The world as seen from Just Above Sunset -

"Notes on how things seem from out here in Hollywood..."

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• In Time of War - Visiting Gandhi
• Swans
• Serene Birds
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• Botanicals
• Bougainvillea
• November Orange
• Bam!
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Serenity

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine

This week, photographs from one of the hidden treasures out here -

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine

17190 Sunset Boulevard

Pacific Palisades, California

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine was dedicated by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1950 - it is intended as spiritual sanctuary.  The ten-acre site, with its gardens and natural spring-fed lake, is home to all sorts of flora and fauna - swans, ducks, koi, and, of course, lotus flowers. The grounds include a Court of Religions honoring the five principal religions of the world - a cross for Christianity, a Star of David for Judaism, a Wheel of Law for Buddhism, a crescent moon and star for Islam, and a Sanskrit character for Hinduism. And there's the Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial, where a portion of Gandhi's ashes is enshrined. And there's a small museum with exhibits on Paramahansa Yogananda's work (you can buy a copy of his widely-read "Autobiography of a Yogi" there), and a gift shop with arts and crafts from India. The hilltop Self-Realization Fellowship temple overlooking the lake was opened in 1996. It's a bit "institutional."

You can find what you need about the Self-Realization Fellowship here.  It's a worldwide religious organization with its international headquarters in Los Angeles. Paramahansa Yogananda founded Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920 "to make available the universal teachings of Kriya Yoga."  There are temples, retreats, meditation centers, and monastic communities of the Self-Realization Order all over the world.  Their aims and ideals are listed here.  Think meditation, Gandhi's non-violent resistance to injustice, the oneness of all - you get the idea.

Here's an odd thing. Elvis Presley loved the Lake Shrine. According to his friend, Jerry Schilling, he walked around the lake and picked up some brochures, and later sent away for information about Eastern philosophy. Presley developed a twelve-year relationship with Sri Daya Mata, the woman who is now the president of the Self-Realization Fellowship, and would often call her for advice when he was troubled.

The Lake Shrine is just up the hill from Pacific Coast Highway, at the edge of Malibu, on Sunset Boulevard. In the twenties this was Inceville - Thomas Ince Studios shot silent films here.  It was the Santa Ynez Canyon site. In 1927 Alphonso Bell bought the site from Ince and tried to develop it - and this involved a lot of grading and hydraulic work. The idea was a resort hotel. That didn't work out.  The natural springs kept flooding the site, but the result was Lake Santa Ynez, the only natural spring fed lake in Los Angeles city limits.  Around 1940, H. Everett "Big Mac" McElroy, the Assistant Superintendent of Construction at 20th Century Fox, bought the site and made it his private estate - he built a full-scale Dutch windmill as his house (it's still there) and shipped in an actual (small) Mississippi river boat (being rebuilt at the moment).

McElroy sold the site to an oil company president in the late forties, and the word is the oil company president had a dream that the place should be the site of the "church of all religions," and at three in the morning he grabbed a phone book and looked for anything like "church of all religions." There just happened to be a listing for one of those, in Hollywood.  It was Paramahansa Yogananda's organization.  And the rest is history. This may or may not be true, but that is the story.

The Los Angeles Times wrote about the Lake Shire in 2001.  Still, no one much knows of the place. It's a bit of a hidden gem.