The Most Important Work- Coming Out of Prisonhouse

Interviewer: Well, O.K., I take that back then. I take that back. Anyway, what you're saying is that this life is a jail and that really the goal is another life.

Prabhupāda: Ah, yes.

Interviewer: Right? I mean that this life is an evil prison.

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes, now you have understood. This is not a desirable life, to live in the jail, conditioned.

Interviewer: Well in other words, in a sense that is to reject or at least to repudiate this life, this world.

Prabhupāda: Not repudiate, to understand.

Interviewer: That it is not a good life.

Prabhupāda: It is not a good life, and the whole material world is false identification with myself.

Interviewer: Well is it important to try to improve this life so that it won't be a prison?

Prabhupāda: Yes, improve, improve, to understand that I am not a person of the jail. I am a person of freedom. Long living in the jail one who identifies that "Without jail I cannot live."

Interviewer: Well, I hope we all get out of it sometime, somehow, someway, either here or there.(laughs)

Prabhupāda: But we are trying to educate the prisoners that "Your life is not perfect within the jail. Your life is perfect without the jail." This is our education.

Interviewer: Life is not perfect in the jail.

Prabhupāda: Yes. And the person in the jail they are thinking, "What is this, they are not working for the jail life?"

Interviewer: Person in the jail, I didn't get that.

Prabhupāda: Because they cannot understand that there is life after jail. They are so fool, rascal that they cannot understand that without jail one can live.

Bali-mardana: So what you were saying before, the persons in the jail are thinking "These people are not working for life in the jail," so they don't understand what we are doing.

Interviewer: How's that now?

Prabhupāda: We're not working to keep people in the jail conception of life. So that's why they cannot understand what we are doing.

Interviewer: You mean you're not working for the jail life?

Bali-mardana: To keep people within the conception that life is within the jail.

Prabhupāda: Just like a man has gone to jail, he's giving education to the prisoners, "My dear brother prisoners, this life is not good, you become honest, don't come to the jail." So other prisoners, they are working hard, they are hammering on the bricks, they think that "This man is not hammering on the bricks, he's talking only."

Interviewer: I didn't gather that.

Bali-mardana: In the prison the people are, their work is, say, to hammer on bricks. So when, if someone comes into the jail and tells the prisoners, "You shouldn't be doing this, actually you should become honest and go out of the jail and be free." Now if the persons in the jail... Because... They will then become envious that "this person, instead of working hard like us, he's simply talking." They cannot understand the benefit that he's giving them and they become envious, that "Because he's not working like us he is nonsense." So do you understand the analogy? It's an analogy. Just like we are coming in the world and telling people to get out of this world, to understand the spiritual world, spiritual side of life. But because we're not working like them, sometimes they misunderstand what is our purpose.

Interviewer: In other words you think people should get away from what they're doing in the world.

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes, that is real life.

Interviewer: Huh?

Prabhupāda: Oh! (laughs) (someone comes in?)

Interviewer: That they really shouldn't concentrate so completely on the world.

Prabhupāda: No, no. So long you are in the jail, you have to work according to the principle of the jail but you must know that jail life is not good.

Bali-mardana: You may work within the material world but you have to understand that the purpose is to get out of the material world.

Interviewer: :Well, are your Kṛṣṇa members out of the, out of jail?

Prabhupāda: Just like, some of us are working like the hammerman, breaking bricks with hammer, but that does not mean he does not understand. So long one is in the jail, one is not in freedom, he has to work like that by force. But that is not his proper work. He has got a different work outside the jail or in his freedom life.

Interviewer: Well, what people are saying about the members of the Kṛṣṇa society is that they are not doing the jail work.

Prabhupāda: That I have already explained. The prisoner who is hammering the bricks, he's thinking that this man is simply instructing that you have a different life outside the jail, he's not hammering on the brick. Therefore he is surprised, "How is that he is not hammering like me?"

Interviewer: In other words, he's not participating in jail life.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Bali-mardana: He's educating them.

Interviewer: What's he doing?

Prabhupāda: He's educating.

Interviewer: He's trying to show them a different way?

Prabhupāda: Not different way, he's educating differently.

Bali-mardana: So they can understand what they're doing, what they're supposed to be doing.

Interviewer: He's educating them to what? That this jail life is no good?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Interviewer: That the jail life is no good?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

 

Interviewer: But then is that man that's hammering the bricks, isn't he going to quit hammering the bricks, too?

