ERROR: Your browser does not support scripts.

One who desires to be absorbed in the impersonal brahmajyoti effulgence should worship the master of the Vedas [Lord Brahma or Brhaspati, the learned priest], one who desires powerful sex should worship the heavenly King, Indra, and one who desires good progeny should worship the great progenitors called the Prajapatis. One who desires good fortune should worship Durgadevi, the superintendent of the material world. One desiring to be very powerful should worship fire, and one who aspires only after money should worship the Vasus. One should worship the Rudra incarnations of Lord Siva if he wants to be a great hero. One who wants a large stock of grains should worship Aditi. One who desires to attain the heavenly planets should worship the sons of Aditi. One who desires a worldly kingdom should worship Visvadeva, and one who wants to be popular with the general mass of population should worship the Sadhya demigod. One who desires a long span of life should worship the demigods known as the Asvini-kumaras, and a person desiring a strongly built body should worship the earth. One who desires stability in his post should worship the horizon and the earth combined. One who desires to be beautiful should worship the beautiful residents of the Gandharva planet, and one who desires a good wife should worship the Apsaras and the Urvasi society girls of the heavenly kingdom. One who desires domination over others should worship Lord Brahma, the head of the universe. One who desires tangible fame should worship the Personality of Godhead, and one who desires a good bank balance should worship the demigod Varuna. If one desires to be a greatly learned man he should worship Lord Siva, and if one desires a good marital relation he should worship the chaste goddess Uma, the wife of Lord Siva.

tantuh tanvan pitrn yajet

There are different modes of worship for different persons desiring success in particular subjects. The conditioned soul living within the purview of the material world cannot be an expert in every type of materially enjoyable asset, but one can have considerable influence over a particular matter by worshiping a particular demigod, as mentioned above. Ravana was made a very powerful man by worshiping Lord Siva, and he used to offer severed heads to please Lord Siva. He became so powerful by the grace of Lord Siva that all the demigods were afraid of him, until he at last challenged the Personality of Godhead Sri Ramacandra and thus ruined himself. In other words, all such persons who aspire after gaining some or all of the material objects of enjoyment, or the gross materialistic persons, are on the whole less intelligent, as confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita (7.20). It is said there that those who are bereft of all good sense, or those whose intelligence is withdrawn by the deluding energy of maya, aspire to achieve all sorts of material enjoyment in life by pleasing the various demigods, or by advancing in material civilization under the heading of scientific progress. The real problem of life in the material world is to solve the question of birth, death, old age and disease. No one wants to change his birthright, no one wants to meet death, no one wants to be old or invalid, and no one wants diseases. But these problems are solved neither by the grace of any demigod nor by the so-called advancement of material science. In the Bhagavad-gita, as well as in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, such less intelligent persons have been described as devoid of all good sense. Sukadeva Gosvami said that out of the 8,400,000 species of living entities, the human form of life is rare and valuable, and out of those rare human beings those who are conscious of the material problems are rarer still, and the still more rare persons are those who are conscious of the value of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, which contains the messages of the Lord and His pure devotees. Death is inevitable for everyone, intelligent or foolish. But Pariksit Maharaja has been addressed by the Gosvami as the manisi, or the man of highly developed mind, because at the time of death he left all material enjoyment and completely surrendered unto the lotus feet of the Lord by hearing His messages from the right person, Sukadeva Gosvami. But aspirations for material enjoyment by endeavoring persons are condemned. Such aspirations are something like the intoxication of the degraded human society. Intelligent persons should try to avoid these aspirations and seek instead the permanent life by returning home, back to Godhead.

SB2.3.8

TEXT 8

dharmartha uttama-slokam

raksa-kamah punya-janan

ojas-kamo marud-ganan

dharma-arthah—for spiritual advancement; uttama-slokam—the Supreme Lord or persons attached to the Supreme Lord; tantuh—for offspring; tanvan—and for their protection; pitrn—the residents of Pitrloka; yajet—must worship; raksa-kamah—one who desires protection; punya-janan—pious persons; ojah-kamah—one who desires strength should worship; marut-ganan—the demigods.

One should worship Lord Visnu or His devotee for spiritual advancement in knowledge, and for protection of heredity and advancement of a dynasty one should worship the various demigods.

