The Centre Is New. The Place Is Not.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi lived on this campus for the last eighteen years of his life. The Health Centre opened in April 2026.
How Old We Are
Since 23 April 2026. The campus around us is a different matter entirely.
MERU bought this estate in 1984. Maharishi moved here in 1990 and stayed until his passing in 2008. The body that sets worldwide standards for Maharishi AyurVeda has been based here since 2001. What is new is the Centre, the building it occupies, and the treatment rooms inside it.
A larger Health Centre is planned and will be built over the coming years. Rather than wait for it, we made room for a smaller one on the ground floor of the apartment building completed here in February 2026 — so that the treatments could be given now, to the people who want them now, instead of in a few years' time.
What is new here is the room. Not what happens in it.
The Place
A former college standing inside De Meinweg National Park in the south-east of the Netherlands. It was begun in 1904 and completed in 1909 as Kolleg St. Ludwig, a Franciscan seminary and boarding school, and thousands of students passed through it before it closed in 1978. MERU purchased the estate in 1984.
It is a campus rather than a hotel: meditation halls, a dining hall, Maharishi's Peace Palace, the Peace Park, residential buildings, and since 2026 the Health Centre. The forest surrounds all of it.
Maharishi Here
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi moved to the Vlodrop campus in 1990 and lived here until his passing in 2008 — the last eighteen years of his life. From here the international Transcendental Meditation organisations have been administered worldwide ever since.
More than the meditation organisations is run from this address. Maharishi founded the Maharishi College of Perfect Health International here in 2001, and it establishes and monitors quality standards for the worldwide practice of Maharishi AyurVeda. The departments for Maharishi AyurVeda Aroma Therapy and Light Therapy are based here too, as is the office for Maharishi Vastu, the architecture the Health Centre itself is built in.
The house he lived in still stands on the campus. It is called Maharishi's Peace Palace.
What Was Restored
In the early 1980s Maharishi worked with India's foremost Vedic scholars to restore Ayurveda to its complete classical form, with consciousness as its foundation rather than as an afterthought.
"Maharishi Ayurveda makes the principles and practices of Ayurveda available in such a complete, systematic and authentic way as has rarely been achieved recently in India."
President, All India Ayurvedic Congress · 1997
The Pandits
Two Vedic Pandits are in residence on the campus, and they recite daily. It is the least visible thing here and one of the most unusual.
The tradition they maintain — Vedic chanting, transmitted orally for thousands of years — was proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2003, and inscribed on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. There is nothing to attend and it is not a performance. It simply goes on, every day of your stay.
Before the Centre
Not in this building, but nearby. Maharishi AyurVeda Panchakarma clinics operated at Sint Odilienberg, a few kilometres from the campus, before the Health Centre opened here in Vlodrop.
Our therapists have been practising far longer than the Centre has existed.
The Team
Centre Leadership
Centre Leadership
Health Centre Manager
Assistant Manager
Each Holding a BAMS and Postgraduate MD (Ayurveda)
Head, Dept. of Maharishi AyurVeda Aroma Therapy, MCPHI
Treatment Technicians, Classically Trained
Timeline
1904–1909 — Kolleg St. Ludwig is built near Vlodrop by Franciscan brothers.
1957 — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi begins teaching publicly in India.
1959 — His first world tour reaches the United States.
1975 — Maharishi European Research University is founded, in Switzerland.
1984 — MERU purchases the Vlodrop campus.
Early 1980s — Ayurveda is restored to its classical completeness with India's foremost Vedic scholars.
1990 — Maharishi moves to Vlodrop. MERU becomes the worldwide headquarters of the Transcendental Meditation organisations.
1997 — The President of the All India Ayurvedic Congress signs a statement on the completeness of the restored tradition.
2001 — Maharishi founds the Maharishi College of Vedic Medicine at MERU, renamed the Maharishi College of Perfect Health International in 2007.
2008 — Maharishi passes away at MERU, after eighteen years here.
February 2026 — The MERU Apartments building is inaugurated, built in Maharishi Vastu.
23 April 2026 — The Maharishi AyurVeda Health Centre opens on its ground floor.
Eighty years of ground, four months of guests
The campus is old. The tradition is older still. The treatments given here today draw on both.
