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TEXT 4 yajante sattvika devan
SYNONYMS  yajante--worship;
sattvikah--those who are in the mode of goodness; devan--demigods;
yaksa-raksamsi rajasah--those who are in the mode of passion
worship demons; pretan--dead spirits; bhuta-ganan--ghosts;
ca anye--and 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 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, or 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.
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