Ashram street
What is an Ashram?
“The Ashram is a place where people receive spiritual education. Spiritual education means to create bliss within you and to be happy always, to find out the purpose of your soul in this birth and to learn how to unite yourself with the higher Self. For this you have to learn certain habits, culture and a way of living, as well as service and to learn to be humble. You need a lot of patience to learn this and to receive Guru’s grace. For this it is good to follow some simple rules. An aspirant cannot go forward successfully on the spiritual path if he does not know the most basic duties of daily life. Let this spiritual education become a light within you and let it shine.” Swami Premananda
In 1985 Swami Premananda started to create Sri Premananda Ashram as a place for practising spirituality under his guidance and as a place where charitable service is carried out. In 1989 it was inaugurated. For more than twenty-five years Swamiji walked on every part of the six hundred acres of land and this makes it a very sacred place.
Sri Premeshvarar Temple – Shiva Lingam – Swamiji Mahasamadhi
Sri Premeshvarar Temple
The heart of the Ashram is Sri Premeshvarar temple. The temple is simple, beautiful and very peaceful. Swamiji planned the construction of the temple before his maha-samadhi. On 21st February 2011 Swamiji left his body and his maha-samadhi shrine was then established when his sacred remains were interred underneath the lingam in the main shrine in the Ashram temple. An abhishekam is performed every morning to Sri Premeshvarar and a puja is performed every evening. Devotional songs are also sung every evening in front of a beautiful statue of Swamiji which is in a shrine to the right of the lingam. Around the temple are different deities to which small pujas are regularly performed.
Swamiji’s service
From the young age of seventeen, Swamiji initiated many different service projects, which he continued throughout his lifetime such as free education, accommodation and medical care for hundreds of children from destitute families, free meals for local poor people and extensive planting of trees and flowering plants. These services continue today.
