Steering Toward the Supreme 77
siderable amount of power. On this earth there may
be a king or a president or a dictator—these are men
like us, but they have some extraordinary power, and
in order to get favors from them, to take advantage
of their power, we worship them in one way or
another. But Bhagavad-gita condemns worship of the
demigods. This verse clearly states that people wor-
ship the demigods due to kama, material lust.

This material life is simply based on lust; we want
to enjoy this world, and we love this material world
because we want to gratify our senses. This lust is a
perverted reflection of our love of God. In our
original constitution we are made to love God, but
because we have forgotten God, we love matter. Love
is there. Either we love matter, or we love God. But
in no case can we get out of this loving propensity;
indeed, we often see that when one doesn’t have
children, he loves a cat or a dog. Why? Because we
want and need to love something. In the absence of
reality, we put our faith and love in cats and dogs.
Love is always there, but it is distorted into the
form of lust. When this lust is baffled, we become
angry; when we become angry, we become illusioned;
and when we are illusioned, we are doomed. This is
the process that is going on, but we have to reverse
this process and turn lust into love. If we love God,
we love everything. But if we do not love God, it is
not possible to love anything. We may think that it
is love, but it is simply a glamorized form of lust.
Those who have become the dogs of lust are said to
have lost all good sense: kamais tais tair hrtajnanah.
