“An idea is more powerful than an army” quoted by Ruskin describes the influence of Ramakrishna Mission to the world.  The strength of Ramakrishna Mission is not in its money or men or organization but in the idea, which is in order to understand God in any religion one has to go to the root of the religion to reach him and not merely talking about him.

Ramakrishna Mission is a philanthropic, volunteer organization founded in 1897 by Swami Vivekananda a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna with a dozen of monks. The Mission’s work is based on the principles of karma yoga. Headquartered at Belur Math in Kolkata, India the Mission subscribes to the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta. The Mission is affiliated with its twin organization Ramakrishna Math, which is a monastic order. Both Math and Mission has nearly 166 centers all over India and abroad.  http://www.sriramakrishna.org/

The Vedantic Society of Northern California located in San Francisco (http://www.sfvedanta.org/) is one of the branches of Ramakrishna Mission to spread the message of Vedantic teachings in California. It was founded in 1900 by Swami Vivekananda. The Vedantic Society is a non-profit organization spiritually affiliated to the Ramakrishna order.

Vedantic means the end of the Vedas and it also means the culmination of spiritual knowledge (Veda). The Vedantic teachings to realize God can be achieved by following the four methods, they are, jnana yoga (the path of knowledge), bhakti yoga (the path of devotion) karma yoga (the path of selfless action) and raga yoga (the path of concentration). By following these paths one can lead a self-disciplined and high moral life.  Vedanta holds all religions and their teachings as supreme, be it Lord Krishna, Lord Buddha or Jesus Christ.
 
The Vedantic Society has its headquarters at New Temple around the corner of Fillmore and Vallejo Streets in San Francisco. The New Temple conducts a variety of activities like interviews by Swami Prabuddhananda, in-charge of the Society, to deliver Vedanta teachings to those who wants to know about Vedanta. Lecture services are held on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings at the New Temple auditorium, and are open for meditation from 8.00 am to 7.30 pm daily (Tuesday’s members only).

The altar of the New temple depicts the Vedantic concept of God, on the upper part is the Sanskrit word Om (Divinity) and beneath the Om are enshrined Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ and Sri Ramakrishna to emphasize the many aspects of God, transcendental and immanent, formless and  with form. Also enshrined at the altar are Sri Sarada Devi and Swami Vivekananda, the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna.

The Society also has a retreat at Olema in Marine County where spiritual seekers from all religion can meditate and study far from urban disturbances. The Society also has a Library named after Sri Sarada Devi that contains around 10,000 books on various religions around the world.

The Vedantic Society at San Francisco continues its efforts to spread the knowledge of Vedanta among the locals and spread the basic teachings of Vedanta, which is that the essence of all beings and all things from the grass to the Personal God is spirit, infinite and eternal, unchanging and indivisible.

For more info : http://www.sfvedanta.org/