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Caveman

Lectures

Philosophy Discussions

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: In the ancient times, the Neanderthal man, the Cro-Magnon man—they always are saying that these people were killers and hunters; they had to kill to survive.

Prabhupāda: That is Darwin's philosophy, not my philosophy.

Śyāmasundara: But there is no difference between the oldest cavemen and the men today. We're still killing, still hunting, still fighting. Same things.

Prabhupāda: No. Suppose just like Jesus Christ instructed his disciples, "Thou shall not kill." Say two thousand years ago in the Western countries, the men were killers, that's all. But we'll see Bhagavad-gītā, five thousand years ago, Kṛṣṇa is arguing that "If our women become widows then they'll be polluted. There will be varṇa-saṅkara, unwanted children, the society will go to hell." How much elevated society. Five thousand years ago. It is a question of place. It is a question of place. If Darwin says... Here in the Bible it is said that "Thou shall not kill," so that means two thousand years ago they were simply killers. That does not mean five thousand years there were no highly elevated personalities. That is his lack of studying. He is too much localized. He has no broadened knowledge, neither he has studied all the books, contemporary books; therefore he has poor fund of knowledge. He's very poor in his knowledge. Just like, still, there are many Americans... You Americans are completely different from others. You cannot say that all the Americans are drunkards and irresponsible; therefore, they are also. Side by side some moral is still there. You don't drink; you don't take meat; you are all God conscious; side by side there is. So how you can write history that "Such and such, 1971, '72, all Americans were LSD"? How you can conclude like that?

Śyāmasundara: They may find three or four bodies...

Prabhupāda: Even they may find one, they cannot conclude.

Śyāmasundara: Yes. Right. That's all. They can't tell from three or four samples what everything was like.

Prabhupāda: That's not possible.

Conversations and Morning Walks

1972 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- May 4, 1972, Mexico:

Martin: So there's something higher than human form?

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Demigods. (Sanskrit) Generally three divisions: demigods, human beings and other than human beings.

Martin: Primitive cavemen?

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Martin: Primitive cavemen?

Prabhupāda: No, not only cavemen: the animals, birds, beasts, other than.

Martin: Oh, I see. (more thunder)

Prabhupāda: But this human form of life is better than demigods' life because demigods, they are materially very opulent. Just like when the Americans came in India, they thought, "Demigods." Is it not?

Martin: The Indians thought. Hm.

Prabhupāda: Because they're better looking, good looking, intelligent, powerful. Similarly, just like this controller or director of this rain department is Indra. This thundering, it is under his direction this thundering is going on. He throws the thunderbolts and cracks the mountain, and then we get chunks. That is his business. As in government there are different departments, similarly, God has got different departments, and the in-charge of that department is demigod. Creation, that's Brahma; sustenance or maintenance, Himself, Viṣṇu; and dissolution, Lord Siva.

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- December 12, 1975, Vrndavana:

Akṣayānanda: Another point is somebody had to light the fire.

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Akṣayānanda: Somebody must have lit that fire. So similarly the light of the sun, who has started that light?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Akṣayānanda: Somebody has started that light, that fire.

Prabhupāda: So in this way the nonsense scientists are going on. What do you think? Eh?

Harikeśa: So this idea of friction causing electricity, so is electricity—this electrical energy—the source of fire? That's what the scientists think sometimes too, that the lightning bolt came down and made a fire. And that was man's first experience of fire as a caveman.

Akṣayānanda: So where did the lightning bolt come from?

Prabhupāda: Yes. How the lightning was manufactured, rascal?

Harikeśa: Well, there were some positive charges in the clouds and some negative charges in the ground.

Prabhupāda: That's alright. Who made that positive charge and negative charge?

Akṣayānanda: So let them manufacture lightning bolts in the Tata factory.

Prabhupāda: How the electricity is produced unless there is some arrangement? Just put counter-argument and argument, try to understand. You have to preach. So your argument stopped?

1976 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- February 6, 1976, Mayapura:

Hṛdayānanda: Prabhupāda? You wrote in a letter to Bhagavān... You said that originally the Europeans had Aryan-type culture but they have become degraded.

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. They are still Aryan. Europeans are Aryan, Indo-Aryan. That is admitted in history.

Hṛdayānanda: You said that they became degraded by associating, by bad...

Prabhupāda: Yes, by association with these aborigines.

Hṛdayānanda: Who were the aborigines they associated with?

Prabhupāda: Everywhere there were aborigines. In India there are still aborigines, ādivāsī.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: You were saying, Prabhupāda, the Huns.

Prabhupāda: Huns.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes. Huns. They were considered like that?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Huns are also lower than the śūdras, caṇḍālas, dog-eaters, animal-eaters. And these Europeans historians, they take the aborigines, their original father.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Their what, Prabhupāda?

Prabhupāda: Original father.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: You said, "Yes, they are your original father."

Prabhupāda: No, no. "The aborigines, the naked jaṅgalīs, they were original person." Do they not?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Before that, there was the caveman.

Prabhupāda: Ah, caveman. That's... Caveman. That is aborigine.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: And before the caveman was the missing link.

Prabhupāda: And he has known missing link.

