about us
Our Ashram is a community of 200+ students, teachers, yogis, artists, sadhaks and sadhikas from across Nepal, Germany, France, India and more grounded by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
Our Mission
Our mission is to meet the spiritual and material needs of our children and guests guided by the Divine Light. We uplift the material life to the Divine in pursuance of our collective Perfection
Our Values
Our ashram strives to create a community founded by Love, Education and Spirituality through Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga and the living practice of Karmayoga.
Our Foundations
The Sadhak/Sadhika
At the core of our community are the spiritual seeker, the sadhaks and sadhikas. All who pass through our community and seek to surrender to the Divine hold this title. Our Sadhaks and sadhikas are the living emblems of our Yoga.
Education
Everything begins with education. By equipping our students with the tools to pursue passions and create a home for the Yoga in all pieces of their lives, we are participating in shaping Nepal’s future leaders.
Integral Yoga
“All Life is Yoga” says Sri Aurobindo as nothing is apart from the Divine Consciousness. This yoga lives in actions and experiences. It encapsulates the material and the spiritual, this earthly existence and the Divine Light which refracts through it. The core of this Yoga or “spiritual practice” is Karmayoga.
Karmayoga
Karmayoga is karma, or “work” as yoga. Our guru says “whatever you do, you do for the divine,” so we dedicate all of our labor to our collective Divine purpose with every breath, every meal and every heartbeat.
Our Story
Ramchandra Das, founded the Ashram in 1993 after years of contemplation and movement between Nepal and India.
After 12 years living in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry, he felt an inner calling and returned on foot, from memory to home country whose country he couldn’t speak and a family that couldn’t recognize his face. Touched by the poverty of the village deep in his soul, he returned to Pondi for work. Again, he was called to Nepal, to a small plot of land on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley. There he purchased a small plot of land and a c0ow. In the infertile soil, he sowed seeds with manure, selling the milk and rolling incense to pay for his next meal, tending everything himself with the first child, of the Ashram, Laxmi. From there it’s been a long tumultuous, beautiful 25 years guided by the hand the Divine, working towards the spiritual evolution of humankind through the Harmonious practice of karmayoga.
In 2006 Swamiji was drawn to a beautiful 25-acre plot of land in Terai, the tropical southern region of Nepal, and there established the agricultural center of the ashram on Terai’s all-encompassing fields. A once barren plain, as The Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual companion, revitalized the land on which Auroville, the City of Dawn, the Home of the World now sits.
He returned again in 2012 to his home in Gulmi and with funds from the Ashram, started a school to spread the light of knowledge to his home. Something drew him to a lonely hilltop overlooking the expanse of untouched villages and forest and there he decided to begin the construction of the third holy place of Sri Aurobindo, the Gulmi Ashram.
Our Founder
At the age of 12, Swamiji or Ramchandra Das embarked on an adventure into the unknown. He was the oldest of 6 children in a small village 17 hours west of Kathmandu and left home out of concern of taking up too many resources at home. He set out to India with a friend, but upon entering the nation after ___ weeks on foot, his friend abandoned him. At 17 he joined the Indian Army seeking belonging and purpose. He met fellow spirit seekers, prompting him to leave the army to wander Northern India as a sadhu (wandering Hindu ascetic.) He happened upon a book of Sri Aurobindo at the age of 20 and went south to discover himself the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry (also known as Pondicherry.)
He stayed there for 12 years, engaging in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, his spiritual companion and the founder of Auroville.
Entranced by this Indian revolutionaries philosophy of finding the divine through Earthly practices, he washed dishes and cared for one of Sri Aurobindo’s closest disciples for 12 years, until he first felt the call to return home to Nepal.
He currently lives in the Kathmandu Ashram where he periodically visits locations in Terai and his home in Gulmi, holds weekly meditation sessions and talks, contributes to daily labor in the Ashram and guides the spiritual progress of the children in their community. Internationally, he has been a regular speaker in the International Democratic Education Conference (which will be hosted by the Ashram in October 2023) and speaks around the world.
Our Spiritual Lineage
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother
Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo, born Aurobindo Ghose, was born in Calcutta in 1872 to a wealthy doctor. At the age of 7, he was sent to England and studied at St Paul’s School, London and King’s College, Cambridge, at the top of his class and a voracious student of German, Greek, French, Latin and more. In 1893 he returned to India a man of science and a self-declared skeptic and agnostic, working for the Maharaja. He joined the revolutionary society and became a leader for preparations against the British Raj and later the Nationalist movement. The first to posit the idea of complete independence for India, he was prosecuted twice for sedition, but never convicted. During his brief stint in prison, he had a spiritual awakening and left political activity for pure yoga (spiritual practice) in Pondicherry in the south. There he stayed for 40 years, writing and developing his Integral Yoga, striving towards liberating one’s consciousness on this earthly plane, through karmayoga (work). Among his many works were Savitri, the Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga. He left his body in 1950.
The Mother
The Mother, originally named Mirra Alfassa, was born in Paris in 1878. A pupil at the Academie Julian, she became an accomplished artist and excelled as a pianist and writer. Later in her career, she became interested in spiritual development, After studying with Max Theon and his wife, she founded a group of spiritual seekers in Paris and gave talks to various others. in 1914 she went with her husband to Pondicherry with her husband for work and met Sri Aurobindo, one who she’d realized had guided her spiritual development for years. She was obliged to return home due to the outbreak of the first World War. After a brief stint in Japan, she rejoined Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry in 1920 and in four years reaches his level of spirituality. When the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was formed in 1926, she was entrusted with the full material and spiritual charge. Under her guidance, for nearly 50 years, the Ashram flourished, including Auroville, her envisioned township of the world, a roof for all and owned by none. In 1973, the Mother left her body.
"It was my first time in an ashram and I loved it. The people were incredibly kind and caring, giving me a warm welcome. I felt at home straight away."
Gwendolyn L