76
On the Way to Krsna
there are  svāmīs  who go to people's houses and preach, "If you give me one ounce of gold I can make it into one hundred ounces of gold." The people think, "I have five ounces of gold. Let me give it to him, and I'll get five hundred ounces." In this way the  svāmī  collects all the gold in the village, and after collecting it, he vanishes. This is our disease: when we go to a  svāmī , or a temple or a church, our hearts are filled with material desires. Wanting some material profit out of spiritual life, we practice  yoga  just to keep our health fit. But, in order to keep healthy, why take shelter of  yoga ? We can become healthy through regular exercises and regulated diet. Why resort to  yoga ? Because:  kāmais tais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ . We have the material desire to keep ourselves fit and to enjoy life by going to church and making God our order-supplier.
Having material desires, men worship various demigods. They have no idea how to get out of matter; they want to utilize the material world to its best capacity. For instance, in Vedic literature there are so many recommendations: if one wants to cure his disease, he worships the sun, or if a girl wants a good husband, she worships Lord Śiva, or if one wants to become beautiful, he worships such and such god, or if one wants to become educated, he worships goddess Sarasvatī. In this way Westerners often think that the Hindus are polytheistic, but actually this worship is not to God, but to demigods. We should not think that the demigods are God. God is one, but there are demigods who are also living entities just like us. The difference is that they have a con-