"And all the traditions are made up by man. Up to now we have lived in a man-made society in which the woman has not been taken into consideration at all.

"Confucius – and the whole of China is influenced by Confucius' thinking – believes that there is no soul in a woman, she is only body. Killing a woman is not a murder. So for thousands of years in China, if somebody killed his own wife it was not a crime. It was just as if you want to destroy your chair, your furniture, or anything that belongs to you; you possess it, it is yours – exactly as the woman is yours. You are the possessor; you can kill her. There was no law in China to prevent a husband from killing his wife. And there was no punishment either, because the woman was a thing, not a being. And Confucius is thought to be one of the wisest men in the world. Now, what kind of wisdom is this? He is the founder of Confucianism, but all that Confucius has done is to confuse the human mind and nothing else.

"Every religion is afraid of women, because every religion is afraid of sex. Every religion is repressive of sex, against sex. Naturally, it is a by-product that every religion has to be against the woman, the woman has to be condemned. If you condemn sex you are bound to condemn the woman. If you respect the woman – it is a corollary – you will respect sex also, as a natural thing.

"And why were these people against sex? They are different in their attitudes about everything except sex. About sex all religions agree; that seems to be the only agreement amongst religions. So it seems to be tremendously important that we should go deep into the whole phenomenon: why they are afraid of it. They are afraid of sex because it is the greatest energy in man, the most powerful pull of nature and biology. There is no way to destroy it. Either you can condemn and repress it, or you can understand and transform it. But the second is a long and arduous path and needs tremendous intelligence, awareness – because sex is an unconscious force in you."