My impression of Sita Kalyanam '99 was one of intense activity. I walked into the Akhara thinking, “In only seven years I'll be able to retire on the pension,” but I walked out feeling a lot younger. The remedy was that energy, that instruction, that direction, that force with which we had to work and which kept us moving, preparing the Tapovan complex. But who was pushing us? If I had been doing the same work in Australia, it would have taken me not ten days but maybe one hundred days. Where was the energy coming from?
Anyone who dared take a three minute yoga nidra during the day woke up feeling that there was duty to be done. We kept on going and if we felt tired, we put the tiredness aside and somehow it dissolved. Later on some sickness would come and if we put it aside it just dissolved too. In that atmosphere of high energy, everything dissolves. My whole year's accumulation of negativities about my age, my strength and my health all went. So actually I was the winner.
The deepest impression was that of giving. You even had to give away your time for eating and sleeping because there was so much that had to be done. Some people kept going night and day, weeks together. So it was a very wonderful experience to go through and I would recommend it. The next yajna, the Rajasurya yajna, is going to be a very big one. If we are invited, we will come well in advance for hard karma yoga, just to experience what it is like to be selfless a little bit of the time.