"Something can be condemned, and the condemnation can be justified by all kinds of rationality and logic if taken out of context; and the same thing can be praised. If you are not divided into good and bad, into higher and lower, if you are one organic unity, that which looked like evil out of context becomes, in its right place, immensely valuable to the whole. The whole question is how to arrange your inner being?

"All the religions are criminals in the sense that they have not allowed man to be arranged as an orchestra. They have divided man: a part they have called good, and another part they have condemned as evil. But both exist together, and can exist only together.

"Now man finds himself helpless. On both sides there is danger. If he follows nature, all the religions are going to call him a sinner; if he does not follow nature but follows the principles and the doctrines preached by the priests, he is in a constant conflict. He becomes a hypocrite. He pretends to be good – because that is what is respectable, honorable – and from the back door he goes on allowing his nature.

"This dualism, this dichotomy, this schizophrenia has destroyed all dignity of man, all his pride. Even wild animals move with a pride, with a natural dignity and grace, but man is so burdened. Everything that is natural in you has been poisoned by the religions. Just a few examples will help you.

"All the religions are agreed on one point. They differ in their philosophies, but they don't differ as far as destroying the dignity of man is concerned: whatsoever is pleasant has to be condemned – this is a simple criterion followed by all – and whatsoever is painful, arduous, has to be praised as virtue, as piousness, as saintlihood.

"I have been wandering in this country for almost two decades, meeting all kinds of saints and sinners, and my conclusions are that the sinner is more innocent because he has chosen the path of nature – although he is not respectable. He laughs more heartily, he sings more joyously, he dances like a Zorba, but the whole world condemns him."