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Less intelligent (SB)

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Srimad-Bhagavatam

SB Preface and Introduction

SB Introduction:

Unfortunately, despite Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa's direct order and the teachings of the Bhagavad-gītā, less intelligent people misunderstand Him to be nothing but a great historical personality, and thus they cannot accept Him as the original Personality of Godhead.

SB Canto 1

SB 1.1.3, Purport:

Therefore, one who attains full knowledge of these different rasas, which are the basic principles of activities, can understand the false representations of the original rasas which are reflected in the material world. The learned scholar seeks to relish the real rasa in the spiritual form. In the beginning he desires to become one with the Supreme. Thus, less intelligent transcendentalists cannot go beyond this conception of becoming one with the spirit whole, without knowing of the different rasas.

SB 1.1.17, Purport:

The Personality of Godhead is never inactive as some less intelligent persons suggest. His works are magnificent and magnanimous. His creations both material and spiritual are all wonderful and contain all variegatedness.

SB 1.1.17, Purport:

The material creations are manifested for some time as perverted shadows of the spiritual kingdom and can be likened to cinemas. They attract people of less intelligent caliber who are attracted by false things. Such foolish men have no information of the reality, and they take it for granted that the false material manifestation is the all in all.

SB 1.1.17, Purport:

Some of these conditioned souls are engaged in the false enjoyment of material senses and others in simply negating their real life in the spiritual world. These less intelligent persons are known as karmīs, or fruitive workers, and jñānīs, or dry mental speculators. But above these two classes of men is the transcendentalist known as sātvata, or the devotee, who is busy neither with rampant material activity nor with material speculation. He is engaged in the positive service of the Lord, and thereby he derives the highest spiritual benefit unknown to the karmīs and jñānīs.

SB 1.2.7, Purport:

Generally it is said that the bhakti cult is meant for the śūdras, vaiśyas and the less intelligent woman class. But that is not the actual fact. The bhakti cult is the topmost of all transcendental activities, and therefore it is simultaneously sublime and easy.

SB 1.2.8, Purport:

To the gross materialist who cannot see anything beyond the gross material body, there is nothing beyond the senses. Therefore his occupational activities are limited to concentrated and extended selfishness. Concentrated selfishness centers around the personal body—this is generally seen amongst the lower animals. Extended selfishness is manifested in human society and centers around the family, society, community, nation and world with a view to gross bodily comfort. Above these gross materialists are the mental speculators who hover aloft in the mental spheres, and their occupational duties involve making poetry and philosophy or propagating some ism with the same aim of selfishness limited to the body and the mind. But above the body and mind is the dormant spirit soul whose absence from the body makes the whole range of bodily and mental selfishness completely null and void. But less intelligent people have no information of the needs of the spirit soul.

SB 1.2.11, Purport:

The Absolute Truth is both subject and object, and there is no qualitative difference there. Therefore, Brahman, Paramātmā and Bhagavān are qualitatively one and the same. The same substance is realized as impersonal Brahman by the students of the Upaniṣads, as localized Paramātmā by the Hiraṇyagarbhas or the yogīs, and as Bhagavān by the devotees. In other words, Bhagavān, or the Personality of Godhead, is the last word of the Absolute Truth. Paramātmā is the partial representation of the Personality of Godhead, and impersonal Brahman is the glowing effulgence of the Personality of Godhead, as the sun rays are to the sun-god. Less intelligent students of either of the above schools sometimes argue in favor of their own respective realization, but those who are perfect seers of the Absolute Truth know well that the above three features of the one Absolute Truth are different perspective views seen from different angles of vision.

SB 1.2.12, Purport:

Devotional service, which is based on the foreground of full knowledge combined with detachment from material association and which is fixed by the aural reception of the Vedānta-śruti, is the only perfect method by which the seriously inquisitive student can realize the Absolute Truth. Devotional service is not, therefore, meant for the less intelligent class of transcendentalist.

SB 1.2.22, Purport:

The transcendental pastimes of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa are not newly accepted, as argued by some less intelligent persons; His pastimes are eternal and are manifested in due course once in a day of Brahmājī, as the sun rises on the eastern horizon at the end of every twenty-four hours.

SB 1.3.21, Translation:

Thereafter, in the seventeenth incarnation of Godhead, Śrī Vyāsadeva appeared in the womb of Satyavatī through Parāśara Muni, and he divided the one Veda into several branches and subbranches, seeing that the people in general were less intelligent.

SB 1.3.21, Purport:

Śrīla Vyāsadeva divided the Vedas into various branches and subbranches for the sake of the less intelligent classes like the dvija-bandhus, śūdras and women.