Prabhupāda: He may not hammer, he's giving instruction. Just like I was invited in Ahmedabad jail to give some instruction. So I'm not hammering on the bricks because I was in the jail.

Interviewer: No, you're giving instruction.

Prabhupāda: Yes, I'm meant for giving instruction, I am not meant for hammering on the bricks.

Interviewer: But then once you get this...

Prabhupāda: So the person who is hammering on the bricks, he's thinking that "This man is simply talking."

Interviewer: That's why he thinks that the Kṛṣṇa people are separate.

Prabhupāda: He wants to draw him in the business of hammering bricks.

Interviewer: Of hammering bricks. Right, right.

Prabhupāda: That is the difference.

Interviewer: That's the difference. Well, what I'm talking about is...

Prabhupāda: He's thinking that "He's not contributing in hammering the bricks." But he does not know that this hammering on the bricks is not a very good business.

Interviewer: Not a very good business.

Prabhupāda: He does not know, the rascal, who is trying to bring us also in the business of hammering the bricks.

Interviewer: (simultaneously) of hammering the bricks, that's right. Yes.

Prabhupāda: That is the difference.

Interviewer: Yes. Well when you get through with, talking, instructing the man hammering the bricks, is he going to lay down his hammer, too?

Prabhupāda: No, he doesn't require. The same... You try to understand.

Bali-mardana: He may continue hammering, but his knowledge will be complete. He'll have complete understanding.

Prabhupāda: At least he must know that "This hammering is my punishment." He knows that "This hammering is not by business, it is my punishment." That is knowledge, that is knowledge. When a prisoner understands that "This hammering business is not my real business, it is my punishment."

Interviewer: Isn't that a rather negative way to look at the work?

Prabhupāda: Why negative? It is the fact. That is the positive understanding. Why do you take negative? If you are suffering and if you say, if I say, "Don't suffer," is that negative or that is positive?

Bali-mardana: In other words, if you are suffering and I tell you "Don't suffer," it may sound negative but actually it's positive.

Prabhupāda: Yes, positive. But they are rascals, they are taking as negative.

Interviewer: Why is work in the world necessarily suffering? It is, it has, a mixture of pain and joy but it's negative to look on it as useless work. Huh?

Prabhupāda: Therefore they are envious of the Kṛṣṇa conscious men. They do not see that "These people, they are not hammering like us." So therefore they are thinking that there is no contribution of hammering. They think the hammering is the real business.

Interviewer: That's pretty good. (laughter) I think people understand the analogy, they think hammering is the business. What do you think is the business?

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Interviewer: The world thinks hammering is real business.

Prabhupāda: Yes, so our business is to educate them that "Your hammering business is not your life. Your freedom is real business."

Interviewer: Freedom is what?

Prabhupāda: Real business.

Interviewer: You've, I'm sure you've heard or read about these claims by these parent groups that claim that the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement members are, ah, sort of controlled by intensive indoctrination? Brain-washed they call it, you know, by getting up and having the two hours or three of chanting in the morning and prayer beads constantly and the group life, that they're sort of controlled, and denied their freedom. What do you say about that?

Prabhupāda: It is due to misunderstanding. They do not understand what kind of preaching, what kind of education we are giving. We are giving education how to become free from the hammering business in the jail. They think hammering business and keep oneself within the jail is the real life because they have been accustomed to that. And when we speak that "Hammering or to keep within the jail is not your real business: your real business is freedom," naturally they find contradiction, and they think that we are doing something against their business. That is the difficulty.

Interviewer: Like doing something against their what?

Bali-mardana: Against their business.

Interviewer: But in other words you think that there, is there not something to this idea of brain, of being spiritually controlled or spiritually directed?

Prabhupāda: It is not controlled, it is not controlled.

Interviewer: Well, what would you call it?

Prabhupāda: Controlling one from coming to the jail life. If you give good instruction to a man, that "Don't become criminal, don't come to the jail, don't be engaged in the hammering business," it appears negative, but that is positive life.

Bali-mardana: If you tell someone not to do something that's bad for him, it's positive for him.

Prabhupāda: That is his positive life. When the physician says to a patient that "Don't eat like this, then you will increase your diabetes. Don't eat this, don't eat starch, don't eat sugar." So people may think he's simply giving negative, but that is his positive life. They misunderstand.

 

 Interview with Religious Editor Of the Associated Press -- July 16, 1976, New York