The child becomes from the very beginning associated with the idea of food and love. They become almost like two aspects of the same coin, because he gets the love from the mother and also food from the mother. His love object and his food object is the same. Not only the mother but the breast in particular: he gets the food from the breast and the warmth and the feel of love.

There is a difference: when the mother loves the child, the breast has a different feel and different vibe. The mother enjoys the child feeding on her breast; it is stimulating to the mother’s sexuality. If the mother is really in love with the child she goes almost in an orgasmic joy. Her breasts are very sensitive; they are the most erotic zones of her body. She starts glowing and the child can feel it. The child becomes aware of the phenomenon that the mother is enjoying. She is not simply feeding him, she is enjoying it.

But when the mother gives the breast just out of necessity, then the breast is cold; there is no warmth in it. The mother is unwilling, she is in a hurry. She wants to snatch the breast away as quickly as possible. And the child feels that. It is so apparent that the mother is cold, she is unloving, she is not warm. She is not really a mother. The child seems to be unwanted, feels unwanted.

The child feels wanted only when the mother enjoys the child feeding on the breast, when it becomes almost a loving relationship, almost an orgasmic relationship. Only then the child feels love from the mother, needed by the mother. And to be needed by the mother is to be needed by existence because the mother is his whole existence; he knows the existence through the mother. Whatsoever is his idea about the mother is going to be his idea of the world.

A child who has not been loved by the mother will find himself alienated in existence; he will find himself an outsider, a stranger. He cannot believe in God, he cannot trust in existence. He could not even trust in his own mother, how can he trust in anybody else? Trust becomes impossible. He doubts, he is suspicious; he is continuously on guard, afraid, scared. He finds everywhere enemies, competitors. He is every moment afraid of being crushed and destroyed. The world does not seem to him to be a home at all. He cannot be religious, remember.

Religion is born, the first glimpse of religion happens to the child in his relationship with the mother. If that relationship is poisoned then something in the very source is poisoned. Then it becomes very difficult to bring religion to the child. Then he needs great psychotherapy, then he needs a long, long, arduous, painful process of moving backwards so that he can unwind all his ugly memories, 50 he can become free from all his old associations. Unless that happens he will not find himself attuned with any religious approach towards existence.

Atheism is born with his relationship – the first relationship, the first acquaintance – and that is with the mother, particularly the breasts of the mother. If the mother is happy, rejoices in feeding the child, then the child never eats too much because he trusts; he knows the mother is always there. Any time he is hungry his needs will be fulfilled. He never eats too much.