SB 1.3.24, Purport:

Lord Buddha preached nonviolence, taking pity on the poor animals. He preached that he did not believe in the tenets of the Vedas and stressed the adverse psychological effects incurred by animal-killing. Less intelligent men of the age of Kali, who had no faith in God, followed his principle, and for the time being they were trained in moral discipline and nonviolence, the preliminary steps for proceeding further on the path of God realization.

SB 1.3.30, Translation:

The conception of the virāṭ universal form of the Lord, as appearing in the material world, is imaginary. It is to enable the less intelligent (and neophytes) to adjust to the idea of the Lord's having form. But factually the Lord has no material form.

SB 1.3.31, Translation:

Clouds and dust are carried by the air, but less intelligent persons say that the sky is cloudy and the air is dirty. Similarly, they also implant material bodily conceptions on the spirit self.

SB 1.3.31, Purport:

For instance, when a particular gentleman goes in his car, which can be seen very easily, we identify the car with the man within the car. When the President goes out in his particular car, we say, "There is the President." For the time being we identify the car with the President. Similarly, less intelligent men who want to see God immediately without necessary qualification are shown first the gigantic material cosmos as the form of the Lord, although the Lord is within and without.

SB 1.4.3, Purport:

Because Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the special contribution of Śrīla Vyāsadeva, there are so many inquiries by the learned Śaunaka Muni. It was known to them that Śrīla Vyāsadeva had already explained the text of the Vedas in various ways up to the Mahābhārata for the understanding of less intelligent women, śūdras and fallen members of the family of twice-born men. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is transcendental to all of them because it has nothing to do with anything mundane. So the inquiries are very intelligent and relevant.

SB 1.4.24, Purport:

In the present age the mode of goodness is almost nil, and so for the general mass of people, the kindhearted, powerful sage Śrīla Vyāsadeva divided the Vedas in various ways so that they may be practically followed by less intelligent persons in the modes of passion and ignorance.

SB 1.4.25, Purport:

If the father and the mother do not undertake the process of spiritual family planning and simply beget children out of passion only, their children are called dvija-bandhus. These dvija-bandhus are certainly not as intelligent as the children of the regular twice-born families. The dvija-bandhus are classified with the śūdras and the woman class, who are by nature less intelligent. The śūdras and the woman class do not have to undergo any saṁskāra save and except the ceremony of marriage.

The less intelligent classes of men, namely women, śūdras and unqualified sons of the higher castes, are devoid of necessary qualifications to understand the purpose of the transcendental Vedas. For them the Mahābhārata was prepared. The purpose of the Mahābhārata is to administer the purpose of the Vedas, and therefore within this Mahābhārata the summary Veda of Bhagavad-gītā is placed. The less intelligent are more interested in stories than in philosophy, and therefore the philosophy of the Vedas in the form of the Bhagavad-gītā is spoken by the Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

SB 1.5.13, Purport:

People in general have a taste for literatures by instinct. They want to hear and read from the authorities something about the unknown, but their taste is exploited by unfortunate literatures which are full of subject matter for satisfaction of the material senses. Such literatures contain different kinds of mundane poems and philosophical speculations, more or less under the influence of māyā, ending in sense gratification. These literatures, although worthless in the true sense of the term, are variously decorated to attract the attention of the less intelligent men. Thus the attracted living entities are more and more entangled in material bondage without hope of liberation for thousands and thousands of generations.

SB 1.7.12, Purport:

There is a class of less intelligent devotees of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa who desire to relish at once the activities of the Lord narrated in the Tenth Canto without first understanding the primary cantos. They are under the false impression that the other cantos are not concerned with Kṛṣṇa, and thus more foolishly than intelligently they take to the reading of the Tenth Canto. These readers are specifically told herein that the other cantos of the Bhāgavatam are as important as the Tenth Canto.

SB 1.7.31, Purport:

Although the brahmāstra was released on this earth, the heat produced by the combination of both weapons covered all the universe, and all the populations on all the different planets began to feel the heat excessively and compared it to that of the sāṁvartaka fire. No planet, therefore, is without living beings, as less intelligent materialistic men think.

SB 1.8.19, Purport:

In the Bhagavad-gītā Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa affirms that less intelligent persons mistake Him to be an ordinary man like us, and thus they deride Him. The same is confirmed herein by Queen Kuntī. The less intelligent persons are those who rebel against the authority of the Lord. Such persons are known as asuras.

