BHAGAVAD-GITA 17:4

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BHAGAVAD-GITA 17:4

 

yajante sattvika devan

yaksa-raksamsi rajasah

pretan bhuta-ganams canye

yajante tamasa janah

 

WORD FOR WORD

 

yajante--worship; sattvikah--those who are in the mode of goodness;

devan--demigods; yaksa-raksamsi--demons; rajasah--those who are in the

mode of passion; pretan--spirits of the dead; bhuta-ganan--ghosts;

ca--and; anye--others; yajante--worship; tamasah--in the mode of

ignorance; janah--people.

 

TRANSLATION

 

Men in the mode of goodness worship the demigods; those in the mode of

passion worship the demons; and those in the mode of ignorance worship

ghosts and spirits.

 

PURPORT

 

In this verse the Supreme Personality of Godhead describes different

kinds of worshipers according to their external activities. According

to scriptural injunction, only the Supreme Personality of Godhead is

worshipable, but those who are not very conversant with, or faithful

to, the scriptural injunctions worship different objects, according to

their specific situations in the modes of material nature. Those who

are situated in goodness generally worship the demigods. The demigods

include Brahma, Siva and others such as Indra, Candra and the sun-god.

There are various demigods. Those in goodness worship a particular

demigod for a particular purpose. Similarly, those who are in the mode

of passion worship the demons. We recall that during the Second World

War a man in Calcutta worshiped Hitler because thanks to that war he

had amassed a large amount of wealth by dealing in the black market.

Similarly, those in the modes of passion and ignorance generally

select a powerful man to be God. They think that anyone can be

worshiped as God and that the same results will be obtained.

 

Now, it is clearly described here that those who are in the mode of

passion worship and create such gods, and those who are in the mode of

ignorance, in darkness, worship dead spirits. Sometimes people worship

at the tomb of some dead man. Sexual service is also considered to be

in the mode of darkness. Similarly, in remote villages in India there

are worshipers of ghosts. We have seen that in India the lower-class

people sometimes go to the forest, and if they have knowledge that a

ghost lives in a tree, they worship that tree and offer sacrifices.

These different kinds of worship are not actually God worship. God

worship is for persons who are transcendentally situated in pure

goodness. In the Srimad-Bhagavatam (4.3.23) it is said, sattvam

visuddham vasudeva-sabditam: "When a man is situated in pure goodness,

he worships Vasudeva." The purport is that those who are completely

purified of the material modes of nature and who are transcendentally

situated can worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

 

The impersonalists are supposed to be situated in the mode of

goodness, and they worship five kinds of demigods. They worship the

impersonal Visnu form in the material world, which is known as

philosophized Visnu. Visnu is the expansion of the Supreme Personality

of Godhead, but the impersonalists, because they do not ultimately

believe in the Supreme Personality of Godhead, imagine that the Visnu

form is just another aspect of the impersonal Brahman; similarly, they

imagine that Lord Brahma is the impersonal form in the material mode

of passion. Thus they sometimes describe five kinds of gods that are

worshipable, but because they think that the actual truth is

impersonal Brahman, they dispose of all worshipable objects at the

ultimate end. In conclusion, the different qualities of the material

modes of nature can be purified through association with persons who

are of transcendental nature.

 

Copyright 1983 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International. Used with

permission.