Lord Krishna
Divine TeacherThe Supreme Lord, the charioteer and divine guide of Arjuna. Krishna delivers the eternal wisdom of the Gita, revealing the nature of the soul, duty, and the path to liberation.
Speaking: Chapter 17, Verse 4
Verse 4
The Yoga of the Three Types of Faith
The sattvic worship the gods; the rajasic worship yakshas and rakshasas; others — the tamasic — worship spirits and ghosts.
Context & Meaning
Faith expresses itself through what one chooses to worship — and the object of worship reveals the quality of one's faith. The sattvic, with their orientation toward light, truth, and harmony, worship the devas — the cosmic principles of order, intelligence, and grace. The rajasic, driven by ambition and desire for power, worship yakshas and rakshasas — the more volatile, power-conferring supernatural forces that can grant wealth, dominance, and worldly success. The tamasic, caught in the lowest orientation, worship pretas (spirits of the dead) and bhūta-gaṇas (elemental forces associated with darkness and inertia). The objects of worship are not arbitrary — they are chosen because they resonate with the worshipper's inner state and are believed to grant what the worshipper actually wants.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainAdi Shankaracharya
AdvaitaThe gods (devas), yakshas, and pretas are real beings at different strata of cosmic reality — corresponding to sattva, rajas, and tamas respectively. What one worships shapes what one becomes: the sattvic worshipper is refined by contact with the higher; the rajasic is intensified by contact with the passionate; the tamasic is deepened in darkness by contact with the inert and the dead. Worship is a two-way street: the worshipper is shaped by what they bow before.