Shifting his headquarters to Varkala
In the year 1907 Narayana Guru left Aruvipuram and came to live on a hillock which was not far from the temple of Janardana. Eighteen years after the founding of the S.N.D.P. Yogam in Aruvipuram, Narayana Guru consecrated a temple at Sivagiri and dedicated it to Sarada, the goddess of wisdom Within this period the Guru traveled extensively and founded a number of temples such as in Anjengo and Perungottukara (1904), Trichur (1910), Cannanore (1907), Tellichery (1908), Calicut and Mangalore (1910).
The new headquarters and Sarada Temple founded in 1912 implied in it a secret gesture of the Guru that he wanted a more open place and a fertile field for the incubation of global ideals that are worthy of human wisdom and dignity. He personally administered the center and initiated several spiritual aspirants into the sacred order of sanyasa. A cross section of the Kerala community could be seen among his sanyasin disciples. His first sanyasin-disciple was Sivalinga Swami. He was a Nair. His other well known disciples were Swami Sathyavrata (Nair), Bodhananda (Ezhava), Sree Narayana Chaitanya (Nair), Swami Amritananda (Namboodiri), Swami Govindananda (Ezhava), Swami Dhalma Tearthe (Nair), Swami Ananda Teertha (Shenoy), Swami Sankarananda (Ezhava), Swami Guru Prasad (Thiya), Swami Vidyananda (Ezhava) and Swami Atmananda (Ganeke).
Sanyasins are never considered to belong to any caste or tribe. We have deliberately mentioned here their caste background only to show that the Guru was very eager to have a spiritual fraternity that could transcend the frontiers of caste. The Guru even gave sanyasa to an Englishman by name Earnest Kirk . The Guru advised Kirk to continue in his western mode of clothing and to retain his own Christian name. In the ashram the Guru took young boys from among the so called 'untouchables' particularly from the Pariah and Pulaya communities, and made them chant the Upanishads, offer worship in the temple and cook and serve food to the residents and visitors to the Sivagiri Mutt .