"There one goes in absolute aloneness.

"But the priests have converted the idea of God into a great profession; they are perhaps worse than the prostitutes. Without priests there would have been no prostitutes. It is because of them that prostitutes exist.

"You will be surprised to know that in India, particularly in the South, every temple had prostitutes – not one, but dozens of them. They just have changed the name – they were called devadasis, servants of God – but their function was to attract people to the temple. The temple that had the most beautiful prostitutes prospered, accumulated much money.

"They made it a rule that any beautiful girl born in their city had to be offered to the god of the temple. Now, this god is a dead statue of stone; the beautiful girl was really offered to the priests. They used the women for their own sexual lust, and afterwards the women became an advertisement to call the customers to come to their temple. Richer customers would remain there not for worshipping God, but for enjoying the prostitutes. And these priests never thought that they were functioning like pimps. But this has been so, in different ways, all around the world.

"Prostitution is a by-product of a forced marriage, and priests created the forced marriage. They don't call it forced marriage, they call it arranged marriage, but who has the right to arrange marriage? Love knows its own ways. It needs no astronomers, no priests, no palmists; it finds its own way.

"It is stupid to say that love is blind. This idea, that love is blind, has been created by those who want to be guides for the blind. Lust is blind, love is just the opposite – clear perceptivity. The more loving you are, the more your perception is clear and profound.

"But whenever you create a forced institution, on the side something ugly happens – on the margin, because man cannot remain in bondage. And if marriage becomes a bondage, then he wants some freedom. And that freedom has destroyed millions of women.

"In the West recently, because of the women's liberation movement, a new institution has come into being – male prostitution."