRS built. (Other buildings on the campus, like the auditorium which is adorned with tarot card-inspired paintings by artist and former PRS board member Michael Pearce, were built later.) Walking into the library, your first point of contact is with the intricate wooden carving of Coatlicue, the Aztec earth goddess and mother of the gods, who has twin serpents for a head and is a symbol of creation and destruction. In this library lie thousands of rare books and artifacts collected from Hall’s worldwide travels in his early 20s, which were the original foundation for PRS. Sacred esoteric texts from Japan to Egypt all live in this space. The books themselves and the knowledge they hold feel like a fundamental part of the architecture, the energetic heart of its bedrock.
The Philosophical Research Society’s campus, chock-full of hidden symbolism, has a long history.
In the Philosophical Research Society’s library lie thousands of rare books and artifacts collected from founder Manly P. Hall’s worldwide travels in his early 20s.
PRS is overflowing with both esoteric and Hollywood history. There are photos from the day Hall officiated the wedding of author Charles Bukowski and his wife Linda Leigh at PRS. Others with his dear friend Bela Lugosi. Helen Keller, who was also a friend to Hall, donated her personal stamp signature to PRS, which sits in a glass case in the library next to her memoir. At opposite ends of the campus, there are two stone statues. One of them, a figure who sits with its arms draped over its knees toward the back entrance, as if on watch, makes eye contact with everyone who walks through PRS’ doors. The inscription on its back partially reads: “Realizing the oneness of thy self with the eternal through unified consciousness. Man know thy self.”
I’m reminded why I like coming to places like this when I tell Brass, my knowledgeable guide, that I dreamt about Manly P. Hall the night before and his figure was glowing blue. The reasonable explanation is that I had gone down a research rabbit hole before going to sleep that night, and my subconscious ran with it. But instead of offering that up, or looking at me like I was insane, Brass simply responds by asking me when my birthday is. When I tell her it’s coming up, she nods in affirmation and says, “Well done.” In spaces like this there is so much understood that doesn’t need to be said or seen.
“We’ve got a lot of spirituality happening in this neighborhood, and I do believe there is a vortex here,” Brass says about Los Feliz. “I think a lot of it is that we populate the scene between the flatland of L.A. and the Griffith Park hill.”
Darkness and light
The distinct architecture of L.A. spirituality makes sense only because the light that David Lynch waxed poetic about (“it thrilled my soul”) is imbued with a creeping sense of darkness that David Bowie couldn’t stop talking about in the ’70s ( “it’s a movie that is so corrupt with a script that is so devious and insidious. It’s the scariest movie ever written”). It’s where the sunshine gets that hazy quality from, saying nothing about the smog.
We live in a city of extremes — the darkness and the light battling it out all over. Every person, place or spiritual center you encounter in the city feels like a testament to this. The duality works like a magnet for the spiritually inclined, I suspect because it feels like an honest reflection of our inner realities.
Throughout my journey, Brother Keshavananda’s words about our first and most important spiritual environment being the self rang true. As I sat in meditation with the soundtrack of an ambulance rushing by, it felt like a fitting metaphor for what it feels like to live, feel, suffer and seek as a human being — in L.A., specifically.
It’s when you hold the good and the bad together that things actually click.
