This struggle for existence of the human being is due to his lack of knowledge of God. He does not know how God is great. There is no educational institution all over the world to discuss this subject matter, how God is great, how He is omnipotent, how I am servant of God. These things are not discussed. But when we forget our relationship with God, we become subjected to the threefold miseries of material existence.
Take for example . . . just like an Australian citizen: he is under the laws of the state of Australia. But if he says: "I don't care for the government," he becomes lawless, and sometimes he becomes criminal, and he is put into the prison life. In the prison also, he has to abide by the laws of the government, and outside the prison also, one has to abide by the laws of the government. But outside the prison the citizens abide by the laws of the government voluntarily, and inside the prison house, the criminals, they defy the laws of government, and therefore they are put into the prison house.
So when we defy the laws of God, we are put into threefold miseries of life. That is called material existence. And when we abide by the laws of God, then we are happy. We . . . we should know this fact. And religion means to abide by the laws of God. In the Sanskrit language it is said, dharmaṁ tu sākṣād bhagavat-praṇītam (SB 6.3.19). Dharma, or religion, means the codes of God. Code. Just like laws cannot be manufactured by some individual man—laws are enacted by the government—similarly, religious principles, they are made by God.