The path of religion entails making progress on the path of spiritual advancement, ultimately reviving the eternal relation with Lord Visnu in His impersonal effulgence, His localized Paramatma feature, and ultimately His personal feature by spiritual advancement in knowledge. And one who wants to establish a good dynasty and be happy in the progress of temporary bodily relations should take shelter of the Pitas and the demigods in other pious planets. Such different classes of worshipers of different demigods may ultimately reach the respective planets of those demigods within the universe, but he who reaches the spiritual planets in the brahmajyoti achieves the highest perfection.

SB2.3.9

TEXT 9

rajya-kamo manun devan

nirrtim tv abhicaran yajet

kama-kamo yajet somam

akamah purusam param

rajya-kamah—anyone desiring an empire or kingdom; manun—the Manus, semi-incarnations of God; devan—demigods; nirrtim—demons; tu—but; abhicaran—desiring victory over the enemy; yajet—should worship; kama-kamah—one who desires sense gratification; yajet—should worship; somam—the demigod named Candra; akamah—one who has no material desires to be fulfilled; purusam—the Supreme Personality of Godhead; param—the Supreme.

One who desires domination over a kingdom or an empire should worship the Manus. One who desires victory over an enemy should worship the demons, and one who desires sense gratification should worship the moon. But one who desires nothing of material enjoyment should worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

For a liberated person, all the enjoyments listed above are considered to be absolutely useless. Only those who are conditioned by the material modes of external energy are captivated by different types of material enjoyment. In other words, the transcendentalist has no material desires to be fulfilled, whereas the materialist has all types of desires to be fulfilled. The Lord has proclaimed that the materialists, who desire material enjoyment and thus seek the favor of different demigods, as above mentioned, are not in control of their senses and so give themselves to nonsense. One should therefore not desire any sort of material enjoyment, being sensible enough to worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The leaders of nonsensical persons are still more nonsensical because they preach openly and foolishly that one can worship any form of demigod and get the same result. This sort of preaching is not only against the teachings of the Bhagavad-gita, or those of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, but is also foolish, just as it is foolish to claim that with the purchase of any travel ticket one may reach the same destination. No one can reach Bombay from Delhi by purchasing a ticket for Baroda. It is clearly defined herein that persons impregnated with different desires have different modes of worship, but one who has no desire for material enjoyment should worship the Supreme Lord, Sri Krsna, the Personality of Godhead. And this worshiping process is called devotional service. Pure devotional service means service to the Lord without any tinge of material desires, including desire for fruitive activity and empiric speculation. For fulfillment of material desires one may worship the Supreme Lord, but the result of such worship is different, as will be explained in the next verse. Generally the Lord does not fulfill anyone’s material desires for sense enjoyment, but He awards such benedictions to worshipers of the Lord, for they ultimately come to the point of not desiring material enjoyment. The conclusion is that one must minimize the desires for material enjoyment, and for this one should worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is described here as param, or beyond anything material. Sripada Sankaracarya has also stated, narayanah paro ’vyaktat: the Supreme Lord is beyond the material encirclement.

SB2.3.10

TEXT 10

akamah sarva-kamo va

moksa-kama udara-dhih

tivrena bhakti-yogena

yajeta purusam param

akamah—one who has transcended all material desires; sarva-kamah—one who has the sum total of material desires; va—either; moksa-kamah—one who desires liberation; udara-dhih—with broader intelligence; tivrena—with great force; bhakti-yogena—by devotional service to the Lord; yajeta—should worship; purusam—the Lord; param—the supreme whole.

A person who has broader intelligence, whether he be full of all material desire, without any material desire, or desiring liberation, must by all means worship the supreme whole, the Personality of Godhead.

The Supreme Personality of Godhead Lord Sri Krsna is described in the Bhagavad-gita as purusottama, or the Supreme Personality. It is He only who can award liberation to the impersonalists by absorbing such aspirants in the brahmajyoti, the bodily rays of the Lord. The brahmajyoti is not separate from the Lord, as the glowing sun ray is not independent of the sun disc. Therefore one who desires to merge into the supreme impersonal brahmajyoti must also worship the Lord by bhakti-yoga, as recommended here in the Srimad-Bhagavatam. Bhakti-yoga is especially stressed here as the means of all perfection. In the previous chapters it has been stated that bhakti-yoga is the ultimate goal of both karma-yoga and jnana-yoga, and in the same way in this chapter it is emphatically declared that bhakti-yoga is the ultimate goal of the different varieties of worship of the different demigods. Bhakti-yoga, thus being the supreme means of self-realization, is recommended here. Everyone must therefore seriously take up the methods of bhakti-yoga, even though one aspires for material enjoyment or liberation from material bondage.

