Walking on 19th Avenue Southeast, it's easy to overlook the white church just a few houses west of Lassing Park. Its chapel looks more like a garage set next to the two-story house that makes up the Vedanta Center of St. Petersburg, Fla.

For nearly a half century, this humble building has served as a haven for practitioners of Eastern philosophies and religions who eventually embraced Vedanta - a type of Hinduism - as their faith. With the arrival of Swami Yuktatmananda last month, to serve as the group's first official spiritual leader, the center has evolved from a place for curious westerners to learn yoga and Eastern philosophy to the only Ramakrishna Order in the southern United States.

The center was established in 1959 by Rev. M. McBride Panton and his wife Earnly, who blended Vedanta philosophy with spiritualist ideas. Earnly Panton taught a hatha yoga class.

Interest in the church grew during the 1960s and 1970s, and now claims a core congregation of about 20 members, said Jean Bomonti, chair of the center. Many came at the advice of friends; most were simply looking for alternatives to Western religion.

Following the death of the Pantons, the church was donated to the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, and members began actively seeking a resident swami to lead them. Local members kept the church going during those 20 years, looking for guidance to Swami Adiswarananda, who was based out of the center in New York. During those years, members continued to meet every Wednesday and Sunday to meditate and study the scriptures of Vedanta.

THE BELIEF

Vedanta is a branch of Hindu philosophy that can be traced back to a set of ancient texts called the Vedas and gained prominence from the 7th century on, most scholars say. Just as modern Christianity includes but goes beyond the Old Testament, Vedanta expands on the earlier parts of the four Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus.

Modern Vedanta was founded in the mid 19th century by Sri Ramakrishna, one of the most revered figures in the Hindu religion, and was popularized in America by his student Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda traveled to the United States in 1893 where he introduced Vedanta at the World Parliament of Religions. He is credited by many with sparking Western interest in Hinduism, said Arvind Sharma, Birks professor of comparative religion at the University of Montreal in Quebec. Vedanta has influenced the work of such people as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mahatma Gandhi and Deepak Chopra.

"It's an intellectual religion," Sharma said. "It appeals to both head and heart."

Among other beliefs, modern Vedanta teaches that all religions lead to the same God. On the grounds of the center in St. Petersburg, there are statues of Buddha, Shiva and Jesus Christ. While practitioners of Vedanta believe in the Hindu philosophies of reincarnation and kharma, they also believe that those who make the right choices in life - practicing love, selflessness and knowledge - can move closer to God.

There are about 160 Vedanta centers in the world, including 14 in the United States. About 1,500 monks serve in the order of Ramakrishna. Some of those move up to the status of swamis, or spiritual leaders who take vows of poverty, celibacy and service.

THE SWAMI

Vedanta Center members in St. Petersburg first applied to the Ramakrishna Order of India requesting their own swami in 1984. They had resubmitted the request every year since. The recent arrival of Swami Yuktatmananda to head the center, which has been held together by committed members for more than 20 years, helps guarantee a more secure future and a deepening of spiritual guidance.

Swami Yuktatmananda, 53, joined the Ramakrishna Order at 25. As a monk in India he served the order as an engineer, teacher and as the editor of an English journal on Vedanta, Prebuddha Bharata. He arrived in the United States from his native India two months ago. But he says he feels as much at home on Florida's steamy Gulf Coast as he did at 6,500 feet in the Himalayas.

"You don't feel that you are lost when you come to a place like this," he said during an interview in the sitting room of the Vedanta Center in St. Petersburg. "I think that's because we're all dedicated to Ramakrishna."

SOME OF THE FAITHFUL

Jean Bomonti, 82, is a retired teacher and the widowed mother of three grown children. In the Marine Corps during World War II, she trained troops to use machine guns. In 1978 she founded Friends of Strays, a no-kill animal shelter in St. Petersburg. She's been a Vedanta Center member since 1959, and is now chair. She spends Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with the swami. Although he cooks most of his meals, she likes to be around to offer help. "The opportunity to serve a holy man is so wonderful. Being the age I am, it's a culmination for me. It's the fulfillment of my life. I feel like I could die happily."

Kathleen Scargill, 56, spent her childhood hoping to escape the expectations of a traditional Catholic childhood in 1950s Cleveland. "Meet a nice fellow, settle down and get married. At a very young age, I just knew I wasn't going to do it." She was 19 when her family moved to St. Petersburg. At the urging of a friend, she sought out the Vedanta Center, where she said the philosophy seemed to "ring true." She was 21 when she made a formal decision to leave the Catholic Church and join Vedanta. She met her future husband, Ian, there during a Sunday service. "He (was) looking for the same thing I was."

Bob Hawley, 61, grew disenchanted with Protestantism when he was still a teenager growing up in St. Petersburg. It was the late 1960s and Hawley, a young man headed to draft age, was questioning American values during the Vietnam War. "You'd see body bags coming home. You were constantly questioning the justification for all of this." At 17, when he was a junior in high school, he visited the Vedanta Center and was impressed with the Rev. M. McBride Panton's charisma and knowledge of Eastern philosophy. He found himself rejecting Christian notions of heaven and hell, preferring Vedanta's belief in kharma, where what a person does in one life matters in the next.

Interested in more? Click here to see the related design project, "Bringing Vendanta home."