Prabhupāda: Because everything is God. Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam (ISO 1). You are now still . . . just like a man in the prison house, he may think that, "This prison house must now be separated from government." Is it possible? Because they are suffering, so next plan is to make the prison house separated from government. But that is not possible. You cannot make yourself separated from death, separated from disease. Can you make separate? So long your body is there, there must be disease.
So how you can make yourself separated from God, who is everything? Because they do not know what is God, therefore thinking like that, that God can be separated. But if they study Īśopaniṣad, that God is present everywhere, it is not possible to separation. Yena sarvam idaṁ tatam (BG 2.17). Just like your consciousness is everywhere, in any part of your body, similarly the Supreme Consciousness, God, is everywhere. Vedāhaṁ samatītāni (BG 7.26). Kṛṣṇa says: "I know everything." Unless He is everywhere, how He can know everything? What do you say, scientist?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: God is everywhere. Otherwise how things are going nicely? How things are made so nicely if God's intelligence, consciousness, is not everywhere? So if your consciousness is there, then you are there. Similarly, the Supreme Consciousness is there, everywhere. Then just like the new season, there . . . this tree also dry or the leaves will fall. The other trees also fall. You cannot say that season is acting here, not there. It is acting everywhere. So that season is God consciousness. God wants, "Now this is the time all the trees should be dry." Automatically it is again. Parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate (Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 6.8). His potency is so first class that everything is acting exactly to His desire. Mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ sūyate (BG 9.10).
These things are there. They should study. These rascals say nature. So what is the nature? Nature is working under the direction of God. This is understanding of God. How you can separate? So-called Church, so-called religion, you can reject. That is God's mission. God says that, "You give up all kinds of so-called religion." That is also we advocate. The name, so-called . . . just like you believe in God, but you do not know what is God; therefore you want to separate. But if you know that God cannot be separated, then you do not propose this thing foolishly. Exactly if the prisoner says that, "This time we shall make agitation that there should be no prison house in the government," that is not possible. If the government is there, the prison house must be there.
Prajāpati: The day before yesterday a policeman saw your picture here on this button, and he said, "Who is this man?" And I said: "This is a man who is always thinking and talking about God." And he said: "Well, if everyone was like that, then I would be out of my job." I said: "Well . . . well, there's always . . ."
Prabhupāda: He will get a better job. We have got hundreds and thousands. They are always in twenty-four-hours engaged.
Prajāpati: But there would still be need for policemen.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Karandhara: Well, if everyone was a criminal, he'd also be out of a job.
Prabhupāda: The policeman means . . . we are not harassed by policeman. You may be harassed.
Rūpānuga: Now even the policeman is criminal.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) Yes. Everyone is criminal. If the president is criminal, then what to speak of others?
Rūpānuga: So the biggest problem in the government today is the lying. The people, in a recent poll conducted by the United States Senate . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Rūpānuga: . . . the people indicated that the greatest thing that they were worried about was the cheating in the government. That is, that the honesty . . .
Prabhupāda: Therefore our proposition that this should be the standard of leaders. Then you will get nice leaders.
Rūpānuga: In the court, Śrīla Prabhupāda, when they say . . . when they ask a man to testify, they ask him to raise his hand and say: "Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" And then the man lies.
Prabhupāda: Ah, no . . .
Rūpānuga: So there's no God con . . . not even at that one moment is there any God consciousness.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Rūpānuga: So God and the country have not been separated. Actually, God is right in the center . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Rūpānuga: . . . of the government.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Rūpānuga: But, but they're lying in His name.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That, because they do not know it; therefore it is our duty to educate them to know what is God. People will appreciate. If you do not know something, and if I try to give you information, what reason you have got that you shall not accept it?
Prajāpati: There are certain qualifications for accepting it, though.
Prabhupāda: No, accepting is another. Let us discuss. I give you some information, then if you think it is proper, you have to take it.
Rūpānuga: But you have to be the example.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Rūpānuga: But we have to be the example.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.
Rūpānuga: That . . . that . . . that is the best way to teach, isn't it, Śrīla Prabhupāda?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Rūpānuga: By example.
Prabhupāda: Know. Therefore it is called āpani ācari prabhu jīvere śikhāya. You must behave yourself fully God conscious, then you can teach God consciousness. If you are a butcher, and if you teach God consciousness (laughs), that is incompatible. That will not . . .
Rūpānuga: So on the plane yesterday, Śrīla Prabhupāda, I was preaching to a businessman and telling . . . we were discussing all the lying and cheating, and how these leaders have to be changed. And I gave him the qualifications of leadership. And we went down them one by one, and I explained them. And I asked him what he thought, and he liked the idea.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Rūpānuga: And a lot of young people I've been talking to, they like the idea that we're entering into politics.
Prabhupāda: Simply . . . simply we have to make propaganda. People will like it.
Prajāpati: But now in the Vedic days the kṣatriyas, they did not always follow all what we consider regulative principles.
Prabhupāda: No, no. That is not kṣatriya. According to Bhagavad-gītā, you do not follow the kṣatriya rules and regulation you are not a kṣatriya. That is government duty. But the government is third class. Government's duty is to see that what you profess, you act. Just like government gives license that, what is called, restaurant. So if you want to maintain the restaurant, then you must follow the rules and regulation. Is it not government's duty to see? You cannot distribute poison in the name of restaurant. Similarly, if you profess to be a brahmin, you must act.
Just like I teach my disciples, "You are now accepting brahmin thread, you must act like a brahmin; otherwise you will be rejected." Last morning I was talking like that. So similarly, it is the duty of the head man to see that one who is professing as such and such, he must act like that. Otherwise he should be rejected. That is the duty to be seen by the chief man of the chief institution. Why I appointed the GBC men? I advised them to go, temple to temple, if they are acting nicely, according to us. That is our . . . that is the duty of the GBC. But if he does not act himself nicely, what he will do that?
So it is the government's duty to see that these are divisions of engagement: brahmin, kṣatriya, vaiśya, śūdra. So nobody should be unemployed. Everyone should be employed—must have engagement. Otherwise idle brain will produce devil's workshop. That is being done. So many hippies are idle. Government has no proposition how to engage them. They do not know how the nation is going—deteriorated. But they do not know. They have no other . . . because they are imperfect. They are imperfect; therefore they have allowed this imperfectness to make progress. If government is imperfect, they will allow this imperfectness to go. Boys are hippies and girls are prostitutes, and the government has no eyes to see where they are going. So this is . . . this will not make any progress.