About Tureya Ashram in Vilpatti Road, Kodaikanal

Ashrams have been an integral part of Indian culture for thousands of years. Their primary purpose was and still is to initiate students of spirituality into the secret teachings of the inner soul. Upanayana, or the investiture of Truth, is monument in the activity of revelation that occurs within students who have committed themselves to the process of discovering their spiritual life. Ashrams are the sanctuaries for the process upanayana where restoration of the wisdom and experience of the interconnectivity of life occur spontaneously.

Conventionally, ashrams are blanketed with the ideals of Hinduism. They also maintain a somewhat rigid structural value pyramid that includes a hierarchal class in which only a certain group of people, usually upper class men, can study the essence spiritual wisdom to its fullest degree.

At the Tureya Foundation our view of an Ashram is quite distinct from this classical ashram environment: first and perhaps foremost our community does not consider an ashram to be a place of religion but rather a place of spirituality. The difference is quite profound; a place of religion entails dogmatic boundaries of worship and belief that caste out other ideals under the pretences of inferiority. For us at the Tureya Foundation, an Ashram cannot be compared to places of religious worship in which one is committed to one God or one belief. Instead, we focus on the universality of the cosmic Truth and consider our Ashram to be a place of spiritual revelation that is not bound to a specific believes or conceptual ideologies. Ultimately, the supreme is universally infinite which suggests that there are infinitely diverse ways of expressing the Divine.

Next, we believe that if the Divine is Infinite than there is absolutely no possibility for discrimination based upon gender, race, or economic class. A poor Dalit (previously referred to as an untouchable) girl has just as much potential to unveil the truth of her intelligent field of bliss as a wealthy Brahman male priest. Reflecting within the same idea, a western CEO of Ford possess just as much inherent potential as a wondering monk in the Himalayas. What matters most in spirituality is not the physical form you have taken in this life but the will of your heart to discover the inner seer of your infinite self.

Finally, at the Tureya Foundation we distinguish ourselves from the conventional Ashram Environment by integrating a mixture of traditional mysticism with modern scientific wisdom. From our perspective an integral wisdom includes knowledge of both the internal and external world. To know within we must also know without, and to know without is highly impossible unless we know within. A tantric saying goes “what is here is elsewhere. What is not here is nowhere.” By knowing the Truth of the fundamental aspects of nature, our lives are transformed in profound ways. But Truth can only be embodied when we acknowledge that there is both an inner world and outer world that are intrinsic aspects of the spiritually Divine.

But in the light of Tantric philosophy our perception of an Ashram environment is quite traditional in that we believe that an ashram is a place where seers of the life essence can join together to create a concentrated spiritual vision for the future growth of both the greater spiritual community and the individuals that form it. For us, an ashram takes on many roles to serve in the process of Truth revelation; a refuge, sanctuary, school, place of worship, retreat, and home are just some of the names that can describe the dynamics of an ashram environment cultivated by the Tureya community.