Akamah is one who has no material desire. A living being, naturally being the part and parcel of the supreme whole purusam purnam, has as his natural function to serve the Supreme Being, just as the parts and parcels of the body, or the limbs of the body, are naturally meant to serve the complete body. Desireless means, therefore, not to be inert like the stone, but to be conscious of one’s actual position and thus desire satisfaction only from the Supreme Lord. Srila Jiva Gosvami has explained this desirelessness as bhajaniya-parama-purusa-sukha-matra-sva-sukhatvam in his Sandarbha. This means that one should feel happy only by experiencing the happiness of the Supreme Lord. This intuition of the living being is sometimes manifested even during the conditioned stage of a living being in the material world, and such intuition is expressed in the manner of altruism, philanthropy, socialism, communism, etc., by the undeveloped minds of less intelligent persons. In the mundane field such an outlook of doing good to others in the form of society, community, family, country or humanity is a partial manifestation of the same original feeling in which a pure living entity feels happiness by the happiness of the Supreme Lord. Such superb feelings were exhibited by the damsels of Vrajabhumi for the happiness of the Lord. The gopis loved the Lord without any return, and this is the perfect exhibition of the akamah spirit. Kama spirit, or the desire for one’s own satisfaction, is fully exhibited in the material world, whereas the spirit of akamah is fully exhibited in the spiritual world.

Thoughts of becoming one with the Lord, or being merged in the brahmajyoti, can also be exhibitions of kama spirit if they are desires for one’s own satisfaction to be free from the material miseries. A pure devotee does not want liberation so that he may be relieved from the miseries of life. Even without so-called liberation, a pure devotee is aspirant for the satisfaction of the Lord. Influenced by the kama spirit, Arjuna declined to fight in the Kuruksetra battlefield because he wanted to save his relatives for his own satisfaction. But being a pure devotee, he agreed to fight on the instruction of the Lord because he came to his senses and realized that satisfaction of the Lord at the cost of his own satisfaction was his prime duty. Thus he became akama. That is the perfect stage of a perfect living being.

Udara-dhih means one who has a broader outlook. people with desires for material enjoyment worship small demigods, and such intelligence is condemned in the Bhagavad-gita (7.20) as hrta jnana, the intelligence of one who has lost his senses. One cannot obtain any result from demigods without getting sanction from the Supreme Lord. Therefore a person with a broader outlook can see that the ultimate authority is the Lord, even for material benefits. Under the circumstances, one with a broader outlook, even with the desire for material enjoyment or for liberation, should take to the worship of the Lord directly. And everyone, whether an akama or sakama or moksa-kama, should worship the Lord with great expedience. This implies that bhakti-yoga may be perfectly administered without any mixture of karma and jnana. As the unmixed sun ray is very forceful and is therefore called tivra, similarly unmixed bhakti-yoga of hearing, chanting, etc., may be performed by one and all regardless of inner motive.

bhagavaty acalo bhavo

yad bhagavata-sangatah

etavan—all these different kinds of worshipers; eva—certainly; yajatam—while worshiping; iha—in this life; nihsreyasa—the highest benediction; udayah—development; bhagavati—unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead; acalah—unflinching; bhavah—spontaneous attraction; yat—which; bhagavata—the pure devotee of the Lord; sangatah—association.

All the different kinds of worshipers of multidemigods can attain the highest perfectional benediction, which is spontaneous attraction unflinchingly fixed upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead, only by the association of the pure devotee of the Lord.

All living entities in different statuses of life within the material creation, beginning from the first demigod, Brahma, down to the small ant, are conditioned under the law of material nature, or the external energy of the Supreme Lord. The living entity in his pure state is conscious of the fact that he is a part and parcel of the Lord, but when he is thrown into the material world on account of his desire to lord it over material energy, he becomes conditioned by the three modes of material nature and thus struggles for existence for the highest benefit. This struggle for existence is something like following the will-o’-the-wisp under the spell of material enjoyment. All plans for material enjoyment, either by worship of different demigods as described in the previous verses of this chapter or by modernized advancement of scientific knowledge without the help of God or demigod, are illusory only, for despite all such plans for happiness, the conditioned living being within the compass of material creation can never solve the problems of life, namely birth, death, old age and disease. The history of the universe is full of such planmakers, and many kings and emperors come and go, leaving a planmaking story only. But the prime problems of life remain unsolved despite all endeavors by such planmakers.

