Giraffe

Expressions researched:
"giraffe" |"giraffes"

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- April 6, 1974, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Not Darwin's theory. Darwin's theory is no explanation that whose evolution? Evolution is of the soul. The soul is changing in different bodies, one body better than the other. That kind of evolution.

Acyutānanda: Darwin has no individual evolution, but the evolution of a species, like, they say, there were horses. And then when they had eaten up all the food on the ground, so they started to get the food on the trees. So their necks became longer. And those with longer necks lived, and the others died. So then there were the giraffes. So they moved like that. "Survival of the fittest." That's his theory. Then the more intelligent animals will live more than the less intelligent. So they will die out and then they will be up to the human. But that doesn't explain why there are still lower species of life, that why are there still animals?

Girirāja: (reads) "...we are given the histories of Kṛṣṇa's appearances and disappearances millions and billions of years ago. In the Fourth Chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that both he and Arjuna had many births before, and that He, Kṛṣṇa, could remember all of them and that Arjuna could not. This illustrates the difference between the knowledge of Kṛṣṇa and that of Arjuna. Arjuna might have been a very great warrior, a well-cultured member of the Kuru dynasty..." (break)

Acyutānanda: In the last part of Kṛṣṇa Book, Mahā-Viṣṇu says that Arjuna is of the capacity of Nara-nārāyaṇa. So they are avatāras also.

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- June 26, 1975, Los Angeles:

Rādhā-vallabha: They don't say that it has anything to do with God. They simply say...

Prabhupāda: That is their nonsense rascaldom. Who is arranging this? You cannot do it. You cannot do it. So somebody has arranged like that. It is going on. Somebody has done. You have not done; neither you have power to do it. So that somebody is God.

Rādhā-vallabha: The same scientist—his name was Lamarck—he said that the giraffes have long necks because after many, many years of trying to eat leaves from trees their necks got longer.

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Brahmānanda: He says the giraffes with the long necks in Africa their necks... Formerly their necks were very short, but they were always trying to eat the leaves on the top of the tree, so by doing this for many, many years their necks became longer, longer, longer.

Prabhupāda: That is Darwin's theory.

1977 Conversations and Morning Walks

Talk with Svarupa Damodara -- April 18, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: Speculation. It is not sound knowledge.

Dr. Sharma: He says that the giraffe has got a very lengthy neck because there was no grass on the floor. He had to reach the branches and bows of a tree for the leaves. So he got a lengthy neck.

Prabhupāda: So who made this arrangement?

Dr. Sharma: It was written by Darwin.

Talk with Svarupa Damodara -- April 18, 1977, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: He's a nonsense.

Dr. Sharma: They did not develop a big neck. Only giraffe developed, because Darwin wanted.

Prabhupāda: (laughs) Therefore he's a nonsense. He has...

Dr. Sharma: (indistinct) that we all learn by our fault, we are being obsessed by our own thing. We don't seem to observe the creed of life.

Prabhupāda: Less intelligent. Therefore it is our duty to educate them, out of sympathy. That is Caitanya Mahāprabhu's mission. Paścimera loka saba mūḍha anācāra: "The Western peoples, they are mūḍhas and anācāras." So this mission is paropakāra, to give them knowledge and how to become civilized. This is the mission.