Link to purport by A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada

Transcript of Bhakti-Shastri class on this verse by Chaitanya

Bg 7.23

antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ
tad bhavaty alpa-medhasām
devān deva-yajo yānti
mad-bhaktā yānti mām api

Word for word: 

anta–vat — perishable; tu — but; phalam — fruit; teṣām — their; tat — that; bhavati — becomes; alpa–medhasām— of those of small intelligence; devān — to the demigods; deva–yajaḥ — the worshipers of the demigods; yānti— go; mat — My; bhaktāḥ — devotees; yānti — go; mām — to Me; api — also.

Translation: 

Men of small intelligence worship the demigods, and their fruits are limited and temporary. Those who worship the demigods go to the planets of the demigods, but My devotees ultimately reach My supreme planet.

 

antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ

the phala that one gets by the worship of devtas are antavat is temporary,   

tad bhavaty alpa-medhasām

so who aspires for this actually who is alpa-medhasā, medhasā is intelligence and alpa is little / less / scanty / not much. Those who has less intelligence 

devān deva-yajo yānti

so those who worship devtas go to devtas.

mad-bhaktā yānti mām api

and those worship Me comes back to Me Sri Krishna is telling over here.

So in this way He is explaining a difference in different kinds of worships different levels of worship.

So antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ, so demigods are temporary, demigods abode are temporary demigods worshipers they themselves are temporary, as a soul they are eternal but the attainment which they get as long as they are existing in the material world everything is temporary. Our bodily existence is temporary, so demigod worshipers when they are elevated what is the ultimate fruit they can get? The ultimate fruit they get by the mercy of Supreme God is, somehow they get elevated from demigod worship to the worship of Supreme Lord, that is the ultimate blessing that they can get and instead of Saakam they become Niskaam in the worship of Supreme Lord. Otherwise at the material level the benefit that they can get is they may move from materialist consciousness to pious materialism and they may go to the demigod abode and they live with demigod but that is also not permanent. The demigod abode themselves are temporary so even if they attain those abodes they live there temporarily, and quite often they will not attain those abodes because today especially when people perform demigod worship they don’t even do with proper scriptural rules and regulations.

So tam-tam niyam asthayami, there has to be niyam and one has to be asthaya one has to follow those niyams fully the rules faithfully so even demigod worship has to be done with rule and regulations. Now the rules and regulation for demigod worship may be different from worship of Supreme Lord or even among demigods but there are rules nonetheless and only when one follows the rules then one gets elevated, so today we have demigod worship in India for example we may have worship of Ganesh Ji and in such worship people are playing movie songs in the pendal and many people doesn’t find it objectionable in such a thing because their whole idea is that this kind of religious practice is one kind of entertainment. People are coming to Ganesh Ji for entertainment and hearing movie song also for entertainment only so what is the problem in bringing two forms of entertainment together? Actually it is a complete misunderstanding. Demigod worship should also be done for the glorification of demigod ultimately one should worship the Supreme Lord but if you are worshiping the demigods then we should glorify that demigod in the worship, the best way to glorify that demigod is to glorify that demigod as a devotee of the Supreme Lord. As in Sivastakam (written by Lord Chaitanya) where Lord Shiva is glorified as a devotee of Supreme Lord but if one doesn’t do that kind of glorification at least he should worship demigod and glorify him as per the power of the demigod but today even that is not done, the demigod image might be there but actually one may be singing movie song there and may be in morning and evening at the time of arati little bit songs of the demigod is played, and there songs are often sung by professional singer who is not singing out of devotion but for the desire for profit or fame so this kinds of worship of demigods will not lead  too much of spiritual advancement. Actually by the worship of demigods even if the worship is done properly the advancement will happen gradually. Sri Krishna has said if someone worships Him for material motive from there to full surrender takes many life time so from worship of demigods for material motives to surrender to Krishna will take much longer time. So we should encourage this as a devotees when we get forum, we should not hurt people’s feeling when they do demigod worship but we can guide them, people are uninformed and because they are uninformed they don’t know something wrong over here so we can gently but gravely explain if they wanted to worship demigod the best way is to glorify them as servant of Krishna. That is what Krishan is telling over here it is not that all of this lead to same result, if someone is worshiping demigod it is not that by worshiping demigod people will go back to Krishna, it is very clearly Krishna is saying devān deva-yajo yānti those who is worshiping devatas will go back to devatas and mad-bhaktā yānti mām api and those who worship Me will come back to Me. And because attaining Me is eternal attainment attaining devatas are temporary attainment therefore the two cannot be equated therefore Krishna is saying alpa-medhasām. Those who worship devatas are less intelligent. So this alpa-medhasām can be contrasted by BG 7.19 Gyanvan. So those who are Gyanvan they surrender to Me. Then Sri Krishna says in 7.20 kāmais tais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ the knowledge is stolen away by material desire, so someone can say that ok knowledge is stolen away but they at least start worshiping the devatas they did not get into sinful activities for fulfilment of material desires. Yes that is good they have some medhasā but their medhasā is alpa-medhasā it is not very great because they are not aspiring for eternal they are aspiring for temporary only devān deva-yajo yānti, so those who worship devatas to the devatas and that is why it is less intelligent, for a human being who is capable of attaining eternal result seeking something temporary is settling for less when one can get so much greater but one choses to settle for something small. Say if someone is student of IIT and while in IIT one doesn’t think about how can I have bright career but think about where I can get best food to eat, the hostel mess is terrible and whole day the person spent time in searching for good food. Well if the goal is to eat food one doesn’t have to be in IIT one can find food anywhere to eat, we all need to eat, eating is important but eating is not all important so eating is one part of life, again the purpose of being in IIT is to study and get good career similarly our life has a material side and material side’s importance is not to be rejected entirely or neglected but we have to understand also that the material side of life is not all important even animals are taking care of the material side so we have to raise to higher level of understanding, we have to raise to level of understanding that there is a spiritual side of our life and that should be of our primary focus so when we understand that, and focus on that, then we get eternal result, as long as we focus on material side we get only temporary result that is why alpa-medhasā.

End of transcription.