All the religions will condemn me. I can understand their condemnation, because if I am right then their whole past and their so-called masters prove to be wrong. They have to be against me, because too much is at risk. But they are not going to win finally, because coldness is inhuman – and who cares about the Garden of Eden, and what will you do there? Adam and Eve, before they disobeyed God, were just animals. Their disobedience was the first signature of man becoming independent of animalhood, their disobedience was the first act of intelligence.

I have all the respect for Adam and Eve and no respect for the God who expelled them. He is just an ugly dictator, to prevent his own children from becoming wise, from eating the fruit that will make them eternally alive. What kind of father who does not want his children…two things – knowing, and eternal life. Then what does he want? That they just go on grazing the grass in the Garden of Eden? If Adam and Eve had not disobeyed, you would not have been sitting here, you would be in the Garden of Eden – but not like human beings.

In England there are thirty thousand people now who are worshippers of the devil – because they say either God is dead, because nothing has been heard about him since he created existence, or he has abandoned existence and does not care what is happening here. And you cannot deny their arguments, they have a certain sincerity. World wars go on happening, and God has no concern – and he was so much concerned that Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and he is not concerned at all that Adolf Hitler should kill six million people.

So these devil worshippers – they call themselves Satanists – they have brought a very new idea, that the devil is the son of God – a rebellious son, just the generation gap. So either God has gone senile, has abandoned the world or has died. But they don’t have one significant argument that I would suggest for them, that it was the devil who suggested Eve to revolt, to disobey; otherwise she will remain an animal.

The whole of humanity and progress would not have been possible without the devil. They have not added that argument. They should add it, because that is the most potential, that whatever we are, the whole credit of our evolution goes to the devil.

I am not telling you to become devil worshippers. To me God and the devil are both just fictions. None of them exist.

But one thing is certain, that man’s whole progress has depended on disobeying, on doubting, on being skeptical; not on being naive, or on being believers, or on being faithful, but asking questions and finding the answers. Very few people have contributed to the whole progress of man.

These masters who were very cold have also contributed. They could have done much more, but their coldness deprived humanity of many more things. They were all male chauvinists, and they all thought that the woman is the way to hell, so the woman has to be avoided.

And the woman is the source of warmth. Her love, her devotion, if combined with man’s intelligence, her heart if combined with man’s head – then miracles are possible. And that’s what my basic contribution is: I want man and woman to be together growing in a symphony, in a deep intimacy and harmony.

We can create a totally different world.