“The self interest in our life is the cause of fear. This sense of me and my concern, my happiness, my success, my failure, my achievement, I am this, I am not; He is this, I am not; this whole self-centered observation, with all its expressions of fear, agony, depression, pain, anxiety, aspiration, and sorrow, all that is self-interest, whether in the name of God, in the name of prayer, or in the name of faith. It is self interest. Where there is self interest there must be fear and all the consequences of fear. Then one asks again: Is it possible to live in this world where self interest is predominant? In the totalitarian world and the capitalist world where self interest is dominant. In the hierarchical Catholic world and every religious world, self interest in dominant. They are perpetuating fear. Though they talk about living with peace on Earth, they don’t really mean it because self interest, with the desire for power, position, for fulfillment, and so on, is the factor that is destroying not only the world but the extraordinary capacity of our own brain. The brain has remarkable capacity, as is shown in the extraordinary things they are doing in technology. And we never apply that same immense capacity inwardly, to be free of fear, to end sorrow, to know what is love and compassion, with its intelligence. We never search and explore that field; we are caught by the world with all its misery.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti, May 1981.