“Every room must be filled with light. It should make the spirit want to soar outward and upward as if to embrace the world! Air and breezes should be invited indoors whenever the weather is warm. Flower scents must be given entry. The windows must be many, large, and high. I want to be able to enjoy the stars from indoors at night; to feel, when sitting in the rooms that look out onto the garden, that the rooms themselves are a part of Nature outside.”
— Swami Kriyananda
The monastery has been working with a team of architects, designers, and planners. All of them understand the unique nature of the monastery we are building.
Guru Kripa Site Plan
As of October, 2026, the seven monk cottages on the north west are almost finished, along with the large kitchen and dining hall. These buildings have natural earth walls which have been well proven in India. Swami Kriyananda wrote highly about the adobe (natural earth) buildings he visited in the American southwest, which included rounded corners inside the rooms (much like the first Hermitage buildings).
He also recommended domed ceilings rather than flat ones. Neighbors near the Hermitage land have proven the utility and cost effectiveness of the Rohtak dome ceiling, a regional technology with benefits including simplicity, elegance, and low cost.
An office building, seen towards the south of the site plan, is now being constructed. It will have a larger space for meetings, another room divided into individual working spaces, and a dedicated room for webinars and high quality videos.
More monk cottages will be placed on the northwest section, along with a Temple of Light for meditation.
Watch the digital flyover of the site plan:
“Walls, corners, ceilings — all these seemed to me, as I thought about them, to exert a definite, if subtle, influence on the mind. For peace of mind and inner harmony, the best shape, then, seemed to be the dome: not lofty and unattainable like those cathedral domes, built to suggest heaven; but here and now and all around us: like the sky under which we live.
“Domes like those in a planetarium have another quality: They tend to expand the consciousness.”
—Swami Kriyananda, from Space, Light, and Harmony, the Story of Crystal Hermitage
“It is important not only to draw what we can from nature, but also to give back to it, by praying to God through the devas, those subtle entities who create and sustain plant life, and by loving them and showing them gratitude.
“The universe functions on certain clear principles, which are emphasized in the yoga teachings: loving energy, conscious harmony, mutuality of sharing. It has been said that subtle forces are consciously responsible for plant life on this planet, and that these forces are, at the present time, withdrawing their energy. In ancient times, the Vedas taught that one should give energy to the devas, who create and sustain plant life. By giving them energy, we can live in reciprocal harmony with them, through nature.
“People nowadays scoff at this as “superstition.” My Guru said it is a mistake to do so. It is, he said, important not only to draw what we can from nature, but also to give back to it, by praying to God through those subtle entities, and by loving and showing them gratitude. It is an error to treat them as though they had no existence. In seizing what we can only for ourselves, we withdraw ourselves from nature’s abundance. When we do that, nature, in return, withdraws her abundance.”
— Swami Kriyananda
