"Now it is not a question of the court; it is a question of his religious conditioning. His conditioning has been challenged; the court is exploiting the conditioning. And if he speaks the truth, then there is bound to be a reward – perhaps after death, but God will know that he has been true to his word.

"But today, in a scientific age, when people are no longer burdened with past superstitions, the ceremony of the oath is simply stupid. Who cares about hell and heaven? Who is worried about God? The whole conditioning has disappeared. Now putting your hand on the Bible means nothing, you can still lie – of course with less embarrassment, because you have taken the oath. The oath used to serve the truth in the past because of your superstition. Now it serves the lie: because of your oath, your lie is accepted as truth. It is absolutely irrelevant – and particularly for a man of evolved consciousness. It is against his being to take the oath, because it simply means that without an oath you are not capable of saying the truth. And if a man is capable of lying, what prevents him? – he can lie even if he takes the oath. And the book on which he is taking the oath is full of lies, utter lies!

"And it is not only The Holy Bible; all religious books are third-rate fictions – not even first-rate. There is no holy book in the world; there are only well-written books and not-so-well-written books. And your so-called holy scriptures belong to the second category. As literature they have no value.

"A man should be accepted on his own authority, on his own individuality. He should be respected – that he will speak truth.

"And now there are scientific devices – this old rotten device is of no use. There are lie detectors. Where you are standing in the court, a lie detector can be just underneath the platform you are standing on: it can immediately show whether you are lying or whether you are saying the truth. It is so easy, because whenever you lie your heartbeat changes: when you know the truth and you go against your own knowledge – you are saying something you know is not true – your heart is no longer rhythmic."