Morning Walk -- March 18, 1976, Mayapura:

Prabhupāda: No, when there was no civilization.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Eh? They...

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: There is no civilization five thousand years ago.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Three thousand years...

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: All cavemen.

Prabhupāda: ...before, there was no civilization.

Morning Walk -- March 18, 1976, Mayapura:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: How can a caveman make it, then?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Trivikrama: Each verse, so...

Prabhupāda: Each rich.... Is it impossible to compose verses by the cavemen? How foolish they are. Not only that, in Mahābhārata there are 100,000 verses. In Bhāgavata, there are 18,000 verses. In the Purāṇas... Where is such rich literature? If they were cavemen, wherefrom this literature came?

Satsvarūpa: They also said Kṛṣṇa was a tribal chief. But how could He speak such philosophy?

Prabhupāda: How rascal they are.

Pañca-draviḍa: There are a few flaws in the theory.

Prabhupāda: The best class of men, the Aryans, and they were worshiping a tribal chief! And what was Arjuna? He was also a tribal chief? Arjuna said that "I become Your disciple." So what was he, that he is submitting to a tribal chief? Śiṣyas te 'haṁ śādhi māṁ tvāṁ prapannam (BG 2.7). And He's teaching Bhagavad-gītā?

Lokanātha: Which is being read after five thousand years.

Prabhupāda: And still, they cannot assimilate it, so much, so-called civilized men, they cannot understand even the beginning of Bhagavad-gītā, tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ (BG 2.13), that there is transmigration of the soul, these rascals. And who is tribal chief?

Morning Walk -- June 7, 1976, Los Angeles:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: I read one anthropology book, and it said that about 3,500 years ago in India people were only living in all the caves, and they were simply using stones and things like that, very primitive tools. No knowledge at all.

Mahendra: But they cannot explain how it was that these people evolved, these cavemen evolved such a language as Sanskrit, which not even the greatest scholar today can even begin to comprehend. It is a very great language.

Prabhupāda: That is their grudge. When they see such exalted literature, they are envious.

1977 Conversations and Morning Walks

Conversation and Instruction On New Movie -- January 13, 1977, Allahabad:

Rāmeśvara: One thing they will like to see in this movie is many different temples, beautiful temples from South India, and also Vaiṣṇava festivals.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: Like Ratha-yatra in Jagannātha Purī.

Prabhupāda: And the stories also, that how by executing one of the items a devotee became perfect.

Hari-śauri: And show how they're doing those...

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Hari-śauri: ...items in different sampradāyas and...

Rāmeśvara: This will show, this movie will show, that Vaiṣṇava is very authorized.

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes.

Rāmeśvara: Chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa is widespread. Because that... They are criticizing.

Prabhupāda: No, no, this, this, this śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ, this śloka, was cited just little after the creation. That means millions and millions of years ago. Now, not recently. Many millions and billions of years ago. That is the oldest. Śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ smaraṇaṁ pāda-sevanam (SB 7.5.23). Whichever item you take, it is very, very... Just like this Parīkṣit Mahārāja. That is at least five thousand years ago. So where is the history of the human society in the Western countries? They cannot give history more than three thousand years.

Rāmeśvara: They think it is simply caveman.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Rāmeśvara: Prehistoric. They call it pre—history, living in caves, monkey men. Also I was thinking, in the movie they can take the testimonial of different scholars and professors in India about your books and about chanting as a process for awakening the mind, because they are accusing us that "By chanting, you are killing your brain." So if we take...

Prabhupāda: That, it is acting, rascal, on brain. We are teaching or giving them process. That you cannot understand. But our mantra is so strong that it is acting on the brain. So why don't you take this side, that "If we are simply chanting and it is acting on the brain, even from your side, that it is so strong that we are giving up everything for this process. So how much this chanting is strong, why don't you see to that?"

Room Conversations Bangladesh Preaching/Prabhavisnu Articles by Hamsaduta -- August 11, 1977, Vrndavana:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: "Among animals that evolved on this planet, man is the only animal that has progressed in all his activities. This he achieved through his knowledge in science. While all organisms continue to live even today as their forebears did millions of years ago, man alone has progressed..."

Prabhupāda: No, no. There are uncivilized men. Without any knowledge they can produce children. Do they have any scientific knowledge? How they are producing children? The same man, the same woman, the same child. What is the difference?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says, "Man alone has progressed from the caveman state to the present spaceman state."

Prabhupāda: Progressing means eating, sleeping, nothing more progress. He eats by killing an animal in the jungle, and you are eating, killing an animal in the organized slaughterhouse. That's all. So what is the difference between you and him? You are committing sinful activities by hammering, the killing, but he does not do so. He's not so sinful.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says that "Man alone has progressed..."

Prabhupāda: He can be allowed to do so because he is not civilized. But you are civilized, and you are committing great sinful activities by maintaining slaughterhouse. You are such a rascal. And because you are godless, you do not know that you will suffer for these sinful activities. That is the proof of existence of soul.

Page Title:Caveman
Compiler:Rishab, MayuriSakhee
Created:17 of Feb, 2011
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=1, Con=8, Let=0
No. of Quotes:9