SB 1.8.19, Purport:

All our senses are imperfect. We claim to observe everything and anything, but we must admit that we can observe things under certain material conditions only, which are also beyond our control. The Lord is beyond the observation of sense perception. Queen Kuntī accepts this deficiency of the conditioned soul, especially of the woman class, who are less intelligent. For less intelligent men there must be such things as temples, mosques or churches so that they may begin to recognize the authority of the Lord and hear about Him from authorities in such holy places. For less intelligent men, this beginning of spiritual life is essential, and only foolish men decry the establishment of such places of worship, which are required to raise the standard of spiritual attributes for the mass of people. For less intelligent persons, bowing down before the authority of the Lord, as generally done in the temples, mosques or churches, is as beneficial as it is for the advanced devotees to meditate upon Him by active service.

SB 1.8.22, Purport:

All the great ācāryas established such temples of worship in all places just to favor the less intelligent, and one should not pose himself as transcending the stage of temple worship while one is actually in the category of the śūdras and the women or less.

SB 1.8.25, Purport:

This material world is certified by the Lord in the Bhagavad-gītā as a dangerous place full of calamities. Less intelligent persons prepare plans to adjust to those calamities without knowing that the nature of this place is itself full of calamities.

SB 1.9.17, Purport:

The devotee does not have to learn anything new from the Lord because the Lord teaches the sincere devotee always from within. Whenever, therefore, a show is made to teach the devotee, as in the case of the teachings of Bhagavad-gītā, it is for teaching the less intelligent men.

SB 1.9.18, Purport:

The Vedic knowledge is received perfectly by disciplic succession from authorities. Such knowledge is never dogmatic, as ill conceived by less intelligent persons. The mother is the authority to verify the identity of the father. She is the authority for such confidential knowledge. Therefore, authority is not dogmatic.

SB 1.9.26, Purport:

The śūdra class is less intelligent and should have no independence. They are meant for rendering sincere service to the three higher sections of the society. The śūdra class can attain all comforts of life simply by rendering service to the higher classes.

SB 1.9.33, Purport:

Transcendental relation with the Lord in any one of the different rasas (humors) is relishable by the respective devotees in the highest ecstasy. Less intelligent mundaners who want to make a show of being transcendentally related with the Lord artificially jump at once to the relation of conjugal love, imitating the damsels of Vrajadhāma. Such a cheap relation with the Lord exhibits only the base mentality of the mundaner because one who has relished conjugal humor with the Lord cannot be attached to worldly conjugal rasa, which is condemned even by mundane ethics.

SB 1.9.42, Purport:

The Paramātmā feature of the Lord is an expansion of His plenary portions. He expands Himself as Paramātmā in everyone's heart by His inconceivable energy, and He also expands Himself as the glowing effulgence of brahmajyoti by expansion of His personal glow. It is stated in the Brahma-saṁhitā that the brahmajyoti is His personal glow. Therefore, there is no difference between Him and His personal glow, brahmajyoti, or His plenary portions as Paramātmā. Less intelligent persons who are not aware of this fact consider brahmajyoti and Paramātmā to be different from Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

SB 1.9.42, Purport:

The worshipable object of Bhīṣmadeva is Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa as Pārtha-sārathi, and that of the gopīs is the same Kṛṣṇa in Vṛndāvana as the most attractive Śyāmasundara. Sometimes less intelligent scholars make a mistake and think that the Kṛṣṇa of Vṛndāvana and that of the Battle of Kurukṣetra are different personalities. But for Bhīṣmadeva this misconception is completely removed.

SB 1.10.16, Translation and Purport:

Out of a loving desire to see the Lord, the royal ladies of the Kurus got up on top of the palace, and smiling with affection and shyness, they showered flowers upon the Lord.

Shyness is a particular extra-natural beauty of the fair sex, and it commands respect from the opposite sex. This custom was observed even during the days of the Mahābhārata, i.e., more than five thousand years ago. It is only the less intelligent persons not well versed in the history of the world who say that observance of separation of female from male is an introduction of the Mohammedan period in India. This incident from the Mahābhārata period proves definitely that the ladies of the palace observed strict pardā (restricted association with men), and instead of coming down in the open air where Lord Kṛṣṇa and others were assembled, the ladies of the palace went up on the top of the palace and from there paid their respects to Lord Kṛṣṇa by showers of flowers.

SB 1.10.24, Purport:

In such Vedic literatures as the Upaniṣads, the Lord has expressively been distinguished from the mundane conception of His existence. His identity being fully spiritual, His form, name, quality, and paraphernalia, etc., have been elaborately distinguished from matter, and therefore He is sometimes misunderstood by less intelligent persons as impersonal.

