So there can only be peace when mankind, when you and I, have no conflict in ourselves. And you might say, "If one achieves, or comes to an end of all conflict within oneself, how will it affect the rest of mankind?" This is a very, very old question. This has been put thousands of years before Christ, if he ever existed. And we have to ask whether in ourselves sorrow, pain and anxiety, and all that, can ever end? If one applies, looks, observes, with great attention, as you look with considerable attention when you are combing your hair, or shaving, with that quality of attention, heightened, you can observe yourself - all the nuances, subtleties. And the mirror is your relationship between human beings, in that mirror you can see yourself exactly as you are. But most of us are frightened to see what we are, and so we gradually develop resistance, guilt, and all the rest of that business. So we never ask for total freedom - not to do what you like, but to be free from choice. Where there are multiple choices there are multiple confusions.

So can we live on this earth, 'pacem in terris', with great understanding of mankind, which is to understand yourself so profoundly, not according to some psychologist, analyst. They too have to be analyzed. So we can, without turning to the professionals, as simple laymen we can observe our own
idiosyncrasies, tendencies. Our brain - the speaker is not a specialist about brain matter - our brain has been conditioned to war, to hate, to conflict. It is conditioned through this long period of evolution, whether that brain with its cells, which contain all the memories, whether that brain can free itself from its own conditioning. You know it is very simple to answer such a question. If you have been going north all the days of your life, as humanity has been going in a particular direction, which is conflict, and somebody comes along and says, "That leads nowhere". He is serious, and perhaps you are serious. Then he says, "Go south, go east, any other direction but that". And when you actually move away from that direction there is a mutation in the very brain cells themselves because you have broken the pattern. And that pattern must be broken now, not forty or a hundred years later.15 And can human beings have the vitality, the energy, to transform themselves to civilized human beings, not killing each other?

J. Krishnamurti's talk to The United Nations when he was presented with the
1984 United Nations Peace medal