"If He were really a creator of the universe and consciousness, He would have been the first person to tell Adam and Eve to taste wisdom and to taste eternal life. He was not religious at all. You cannot find a more irreligious person than the Christian God.

"Religion is nothing but a science to attain wisdom, understanding, to know what life is, and to live it in utter celebration.

"And you can live life in celebration only if you know there is no death. If you know that it is going to be eternal, that there is no beginning and no end, only then can you live without misery. God prohibited man from both. Without wisdom you cannot attain to religious ecstasy, and without the feeling of eternal life you cannot sing and you cannot dance.

"When death is there every moment, and any moment you can be taken away. They say, 'Never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' You cannot be certain about the next moment. How can you enjoy, when death is so close and follows you like a shadow?

"This idiot, God, prohibits man from only two trees. And they lived in the Garden of Eden where millions of trees must have existed. He is not even as intelligent as Sigmund Freud, who is not very intelligent either. Just average intelligence is needed to know that to prohibit anything is dangerous; it gives a challenge to the mind. It is not the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge, it is God himself.

"By pointing out these two trees, God makes it certain that these people sooner or later will be attracted towards them. If He had not mentioned them, I don't think even up to now we would have been able to find those two trees in the immense garden of paradise. And if it was the serpent who convinced Eve, he is the first revolutionary, the first man who feels and who knows what has to be done. He is the most intelligent being in your whole Bible – the serpent – because he was showing the way of understanding.

"Most of your misery is caused by your misunderstanding, your ignorance, your unintelligence."