Paramahansa Yogananda founded several world-renowned spiritual sanctuaries during his lifetime. At the Self-Realization Fellowship Mother Center, and at the SRF Ashram Center and Hermitage in Encinitas, he lived, worked, taught, and deeply communed with God over a span of many years. Today, these and the other sites he founded — such as the SRF Lake Shrine and the SRF Temples in Hollywood and San Diego — are revered as places of sacred pilgrimage for people from all over the world.
Paramahansaji took great delight in landscaping the meditation gardens in each of these sanctuaries. He hoped that these expressions of God’s harmony, tranquility, and beauty would inspire visitors to establish a portable heaven in their own hearts. As places of divine communion, thousands are drawn by the vibrations of peace and harmony that they find here.