"It is not that God made man in his own image, it is man who has made God in his own image. And all the scriptures of all the religions have given man a strange licentiousness over nature, over animals and birds. That has culminated in destroying many species of animals, birds. It has destroyed millions of trees for no reason. Every second that passes, one football ground is cleaned of all greenery, all trees.

"When India became independent, it had thirty-three million hectares of trees. Today it has only eleven million hectares.

"This man-centered view begins with Genesis, in the Bible. In Genesis it says:

"'Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'

"This is the ultimate crime that has made man violent against nature, given him the freedom to conquer innocent animals, to destroy them. It has made man barbarous.

"Now we are suffering because all those trees have been destroyed and more are being destroyed continuously. There is a certain balance in existence. These trees are your brothers and your sisters, there is no question of dominion. You exhale carbon dioxide, they inhale it. They exhale oxygen, you inhale it. Such a deep relationship…You cannot exist without trees, nor can trees exist without you; your existence is so deeply rooted in each other.

"As trees have become less and less, the level of oxygen in the air has gone down and down and down. Now you are living only a fragmentary life. You may not have thought about it….

"Why don't you breathe fully? Your lungs have six thousand sacs which have to be filled, but you breathe shallowly, so only two thousand sacs are filled, and four thousand remain stagnant, filled with dead carbon dioxide which is the cause of millions of diseases. It reduces your lifespan, it weakens your spirit, it destroys your intelligence. You are living at the minimum just because of this statement in Genesis that you 'have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'

"Man has killed so many beautiful species of animals just for his food, has killed so many birds – whole species have disappeared."