Many devotees ask what is actually done when they request a pooja from a distance. Here is the full sequence.
When a devotee requests a pooja from another city — or another country — a fair question follows: what exactly happens, and how is it mine if I am not present?
The sankalpa
Everything begins with the sankalpa, the formal statement of intention. Your name, your gotra, your nakshatra and the purpose of the pooja are spoken aloud at the start of the ritual, along with the place, the tithi and the year. This is what binds the ritual to you. Physical presence is welcome and traditional, but it is the sankalpa, not the body, that establishes the connection.
The sequence
The altar is prepared before dawn. Ganapati is invoked first, as in every rite. Then the kalasha is established, the deity of the pooja is invited into the yantra or murti, and the sixteen upacharas — the offerings of welcome, water, cloth, flower, incense, lamp, food — are made in order.
Where a homam is prescribed, the fire is lit and the offerings are made with the mantra of the deity, counted to the number vowed in the sankalpa. The rite closes with the purnahuti, the aarti and the distribution of prasadam.
What returns to you
The prasadam from that specific ritual — not from a common stock — is packed the same day with the sankalpa slip bearing your name and the date. It reaches you by hand at the ashram or by courier.
A note on expectation
A pooja is an offering, not a transaction. It is performed with full procedure and full attention, and what follows unfolds in its own time. Devotees who come to it with that understanding are, in Swamiji's long experience, the ones who feel its effect most clearly.