Text 30]
Dakṣa Curses Lord Śiva
73
TRANSLATION
Bhṛgu Muni continued: Since you blaspheme the Vedas and the brāhmaṇas, who are followers of the Vedic principles, it is understood that you have already taken shelter of the doctrine of atheism.
PURPORT
Bhṛgu Muni, in cursing Nandīśvara, said that not only would they be degraded as atheists because of his curse, but they had already fallen to the standard of atheism because they had blasphemed the  Vedas , which are the source of human civilization. Human civilization is based on the qualitative divisions of social order, namely the intelligent class, the martial class, the productive class and the laborer class. The  Vedas  provide the right direction for advancing in spiritual cultivation and economic development and regulating the principle of sense gratification so that ultimately one may be liberated from material contamination to his real state of spiritual identification ( ahaṁ brahmāsmi ). As long as one is in the contamination of material existence, he changes bodies from the aquatics up to the position of Brahmā, but the human form of life is the highest perfectional life in the material world. The  Vedas  give direction how to elevate oneself in the next life, so the  Vedas  are the mother for such instructions, and the  brāhmaṇas , or persons who are in knowledge of the  Vedas , are the father. Thus if one blasphemes the  Vedas  and  brāhmaṇas , naturally one goes down to the status of atheism. The exact word used in Sanskrit is  nāstika , which means one who does not believe in the  Vedas  but manufactures some concocted system of religion. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu has said that the followers of the Buddhist system of religion are  nāstikas . In order to establish his doctrine of nonviolence, Lord Buddha flatly refused to believe in the  Vedas , and thus, later on, Śaṅkarācārya stopped this system of religion in India and forced it to go outside India. Here it is stated,  brahma ca brāhmaṇān .  Brahma  means the  Vedas .  Ahaṁ brahmāsmi  means "I am in full knowledge." The Vedic assertion is that one should think that he is Brahman, for actually he is Brahman. If  brahman  or the Vedic spiritual science is condemned, and the masters of the spiritual science, the  brāhmaṇas , are condemned, then where does human civilization stand? Bhṛgu Muni says, "It is not due to my cursing that you shall become atheists; you are already situated in the principle of atheism. Therefore you are condemned."