Some years back, when my mother is watching Bhakti channel on TV, I heard someone say this – “a Puorhit is someone who wishes the hita(welfare) of the puram(city)”. I was amazed listening to this definiton of Purohit and thought – all the people who do Meditation on Twin Hearts are Purohits or priests and felt grateful to our Guru for making everyone of us a priest. By profession, my husband and I are into software industry. Whenever my husband chanted mantras at home, it used to feel like some priest is chanting mantras. So I used to jokingly tell him – “Hey, why don’t you become priest?” We never thought some day, we both will become priests.

In 2016, we were introduced to the fire ritual – Homam by Acharya Sasidhar in one of the classes and my husband and I are carried away by the magic of the Homam. We did our google search further and landed at HomatherapyIndia.com which talked about Homam in extensive detail. After further readings about Homam and its benefits in different books, my husband and I experimented with the practice of Homam at our house. The peace of meditating on fire was profound and Homam became our passion. We used to forget time gazing at fire.

In 2017, our mentors Ruchi Sanjil introduced a course named Mantra Siddhi Yoga which talked extensively about mantras and also gave a formal protocol of Homam. We loved the course and started doing Homam at our home as taught in this course. After this class, Homam has become much more closer to our hearts and we developed a kind of intimate relationship with fire. Earlier, for death anniversary of our ancestors, we used to approach priests and follow the process without understanding the meaning of the rituals done. After learning mantra siddhi yoga and Homam formally, we did Homam ourselves at our home and we offered our gratitude to our ancestors. We felt very satisfied. We did Homam on the death anniversary of our ancestors, on our birthdays and whenever we felt like at our home.There is no need of a special day to perform Homam.On the day Homam is performed, the day becomes special.

Below are some benefits of doing Homam

1. In Homam, environment friendly products like cow ghee, nava dhanyas etc are used. These are used to purify the home and environment around us
2. In Homam, sacred mantras chanted fill the vibrations of the home and the consciousness of the participants with positivity
3. Homam help us generate good karma as we purify the air around us. People residing in that area get benefited by breathing this air filled with mantra chantings, noble thoughts and golden energies of cow ghee
4. Meditating on fire calms down our thoughts and emotions
5. Gurus like Swami Rama, Gajanan Maharaj, Vimalanda, Pandit Sri Rama Sharma spoke highly about Homam and its benefits
   “Fire always burns, and if you worship it properly it will burn away all your bad karmas.” -Vimalananda
6. Homam is an excellent way to offer gratitude,respect,love to divine

In 2017, IWC student named Prachi asked if there is someone who can do Mantra Siddhi Homam at her home. My husband and I were both very happy to take this opportunity and with the encouraging words of our mentors, we did our first Homam at Prachi’s home. It was a unique experience to me and my husband. This is how our first professional Homam took birth and till date, we have performed almost 20 professional Homams for different people. We did Homams for house warming ceremony, birthday of the participants, death anniversary of ancestors, marriage day and so on. Every Homam we performed taught us something new.

When we were doing homam at our home, it is our Sadhana and we used to do it silently or chanting mantras together. There was no explanation or anything else. When we started doing Homam outside, we had to customize Homam as per the participants present. Some participants are Energy Healers, some are non Energy Healers, children were present. People from different backgrounds were present and we had to customize Homam in such a way that everyone could connect. So we started adding meaning of the mantras , some explanation here and there which could help people connect with Homam. We observed that every Homam we performed is unique and the energies and words are as per the needs of the participants. Homam style was beyond our planning and it formed its own shape and form.

These Homams made us priests and we can never thank our Guru for blessing us to become channels to perform Homams. We received so much of love through these Homams. We have seen some people have tears in their eyes when they were participating in Homam and many told us that the explanation part helped them connect beautifully with the Homam.

In this process, we met different people and got opportunity to speak to them. Each one taught us something which stayed in our heart.We met people from different walks of like – a CEO, a celebrity, an industrialist, big-wig in IT industry, artist, House wife,HR head,retired person, IT professional and so on. Each one of them had their unique story to share with us and their stories inspired us to become better human beings. We learnt about parenting, virtues, simplicity, never-give-up attitude and so on. One experience I can never forget is the Homam we performed at the house of this person named Rao(modified name to protect privacy).

Rao lost his legs in his childhood due to polio . He is a non-energy healer and we dont know much about him till we went to his home to perform the Homam. After the Homam, he shared his journey with us. He said that at one point in his life, he felt like committing suicide and went to Railway Station as he felt he cannot do anything in life due to being physically handicapped. Someone saved him and brought him out of it. Later, he found Government job, got married, had children and now he is retired from his job. He told many inspiring stories about his life like how he gave up his salary of one month to provide food to other physically handicapped people, like how he went door to door of Government offices to work for the benefit of others and so on.  He told us proudly that he can do everything a normal person can do like riding a vehicle, cleaning the house, cooking and so on. He was dynamic and left us inspired. He recollected one instance from his life where he saved the life of a person and he had tears in his eyes when he recollected the incident . He said he never thought he will come this far in his life. He also shared with us one beautiful line – Prosperity in life is to think about God and poverty in life is to forget God(For me, its my Guru). My husband and I were speechless listening to his life story and we wondered – “will we ever have such tears of joy in our eyes when we turn 60 or 70 years of age?” Only time has to answer us. Interaction with him left us greatly inspired

This is only one story I could share here. There are many such inspiring stories which touched us when we performed Homams. Through performing Homam as a priest, we received love. We received inspiration. We did our own sadhana as part of Homam. We went into meditative state while performing Homam. We received the blessings of Devatas and Gurus. We got opportunity to generate good karma. We had many moments of laughter and enjoyed varieties of food served as prasada. We had some of the best moments of our lives being priests. We never thought being a priest can be such a rewarding experience

Our deep gratitude to our Guru, Acharya Sasidhar, Homa Therapy India, all the books which inspired to take Homam seriously , our mentors Ruchi Sanjil, all the people who blessed us with the opportunity to do Homam at their home and Supreme God.

Lokah Samastha Sukhino Bhavanthu