SB 1.11.16-17, Purport:

In the Vedas also it is enjoined that no one can know the Supreme Lord without being favored by Baladeva. Bala means spiritual strength not physical. Some less intelligent persons interpret bala as the strength of the body. But no one can have spiritual realization by physical strength. Physical strength ends with the end of the physical body, but spiritual strength follows the spirit soul to the next transmigration, and therefore the strength obtained by Baladeva is never wasted. The strength is eternal, and thus Baladeva is the original spiritual master of all devotees.

SB 1.11.24, Purport:

The authorized ācāryas, who know the science perfectly, install such temples of the Lord under regulative principles just to offer facilities to the common man, but persons who are less intelligent, without being conversant with the science, mistake this great attempt to be idol worship and poke their nose into that to which they have no access.

SB 1.12.24, Purport:

The last instruction of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad-gītā is that one should give up everything and should follow in the footsteps of the Lord alone. Less intelligent persons do not agree to this great instruction of the Lord, as ill luck would have it, but one who is actually intelligent catches up this sublime instruction and is immensely benefited.

SB 1.14.8, Purport:

The Lord is kaivalya, and for Him there is no difference between matter and spirit because everything is created from Him. Therefore His quitting one sort of body or accepting another body does not mean that He is like the ordinary living being. All such activities are simultaneously one and different by His inconceivable potency. When Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira was lamenting the possibility of His disappearance, it was just in pursuance of a custom of lamenting the disappearance of a great friend, but factually the Lord never quits His transcendental body, as is misconceived by less intelligent persons. Such less intelligent persons have been condemned by the Lord Himself in Bhagavad-gītā, and they are known as the mūḍhas.

SB 1.15.27, Purport:

The Bhagavad-gītā, being spoken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is the essence of all Vedic wisdom. It is nicely presented by the Lord Himself for all who have very little time to go through the vast Vedic literatures like the Upaniṣads, Purāṇas and Vedānta-sūtras. It is put within the study of the great historical epic Mahābhārata, which was especially prepared for the less intelligent class, namely the women, the laborers and those who are worthless descendants of the brāhmaṇas, kṣatriyas and higher sections of the vaiśyas.

SB 1.15.31, Purport:

Doubts of duality begin from the misconception of the material body, which is accepted as the self by less intelligent persons. The most foolish part of our ignorance is our identifying this material body with the self.

SB 1.15.35, Purport:

In the Bhagavad-gītā (7.24-25) the Lord says, "The impersonalists think that I have no form, that I am formless, but that at present I have accepted a form to serve a purpose, and now I am manifested. But such speculators are factually without sharp intelligence. Though they may be good scholars in the Vedic literatures, they are practically ignorant of My inconceivable energies and My eternal forms of personality. The reason is that I reserve the power of not being exposed to the nondevotees by My mystic curtain. The less intelligent fools are therefore unaware of My eternal form, which is never to be vanquished and is unborn."

SB 1.16.9, Translation and Purport:

Lazy human beings with paltry intelligence and a short duration of life pass the night sleeping and the day performing activities that are for naught.

The less intelligent do not know the real value of the human form of life. The human form is a special gift of material nature in the course of her enforcing stringent laws of miseries upon the living being. It is a chance to achieve the highest boon of life, namely to get out of the entanglement of repeated birth and death. The intelligent take care of this important gift by strenuously endeavoring to get out of the entanglement. But the less intelligent are lazy and unable to evaluate the gift of the human body to achieve liberation from the material bondage; they become more interested in so-called economic development and work very hard throughout life simply for the sense enjoyment of the temporary body.

SB 1.16.9, Purport:

There are so many things manufactured by human energy, but they are all meant for sense enjoyment, and not for getting out of material bondage. And after working hard during the daytime, a tired man either sleeps or engages in sex habits at night. That is the program of materialistic civilized life for the less intelligent. Therefore they are designated herein as lazy, unfortunate and short-lived.

SB 1.18.8, Translation:

Mahārāja Parīkṣit considered that less intelligent men might find the personality of Kali to be very powerful, but that those who are self-controlled would have nothing to fear. The King was powerful like a tiger and took care for the foolish, careless persons.

SB 1.18.19, Purport:

The dvija-bandhu, or the less intelligent, uncultured men born of higher castes, put forward many arguments against the lower-caste men becoming brāhmaṇas in this life. They argue that birth in a family of śūdras or less than śūdras is made possible by one's previous sinful acts and that one therefore has to complete the terms of disadvantages due to lower birth. And to answer these false logicians, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam asserts that one who chants the holy name of the Lord under the direction of a pure devotee can at once get free from the disadvantages due to a lower-caste birth.

