God cannot be Hindus' God or Christians' God or Jews' God or Muhammadans' God. No. God is for everyone, and He is all-attractive. He is fully opulent. He is fully in knowledge, perfect in knowledge, perfect in beauty, perfect in renunciation, perfect in fame, perfect in strength. In this way He is all-attractive. So we must know our relationship with God. That is the first subject matter of this book, Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. Then if we understand our relationship, we can act accordingly.
At the present moment we are—some of us, declining God, "There is no God." Some of them have little conception of God, "God is great," but they do not try to understand what is actual relationship with God. They are not very serious. In this way, practically we are avoiding our eternal relationship with God, and therefore we cannot act properly, and that is the cause of all miseries. That is the cause of all problems. Just like if you do not know the state laws, then you do not act properly; you are always criminal.
For example, if you do not know how to drive, "Keep to the right," if you drive to the left, you may think, "Oh, it is after all driving. What does it matter, right or left?" But no. As soon as you drive left, you become criminal. Similarly, because we do not know our relationship with God, therefore we are acting wrongly, and therefore, under the laws of God, we are becoming more and more criminal and our problems are increasing.
Therefore, in spite of advancement of education, science, civilization, a nice dress, car, and everything, nobody trusts nobody. You see? Everywhere you go, a gentleman's house, oh, "Beware of the dog," "No trespasser allowed." Always suspicious. An individual person is suspicious of another individual person. A nation is suspicious of another nation. A community is suspicious of another community. So how can you have peace and prosperity? Suspiciousness means animal, animalistic.
A dog is suspicious of another dog. As soon as it finds another dog, immediately begins to bark "Bow! Bow! Bow!" So is that human civilization? So what is the mistake of the human civilization? The mistake of the human civilization is that they have forgotten the relationship with God.
So here is the scientific statement of our relationship with God. And then, according to that relationship, exactly in the same way, just like understanding your relationship, your citizenship in a state, you can act nicely, similarly if we know our relationship with God, we can act very nicely, and that is peaceful life.
And besides that, this life, the present life is not all. We have got life after death. That is a fact. Just like we are continuously in life, in this present life. You were a child, I was a child, every one of us were a child. That was a life. Then we became boy, then we became youth. Now we are . . . I am becoming old, and generally, when this body will be useless, I will have to take another body. This is the way.
Unfortunately, the people, they do not believe in the next life, although in everyday affair they are experiencing that, "I am eternal. I can remember the days of my childhood. I can remember the days of my youthhood, my boyhood, and I am still working. That means I am continuously there, although my body in different ways have changed." So it is a fact that even after changing this body, you will have another body. Just like you are sitting in this room. Now, if you vacate this room, that does not mean you are finished. You have gone in some other room.
So this is a great science. And people are neglecting this science. They have no, I mean to say, information. There are so many departments in university—technological, medical, engineering, but where is the department to know and understand what is this life, what is God, what is our relationship? So this is not very good civilization.