PRIVATE PUJA/HOMA - SANKALPA & ITS SIGNIFICANCE
"Puja means creating an atmosphere of Divinity and reposing in it. It is the chanting that is important. The chanting has all the vibrations from thousands of years. Like the tuning fork, when similar tune strings are there then they also vibrate. Similarly when you chant those mantras, your consciousness which is thousands of years old, somewhere the deeper layer starts reverberating. That is why when you hear those mantras, something happens in you. I have seen this all over the world, not only in India. In the beginning when we say some chants, like ‘Om Namah Shivaya’, even those people who have no affinity towards Sanskrit or have never heard it before, when they chant this they say, ‘something happens inside’. Our consciousness is very ancient, so the Vedic mantras have that power to touch the deepest layers of our consciousness." -Sri Sri Ravi Shankar