SB 1.19.29, Purport:

On Śukadeva Gosvāmī's arrival at the meeting, everyone, except Śrīla Vyāsadeva, Nārada and a few others, stood up, and Mahārāja Parīkṣit, who was glad to receive a great devotee of the Lord, bowed down before him with all the limbs of his body. Śukadeva Gosvāmī also exchanged the greetings and reception by embrace, shaking of hands, nodding and bowing down, especially before his father and Nārada Muni. Thus he was offered the presidential seat at the meeting. When he was so received by the king and sages, the street boys and less intelligent women who followed him were struck with wonder and fear. So they retired from their frivolous activities, and everything was full of gravity and calm.

SB Canto 2

SB 2.1.9, Purport:

With a poor fund of knowledge, we cannot adjust to the idea of the personality of the Absolute Truth, and the personal activities of the Lord are deplored by the less intelligent impersonalists; but reasons and arguments together with the transcendental process of approaching the Absolute Truth help even the staunch impersonalist to become attracted by the personal activities of the Lord.

SB 2.1.24, Purport:

In the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (1.22.52) it is said that as fire expands its rays and heat from one place, similarly the Supreme Spirit, the Personality of Godhead, expands Himself by His manifold energy everywhere and anywhere. The phenomenal manifestation of the gigantic universe is only a part of His virāṭ body. Less intelligent men cannot conceive of the transcendental all-spiritual form of the Lord, but they are astounded by His different energies, just as the aborigines are struck with wonder by the manifestation of lightning, a gigantic mountain or a hugely expanded banyan tree.

SB 2.1.25, Purport:

In the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, the Personality of Godhead, Lord Kṛṣṇa, manifested His virāṭ-rūpa just to convince the less intelligent class of men, who cannot conceive of the Lord as appearing just like a human being, that He factually has the potency of His claim to be the Supreme Absolute person without any rival or superior.

SB 2.1.32, Purport:

The Supreme Lord is not impersonal, as misconceived by less intelligent thinkers. Rather, He is the Supreme person, as confirmed in all authentic Vedic literatures.

SB 2.1.38, Purport:

Less intelligent persons with a poor fund of knowledge cannot accommodate the thought of this inconceivable potency of the Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, by which He appears just like a human being (BG 9.11).

SB 2.2.14, Purport:

Some way or other, one must try to reestablish one's forgotten relation with the Lord if one at all desires to gain real happiness in life, and to reclaim his natural unfettered condition. For the less intelligent beginners, meditation on the impersonal feature, the virāṭ-rūpa, or universal form of the Lord, will gradually qualify one to rise to personal contact.

SB 2.2.21, Purport:

As such, persons with a poor fund of knowledge cannot have any conception of the param, the Supreme; they try to stick to the varieties of material enjoyments, although they may flatter themselves as being Brahman-realized souls. Such less intelligent persons cannot have any conception of the param, as mentioned in this verse, and therefore they cannot reach the Supreme.

SB 2.2.22, Purport:

As inquisitive persons tour all over the world to gain direct local experience, the less intelligent transcendentalist similarly desires to have some experience of those planets about which he has heard so many wonderful things.

SB 2.2.27, Purport:

Bhagavad-gītā, as it was understood by Arjuna, is also explained (Bg. 10.12-13), but there are many foolish men who do not follow in the footsteps of Arjuna in understanding the spirit of Bhagavad-gītā. They create instead their own interpretations, which are as foolish as they themselves, and thereby only help to put a stumbling block on the path of real understanding, misdirecting the innocent followers who are less intelligent, or the śūdras.

SB 2.2.35, Purport:

There are some less intelligent arguments that matter develops the power of seeing and moving as a certain organic development, but such an argument cannot be accepted because there is no experimental evidence that matter has anywhere produced a living entity.

SB 2.3.1, Purport:

In human society all over the world there are millions and billions of men and women, and almost all of them are less intelligent because they have very little knowledge of spirit soul. Almost all of them have a wrong conception of life, for they identify themselves with the gross and subtle material bodies, which they are not, in fact.

SB 2.3.2-7, Purport:

Rāvaṇa was made a very powerful man by worshiping Lord Śiva, and he used to offer severed heads to please Lord Śiva. He became so powerful by the grace of Lord Śiva that all the demigods were afraid of him, until he at last challenged the Personality of Godhead Śrī Rāmacandra and thus ruined himself. In other words, all such persons who aspire after gaining some or all of the material objects of enjoyment, or the gross materialistic persons, are on the whole less intelligent, as confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā (7.20). It is said there that those who are bereft of all good sense, or those whose intelligence is withdrawn by the deluding energy of māyā, aspire to achieve all sorts of material enjoyment in life by pleasing the various demigods, or by advancing in material civilization under the heading of scientific progress. The real problem of life in the material world is to solve the question of birth, death, old age and disease. No one wants to change his birthright, no one wants to meet death, no one wants to be old or invalid, and no one wants diseases. But these problems are solved neither by the grace of any demigod nor by the so-called advancement of material science. In the Bhagavad-gītā, as well as in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, such less intelligent persons have been described as devoid of all good sense.

