Recently, I watched a lot of U.G. Khrisnamurti. He shattered everything I thought I have known. Now, I don’t know even if I should meditate. I am absolutely lost. What is some advice?

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Been there, done that. U.G. was among my formative spiritual experiences, after having been pointed to him by Osho. This was around 17 years ago. It’s good to let U.G. break down your ego and your perception of what spirituality even is.

Given the benefit of hindsight, one of the things that really impresses me about U.G. is how well he was able to tie an enlightened state to perception. For him, it had nothing to do with morals or thoughts, or any of the things normally attributed to enlightenment. For him, it was first, last, and always about how information gets to you.

When I talk about enlightenment, I usually tie it to thought, because that’s an easier thing to talk about than perception. I don’t always perceive in the way U.G. does, but when I do, I find it literally impossible to articulate. The overwhelming feeling is one of pressure in my head and a firehose of, well, ‘stuff’, moving in. It’s always like that, it’s just whether your attention is focused on those pure mechanics of perception or not.

U.G. is someone who, through a fluke of biology / consciousness, managed to shift his orientation of mind in that direction, towards the bare mechanics of perception. My attention can shift that way, but his whole mind placed that state on what I call the ‘back burner’. My back burner is concerned with both magic, the active shifting of reality in concert with conscious desires, and myth, the elevation of existence permanently away from the mundane.

One thing that happens when your mind is oriented this way, is that an ‘energy’ field develops around you, to the extent that the state is ordering your mind. Other people and animals can simply sense just how pure your mind is. When I’m feeling it while I’m talking a walk, people’s dogs, while they’re walking them, will notice me and start pulling at their leash to get to me. If I start interacting with people in the state, it creates this thick, intense sense of fun amazement that infects not just the people interacting directly with me, but also anyone else that just happens to be around.

It’s well, exhausting. I haven’t heard of anyone who could actually ‘get used’ to it. U.G. tried to cut down on it by exhorting people to not come see him. Osho created this whole society and pecking order around him to manage it. Highly-spiritual people often become recluses because they become instant celebrities just by virtue of the effects of their energy. Though I’ll note that women do seem to be able to manage it a little better, though I wonder how much of that is due simply to the fact that many people just can’t see women as being capable of powerful spirituality. Bigotry can absolutely override spiritual energy.

Reading U.G. and Osho and experiencing the state for myself, I was able to reorient away from this kind of purity. It comes and goes of its own accord, and I’ve mostly grown accustomed to searching for meanings in between when it’s really strong and when it’s nonexistent. I gravitated towards a 90s era teacher, Dr. David R. Hawkins, and the progression from 70s Osho, to 80s U.G., to 90s Hawkins is really fascinating. All were products of their time, and nobody ever gets it 100% right.

U.G.’s ‘calamity’ happened after he attended a talk given by his contemporary, Jiddu Krishnamurti. He had a similar experience as I have, suddenly realizing that all the explanations and articulations of enlightenment, applied to oneself. Having epiphanies kick off intense spiritual ‘cook-offs’ is something I’m very familiar with. He claims later that the event happened purely by chance.

It isn’t chance, but he’s right in stating that it’s not an entirely conscious process. The reorientation I described above is a deep physical change, affecting brain structure, but it’s guided and ultimately constrained by the soul, the ultimate locus of identity. My soul constrained all of my ‘cook-offs’ so that they specifically wouldn’t produce such an embodiment of the pure-perceptive state.

U.G. was fundamentally hampered in his ability to understand his own existence. He, like many Indian spiritual gurus who wandered to the States to find greener pastures, got mixed up in trying to blend the spiritual with the scientific. He claimed that the pineal gland takes over the functioning of the body in what he called the ‘natural state’. The pineal gland is just a gland, and glands make hormones. A very important hormone, but it’s actually the whole body that takes care of itself in the absense of mental direction, there’s no need to attribute it to a chakra. The Ajna chakra, where he got this claim from, is between the eyes, slightly above the eye-line, while the pineal gland is at the base of the brain, not anywhere near the “third eye.” Hawkins got somewhat closer to the right kind of blend. It’s an important topic, and we need ongoing study. But we’re not anywhere near being able to truly ground spirituality in science.

To sum up, U.G. is amazing and spiritual ego is a great thing to lose. He points at all the places where spirituality isn’t going to help you and what it definitively is not. He’s not great at elucidating on what spirituality actually is, but that shouldn’t concern anyone. No one really knows.