Paradise Next Door : Peaceful, Shaded Shrine in Pacific Palisades Celebrates the Fellowship of Mankind

When monks living at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine announced plans to build an eight-sided temple topped by an enormous gold lotus blossom, there was scarcely a flutter from their Pacific Palisades neighbors.

A big surprise, indeed, from a community that traditionally has preferred neighbors who keep a low profile.

But the Lake Shrine, with its 10 acres of sycamore-shaded hillside and flower-carpeted hollow half a mile from the beach, is no conventional neighbor.

This is the sort of precious real estate that developers pine for and neighbors yearn to protect.

So when the Palisades Community Council recently staged a public hearing on the fellowship’s proposed 400-seat temple, there were no complaints about big gold domes.

With the possible exception of increased traffic on Sunset Boulevard, it seems there is little to complain about when you live next door to paradise.

This week, as the Lake Shrine marks its 40th anniversary, its neighbors and its visitors quietly celebrate the park as one of the Southland’s most tranquil treasures.

Throughout the year, the shrine’s secluded gardens and spring-fed lake are open to the public for quiet walks and meditation.

“We think it’s a jewel that should be preserved,” said Carlisle Manaugh, Paseo Miramar Homeowners Assn. president. “The fellowship people have kept this beautiful park open for everyone to use, at no cost to them or to the homeowners. It’s one of the treasures of the Palisades. . . . “

Self-Realization Fellowship was founded in 1920 by Indian Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda and is dedicated to the teaching of scientific principles of meditation. In 1949, Yogananda bought the Pacific Palisades property with plans to turn it into his “little Kashmir” and opened the Lake Shrine on Aug. 20, 1950.

Manaugh says he and other Palisadians often walk through the Lake Shrine and stop to sit on one of many benches nestled in shady bowers around the lake. But on weekends, most visitors come from farther away.

“I’m here to get some peace of mind, to slow down a little bit,” said Meredith Pearlstein, owner of Boston Celebrity Services in Boston. “I’m on a vacation, just to unwind, and my friend said we had to come over after breakfast and see this beautiful place.”

Sunday is a popular day for visitors. Temple services are held at 9:30 and 11 a.m. in the 125-seat chapel, a replica of a 16th-Century Dutch windmill, with hand-stenciled beams and Art Nouveau stained glass.

The mill was built in the early 1940s by H. Everett McElroy, a 20th Century Fox set builder. Later, McElroy added a guest cottage, and brought his houseboat from Lake Mead. Both are still in use.

According to Brother Ramananda, the Self-Realization Fellowship minister at the Lake Shrine, more than 300 church members attend services, with the overflow sitting outside in the rose garden, in the Court of All Religions or on the boat dock.

Visitors strolling around the lake may pause to look at the Golden Lotus Archway, a “wall-less temple,” dedicated to world peace by Yogananda and Lt. Gov. Goodwin Knight on the Lake Shrine’s opening day.

Behind the arch is a thousand-year-old Chinese sarcophagus (originally from the Bernheimer Gardens on Sunset Boulevard) containing some of Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes, the only ashes permitted outside India.

Down at the boat dock, visitors may toss bread crumbs to the ducks and swans that glide across the lake.

There are fish in the lake--some bass but mostly mostly enormous koi--which are difficult to see because the water is thick with algae, a natural condition that worsens as the water warms in spring and summer. Fountains and hoses help aerate the water, said fellowship spokesman Bruce Mars, and waste is pumped off the bottom.

In 1987, the natural springs dried up and the water level fell when Sunset Boulevard was torn up to install huge drain pipes. “And then nature had its way again,” said Mars. “The little streams found paths under and around the pipes and the lake filled itself up again.”

Though a crew of workers and the five monks living at the lake do most of the maintenance, they keep a low profile. There are no saffron-clad gurus or chanting monks.

The Lake Shrine is an expression of Self-Realization Fellowship’s belief in tolerance. “We believe in the brotherhood of man, and that we have one common father, and that all true paths lead to the same God,” explained Ramananda, a former Catholic.

“We respect all religions,” he added, pointing out various gifts made to the Lake Shrine over the years: statues of the Virgin Mary in the Sunken Garden, the Hindu goddess Maha Vira on a pedestal, Buddha and Krishna across the lake, and the granite symbols of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism in the Court of All Religions.

Information about Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine guides are available near the entrance. Yogananda’s writings are sold in the gift shop, along with reasonably priced art, accessories and jewelry handcrafted in India. According to Mars, the shop is there to promote cultural exchange as much as to raise money.

Next to the shop is a museum that tells the story of Yogananda’s life and work, and exhibit many of the unusual gifts and objects that he collected on his travels.

Photos and documents show that he was born in India in 1893, trained as a yogi and came to Boston in 1920 to attend a religious council.

After lecturing around the United States, he settled in Los Angeles, founding the Self-Realization Fellowship World Headquarters on Mt. Washington in Highland Park. His next 25 years were spent lecturing, writing and training a growing flock.

Meanwhile, in the 1920s, the Lake Shrine site in dry, chaparral-covered Santa Inez Canyon, where early Western movies were filmed, was being excavated for fill dirt. The digging disturbed underground springs, the water trickled into the pit and a lake slowly developed.

“When I was a boy in the mid-1930s,” said Manaugh, “that place was just a big mud hole that we floated our rafts on.” In 1940, McElroy bought it and began planting trees. He built the mill and lived in it, then added the guest cottage and the houseboat.

Later he sold it to a resort developer, who in 1949 sold it to the fellowship. After a year laying out gardens and paths, planting flowers and building the Golden Lotus Archway, the shrine opened.

To visit the Lake Shrine, look for the sign and entrance on Sunset Boulevard half a mile from the ocean. The entrance to the Court of All Religions is on the east side of the parking lot, and paths lead from there around the lake.

The Lake Shrine, 17190 Sunset Blvd., is open daily except Monday from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. The museum and gift shop are open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on Sunday from 10 to 10:30 a.m., and noon to 4 p.m. Picnicking and sunbathing are not allowed, but the beach is a half-mile to the west.