SB 2.3.10, Purport:

Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī has explained this desirelessness as bhajanīya-parama-puruṣa-sukha-mātra-sva-sukhatvam in his Sandarbha. This means that one should feel happy only by experiencing the happiness of the Supreme Lord. This intuition of the living being is sometimes manifested even during the conditioned stage of a living being in the material world, and such intuition is expressed in the manner of altruism, philanthropy, socialism, communism, etc., by the undeveloped minds of less intelligent persons. In the mundane field such an outlook of doing good to others in the form of society, community, family, country or humanity is a partial manifestation of the same original feeling in which a pure living entity feels happiness by the happiness of the Supreme Lord.

SB 2.3.14, Purport:

As we have already quoted above from the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu of Rūpa Gosvāmī, even mundane things, if dovetailed in the service of the Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, are accepted as transcendental. For example, the epics or the histories of Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata, which are specifically recommended for the less intelligent classes (women, śūdras and unworthy sons of the higher castes), are also accepted as Vedic literature because they are compiled in connection with the activities of the Lord. Mahābhārata is accepted as the fifth division of the Vedas after its first four divisions, namely Sāma, Yajur, Ṛg and Atharva. The less intelligent do not accept Mahābhārata as part of the Vedas, but great sages and authorities accept it as the fifth division of the Vedas. Bhagavad-gītā is also part of the Mahābhārata, and it is full of the Lord's instruction for the less intelligent class of men. Some less intelligent men say that Bhagavad-gītā is not meant for householders, but such foolish men forget that Bhagavad-gītā was explained to Arjuna, a gṛhastha (family man), and spoken by the Lord in His role as a gṛhastha.

SB 2.4.13, Purport:

The less intelligent men, who are unaware of His transcendental form, describe Him as impersonal Brahman. But Brahman is simply the rays of His transcendental body (yasya prabhā (Bs. 5.40)).

SB 2.4.23, Purport:

The truths described in the Vedic literatures are not theories of mundane imagination, nor are they fictitious, as the less intelligent class of men sometimes think.

SB 2.5.11, Purport:

Sometimes less intelligent men have the foolish impression that Brahmā is the cause of all causes. But Nārada wanted to clear the matter by the statements of Brahmājī, the supreme authority in the universe. As the decision of the supreme court of a state is final, similarly the judgment of Brahmājī, the supreme authority in the universe, is final in the Vedic process of acquiring knowledge. As we have already affirmed in the previous verse, Nāradajī was a liberated soul; therefore, he was not one of the less intelligent men who accept a false god or gods in their own ways. He represented himself as less intelligent and yet intelligently presented a doubt to be cleared by the supreme authority so that the uninformed might take note of it and be rightly informed about the intricacies of the creation and the creator.

In this verse Brahmājī clears up the wrong impression held by the less intelligent and affirms that he creates the universal variegatedness after the potential creation by the glaring effulgence of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

SB 2.5.12, Translation and Purport:

I offer my obeisances and meditate upon Lord Kṛṣṇa (Vāsudeva), the Personality of Godhead, whose invincible potency influences them (the less intelligent class of men) to call me the supreme controller.

As will be more clearly explained in the next verse, the illusory potency of the Lord bewilders the less intelligent to accept Brahmājī, or for that matter any other person, as the Supreme Lord.

SB 2.5.12, Purport:

Brahmājī is conscious of his actual position, and he knows how less intelligent persons, bewildered by the illusory energy of the Lord, whimsically accept anyone and everyone as God. A responsible personality like Brahmājī refuses to be addressed as the Supreme Lord by his disciples or subordinates, but foolish persons praised by men of the nature of dogs, hogs, camels and asses feel flattered to be addressed as the Supreme Lord.

SB 2.5.20, Purport:

In the Bhagavad-gītā (7.24-25) the Lord has declared very clearly that the impersonalist, who gives more importance to the transcendental rays of the Lord as brahmajyoti and who concludes that the Absolute Truth is ultimately impersonal and only manifests a form at a time of necessity, is less intelligent than the personalist, however much the impersonalist may be engaged in studying the Vedānta.

