The Song of God Almighty

by Swami Krishnananda

3: The Lesser Religions of the Lower Gods

VII. 20-23

Many a god do people adore
With vision closed in blinkered eyes,
Desiring the joys mundane;
Here laws of God are narrow streams.

As conduit pipe's waters do flow
In restricted and channelled course,
The Absolute provides the means
To grant wishes through lesser gods.

Whatever one worships and craves
That certainly does one attain
In this the world of sweat and deed
Or other world beyond this life.

Since wholly is God everywhere,
In lesser wholes also He acts,
But worships outward sans the self
Do not procure the desired end.

The out-turned gaze to even gods
Cannot the gods in truth attain;
There is a semblance of the joy
Of what one seeks, but has an end.

Since outward form is not the self
The gods above cannot bestow
What self does seek in its own heart,
For not-self is not experience.

IX. 23-25

When wrongly placed things one desires,
The right thing is then wrongly seen
Put out of contact, wrenched from source,
As corpse bereft of soul-essence.

To senses God looks like the world,
His fingers seem as objects, things,
As placed in space and time outside,
So man does run away from self.

Knowing not God who's everywhere,
One rushes fast to outer gods,
Whose grasp does flee as horizon;
Thus sensate self deludes itself.

When desires pull it's God that pulls,
Which's wrongly seen as senses' pull,
Eternity parades as time,
The Infinite as sky's expanse.

By such worship do people reach
The angels, manes, demons or ghosts,
Or even trees and stones by thought
That's lodged in them as worship's aim.

XVII. 4-6

The Sattva-filled attain to gods,
The Rajas-filled to spirits go,
The Tamas-filled goblins do reach,
Such is the law of Karma's norms.

Contrawise to scripture's lore
Who Tapas do with ego's pride
For selfish gain or harm's intent,
With torture's pain, demoniacal.

They ruin themselves and others,
Ending in rebirth's pangs and groans;
Where ignorance is darkness' bliss,
Wisdom is folly and a waste.

It does not mean to love one god
Implies a hate to other's god,
For such a god is no one's god,
Who conflict breeds or war begets.