Ravindra-svarūpa: When I was at Temple, they told me that you had come. This was before I had ever heard of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. But they told me that you had come the year before I was there. I went there, and then the year before, you had been there. And so I took a course with this Swami Nikilananda. And you had spoken in his class, and they told me that you asked, "So you are studying Vedānta. So what is Vedānta?" And no one knew. No one knew what Vedānta meant. And you said that "Veda means knowledge, and anta means end. So Vedānta means the end of knowledge, and that is Kṛṣṇa." They had never heard that before, even though they'd had so many hours of courses in Vedānta.
Prabhupāda: That is the difficulty, that those who are foolish people, they are taking leading part. That is the defect of modern civilization. One who has no knowledge, he is taking the part of a teacher. So a hodgepodge, must be. He is speaking something hodgepodge. Just like this, one does not know what is Vedānta, and he is reading Vedānta. It is very simple truth. Veda means knowledge, and anta means end. There must be something, ultimate, goal. But the modern process is that we go on unlimitedly, but never we come to the end. Is it not like that? What do you think?
Kīrtanānanda: Yes. It's a fact, no conclusion.