SB 2.5.30, Purport:

The Vedas instruct us to get out of the existence of darkness and go forward on the path of light (tamasi mā jyotir gama). The path of light is therefore to satisfy the senses of the Lord. Misguided men, or less intelligent men, follow the path of self-realization without any attempt to satisfy the transcendental senses of the Lord by following the path shown by Arjuna and other devotees of the Lord. On the contrary, they artificially try to stop the activities of the senses (yoga system), or they deny the transcendental senses of the Lord (jñāna system). The devotees, however, are above the yogīs and the jñānīs because pure devotees do not deny the senses of the Lord; they want to satisfy the senses of the Lord.

SB 2.5.32, Purport:

The different types of bodily construction of the living entities are exactly like different types of motorcars manufactured by assembling the allied motor parts. When the car is ready, the driver sits in the car and moves it as he desires. This is also confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā (BG 18.61): the living entity is as if seated on the machine of the body, and the car of the body is moving by the control of material nature, just as the railway trains are moving under the direction of the controller. The living entities, however, are not the bodies; they are separate from the cars of the body. But the less intelligent material scientist cannot understand the process of assembling the parts of the body, namely the senses, the mind and the qualities of the material modes.

SB 2.5.39, Purport:

Because of a poor fund of knowledge, less intelligent persons sometimes mistake the conditions of the shadow world to be equivalent to those of the spiritual world, and thus they mistake the Lord and His pastimes in the material world to be one with the conditioned souls and their activities. The Lord condemns such less intelligent persons in the Bhagavad-gītā (BG 9.11):

avajānanti māṁ mūḍhā
mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam
paraṁ bhāvam ajānanto
mama bhūta-maheśvaram

Whenever the Lord incarnates, He does so in His full internal potency (ātma-māyā), and less intelligent persons mistake Him to be one of the material creations.

SB 2.6.8, Purport:

The degraded form of family restriction by use of contraceptives, etc., is the grossest type of material contamination. Materialists who use these devices want to fully utilize the pleasure potency of the coating on the genitals by artificial means, without knowing the spiritual importance. And without knowledge of spiritual values, the less intelligent man tries to utilize only the material sense pleasure of the genitals.

SB 2.6.10, Purport:

It is clear from the available description of the body of the Lord (His universal form) that the form of the Lord is distinct from the forms of ordinary mundane conception. In any case, He is never a formless void. Ignorance is the back of the Lord, and therefore the ignorance of the less intelligent class of men is also not separate from His bodily conception.

SB 2.6.43-45, Purport:

The less intelligent man is surprised to see the wonderful actions of material phenomena, as the aborigines are fearful of a great thunderbolt, a great and gigantic banyan tree, or a great lofty mountain in the jungle. For such undeveloped human beings, merely the slight display of the Lord's potency is captivating. A still more advanced person is captivated by the powers of the demigods and goddesses. Therefore, those who are simply astonished by the powers of anything in the creation of the Lord, without any factual information of the Lord Himself, are known as śāktas, or worshipers of the great powers. The modern scientist is also captivated by the wonderful actions and reactions of natural phenomena and therefore is also a śākta.

SB 2.6.43-45, Purport:

When the Lord is described as formless in the Vedic literatures, it is to be understood that all these forms mentioned above, within the experience of universal knowledge, are different exhibitions of the Lord's transcendental potencies only, and none of them factually represents the transcendental form of the Lord. But when the Lord actually descends on the earth or anywhere within the universe, the less intelligent class of men also mistake Him to be one of them, and thus they imagine the Transcendence to be formless or impersonal. Factually, the Lord is not formless, nor does He belong to any of the multiforms experienced within the universal forms.

SB 2.6.46, Purport:

Such activities of the Lord are principally of two varieties. One concerns the mundane manifestation of the material creative force, and the other deals with His pastimes in the form of different incarnations in terms of the time and place. There are innumerable incarnations of the Lord, like the waves of the river flowing constantly in and out. Less intelligent persons take more interest in the creative forces of the Lord in the material world, and, being disconnected from their relationship with the Lord, they put forward many theories of the creation in the name of scientific research. The devotees of the Lord, however, know well how the creative forces work concurrently by the action and reaction of the material energy of the Lord. Therefore they take more interest in the transcendental activities of the Lord as He incarnates Himself on the surface of the material world.

SB 2.7.2, Purport:

In order to guard against the invention of unauthorized incarnations of God by the fanciful, less intelligent persons, the name of the father of the bona fide incarnation is also mentioned in the authorized revealed scriptures. No one, therefore, can be accepted as an incarnation of the Lord if his father's name, as well as the name of the village or place in which he appears, is not mentioned by the authorized scriptures.