Actually human life is meant for making a solution to the problems of life. One can never solve such problems by satisfying the different demigods, by different modes of worship, or by so-called scientific advancement in knowledge without the help of God or the demigods. Apart from the gross materialists, who care very little either for God or for the demigods, the Vedas recommend worship of different demigods for different benefits, and so the demigods are neither false nor imaginary. The demigods are as factual as we are, but they are much more powerful due to their being engaged in the direct service of the Lord in managing different departments in the universal government. The Bhagavad-gita affirms this, and the different planets of the demigods are mentioned there, including the one of the supreme demigod, Lord Brahma. The gross materialists do not believe in the existence of God or the demigods. Nor do they believe that different planets are dominated by different demigods. They are creating a great commotion about reaching the closest celestial body, Candraloka, or the moon, but even after much mechanical research they have only very scanty information of this moon, and in spite of much false advertisement for selling land on the moon, the puffed-up scientists or gross materialists cannot live there, and what to speak of reaching the other planets, which they are unable even to count. However, the followers of the Vedas have a different method of acquiring knowledge. They accept the statements of the Vedic literatures as authority in toto, as we have already discussed in Canto One, and therefore they have full and reasonable knowledge of God and demigods and of their different residential planets situated within the compass of the material world and beyond the limit of the material sky. The most authentic Vedic literature, accepted by the great Indian acaryas like Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Visnusvami, Nimbarka and Caitanya and studied by all important personalities of the world, is the Bhagavad-gita, in which the worship of the demigods and their respective residential planets are mentioned. The Bhagavad-gita (9.25) affirms:

yanti deva-vrata devan
pitrn yanti pitr-vratah
bhutani yanti bhutejya
yanti mad-yajino ’pi mam

“The worshipers of demigods reach the respective planets of the demigods, and the worshipers of forefathers reach the planets of the forefathers. The gross materialist remains in the different material planets, but the devotees of the Lord reach the kingdom of God.”

We also have information from the Bhagavad-gita that all the planets within the material world, including Brahmaloka, are but temporarily situated, and after a fixed period they are all annihilated. Therefore the demigods and their followers are all annihilated at the period of devastation, but one who reaches the kingdom of God gets a permanent share in eternal life. That is the verdict of Vedic literature. The worshipers of the demigods have one facility more than the unbelievers due to their being convinced of the Vedic version, by which they can get information of the benefit of worshiping the Supreme Lord in the association of the devotees of the Lord. The gross materialist, however, without any faith in the Vedic version, remains eternally in darkness, driven by a false conviction on the basis of imperfect experimental knowledge, or so-called material science, which can never reach into the realm of transcendental knowledge.

Therefore unless the gross materialists or the worshipers of the temporary demigods come in contact with a transcendentalist like the pure devotee of the Lord, their attempts are simply a waste of energy. Only by the grace of the divine personalities, the pure devotees of the Lord, can one achieve pure devotion, which is the highest perfection of human life. Only a pure devotee of the Lord can show one the right way of progressive life. Otherwise both the materialistic way of life, without any information of God or the demigods, and the life engaged in the worship of demigods, in pursuit of temporary material enjoyments, are different phases of phantasmagoria. They are nicely explained in the Bhagavad-gita also, but the Bhagavad-gita can be understood in the association of pure devotees only, and not by the interpretations of politicians or dry philosophical speculators.

SB2.3.12

TEXT 12

jnanam yad apratinivrtta-gunormi-cakram

atma-prasada uta yatra gunesv asangah

kaivalya-sammata-pathas tv atha bhakti-yogah

ko nirvrto hari-kathasu ratim na kuryat

jnanam—knowledge; yat—that which; a—up to the limit of; pratinivrtta—completely withdrawn; guna-urmi—the waves of the material modes; cakram—whirlpool; atma-prasadah—self-satisfaction; uta—moreover; yatra—where there is; gunesu—in the modes of nature; asangah—no attachment; kaivalya—transcendental; sammata—approved; pathah—path; tu—but; atha—therefore; bhakti-yogah—devotional service; kah—who; nirvrtah—absorbed in; hari-kathasu—in the transcendental topics of the Lord; ratim—attraction; na—shall not; kuryat—do.

Transcendental knowledge in relation with the Supreme Lord Hari is knowledge resulting in the complete suspension of the waves and whirlpools of the material modes. Such knowledge is self-satisfying due to its being free from material attachment, and being transcendental it is approved by authorities. Who could fail to be attracted?