Time passed. The Poobalakrishna Ashram flourished. On Full Moon days we used to feed nearly 2,000 people as Annadhanam (free food distribution as part of religious practice). The Meditation Center was full of earnest aspirants. Visitors were coming regularly from abroad for spiritual guidance and meditation. Some people strongly expressed their wish to me to take up a spiritual life, renounce the world and be with me. Entire families were practicing spirituality according to my precepts.

Parents and children liked to come away from the cities and the father's high pressured jobs in government or professions and spend long weekends enjoying the beautiful nature, the peaceful meditation camps, the inspiring poojas and my discourses about God and the divine life. Government ministers, engineers and doctors sat, eager to hear about spiritual subjects, alongside simple village folk and farmers in our all-encompassing Poobalakrishna Ashram and Meditation Center. Many have stated – it was a little paradise.

Simple, natural and beautiful, away from the humdrum of the worldly life and, of most importance, a place where one could search for the Self. From morning until night one could hear the sounds of pooja bells and God's divine names. Both Sri Lankan and foreign devotees helped to renovate the Meditation Center in the summer of 1983. Then the Divine revealed that a far different future awaited us.