SB 2.7.9, Purport:

The scriptures like Manu-saṁhitā and other authorized books of the great sages were guiding principles for ruling the subjects, and there was no need for less intelligent persons to manufacture a code of law in the name of democracy. The less intelligent mass of people have very little knowledge of their own welfare, as a child has very little knowledge of its future well-being. The experienced father guides the innocent child towards the path of progress, and the childlike mass of people need similar guidance.

SB 2.7.10, Purport:

At the last stage of his life, Emperor Ṛṣabhadeva wandered like a dumb madman, unaffected by all kinds of bodily mistreatment. Seeing him like a madman, wandering naked with long hair and a long beard, less intelligent children and men in the street used to spit on him and urinate on his body

SB 2.7.27, Purport:

One cannot manufacture a God by one's mental speculation or by numerical votes, as has become a practice for the less intelligent class of men. God is God eternally, and an ordinary living entity is eternally a part and parcel of God.

SB 2.7.36, Translation and Purport:

The Lord Himself in His incarnation as the son of Satyavatī (Vyāsadeva) will consider his compilation of the Vedic literature to be very difficult for the less intelligent persons with short life, and thus He will divide the tree of Vedic knowledge into different branches, according to the circumstances of the particular age.

Herein Brahmā mentions the future compilation of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam for the short-lived persons of the Kali age. As explained in the First Canto, the less intelligent persons of the age of Kali would be not only short-lived, but also perplexed with so many problems of life due to the awkward situation of the godless human society. Advancement of material comforts of the body is activity in the mode of ignorance according to the laws of material nature. Real advancement of knowledge means progress of knowledge in self-realization. But in the age of Kali the less intelligent men mistakenly consider the short lifetime of one hundred years (now factually reduced to about forty or sixty years) to be all in all. They are less intelligent because they have no information of the eternity of life; they identify with the temporary material body existing for forty years and consider it the only basic principle of life. Such persons are described as equal to the asses and bulls.

SB 2.9.9, Purport:

It is said that Yājñavalkya described the transcendental abode of the Lord to Gārgī, and that the abode of the Lord is situated above the highest planet of the universe, namely Brahmaloka. This abode of the Lord, although described in revealed scriptures like the Bhagavad-gītā and the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, remains only a myth for the less intelligent class of men with a poor fund of knowledge.

SB 2.9.33, Purport:

This impersonal feature stressed by the less intelligent impersonalist school is refuted by pointing out that the predominator "I" is the Absolute Truth and that He is a person. The predominated "I," Brahmā, is also a person, but he is not the Absolute. For realization of one's self in spiritual psychology it may be convenient to assume oneself to be the same principle as the Absolute Truth, but there is always the difference of the predominated and the predominator, as clearly pointed out here in this verse, which is grossly misused by the impersonalists.

SB 2.9.33, Purport:

The Personality of Godhead is never formless. In the material world He may not be visible in His personal form to the less intelligent class of men, and therefore He may sometimes be called formless. But actually He is always in His eternal form in His Vaikuṇṭha planets as well as in other planets of the universes as different incarnations.

SB 2.9.36, Purport:

Even if a person is fully addicted to all sorts of sinful acts, if he happens to be engaged in the loving transcendental service of the Lord under proper guidance, he is to be considered the most perfect holy man without a doubt. And thus any person, whatsoever and whosoever he or she may be—even the fallen woman, the less intelligent laborer, the dull mercantile man, or even a man lower than all these—can attain the highest perfection of life by going back home, back to Godhead, provided he or she takes shelter of the lotus feet of the Lord in all earnestness.

SB 2.10.20, Purport:

Less intelligent persons claiming to be on an equal level with God must first prove themselves to be absolute and independent, and then they must substantiate their claim to being one with God.

SB 2.10.42, Purport:

The Supreme Personality of Godhead Viṣṇu incarnates Himself in different societies of living entities to reclaim them from the clutches of illusion, and such activities of the Lord are not limited only to human society. He incarnates Himself even as a fish, hog, tree and many other forms, but less intelligent persons who have no knowledge of Him deride Him even if He is in human society as a human being.

SB Canto 3

SB 3.1.44, Purport:

The secondary purpose of His appearance is to annihilate the upstart asuras and to stop the nonsense of atheistic propaganda by less intelligent persons. By the Lord's causeless mercy, the asuras who are killed personally by the Personality of Godhead get salvation. The meaningful appearance of the Lord is always distinct from ordinary birth.

Page Title:Less intelligent (SB)
Compiler:Rishab
Created:29 of Mar, 2010
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=169, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=0, Let=0
No. of Quotes:169