"That's why I say they will have to listen, they will have to understand – and they will have to go through a transformation because nobody is ready to choose an ultimate death for all life.

"If it was a question of choosing between two ideologies, it would be just intellectual gymnastics. That's why they are so much afraid of me: slowly, slowly, the intelligent people around the world are becoming aware that it is necessary to do something so that man is saved, or be ready to die. And what I am proposing is the only alternative. No other alternative has been proposed anywhere; there is no possibility.

"Man has looked into all the alternatives, has exhausted all the possibilities, and has tried to remain just the way he is, changing only ideologies, religions, scriptures, but he himself remains the same. What is the difficulty? If you choose the holy Koran instead of the Holy Bible; you are the same person, only the book has changed. The question was not a change of book, the question was a change of your total being. They have done everything up to now that was possible.

"I am not giving you any ideology, not another holy book. I am giving you a simple alternative: you have to drop your whole past – your hatred, your distinctions of color and nation, your fights amongst religions, political ideologies – you have to drop it in toto. There is no question of choosing something from the past; you have to drop it completely. You have to become discontinuous with the past, and that discontinuity with the past will bring the transformation. You have not to do anything else.

"Just as the snake slips out of his old skin, leaving it aside completely – he does not even look back – man has to slip out of his past, not even looking back. It is difficult, but not as difficult as death for all of life. The past is heavy, the past is deep rooted, but life and desire to live is far stronger.

"On the other hand there is the whole range of alternatives, but all life-denying. If you choose them, then you are choosing death."