Julie Thayer and UG!

I cannot believe that I am posting a blog. Feels totally alien! The last blog I posted in was in 2023. AI had just begin to creep into the enterprises then! Today, as I write this, its strange that blogspot doesnt have AI plugin. But I am happy for that.

Ok, a small twist. I am not going to be write anything fresh. I will be pasting something from a journalism assignment I did back in 2015. It was an online certificate course in Travel Writing from London School of Journalism. At that point, I was very much into UG Krishnamurthy. The "Nihilist" spriritual "Guru" who felt fresh at that point, and I feel he is equally fresh today. He minced no words and his take on enlightenment and using awareness as a tool for achieving that was radical. I guess his tool was triggering people for their spritual progress :-). Mahesh Bhatt, the Indian Director and Producer is the most mainstream of his followers. 

Recently this year in 2026, a documentary on UG called The Natural State was released. This was based on the diary writings of Julie Thayer who has been his long term follower. Ok, so where am I going with this? In 2015, one of the journalism assignments for me was to interview someone and do a Feature Profile. I knew about Julie Thayer then from her online posts. When I found out Julie lived in New Jersey, where I was at that time, I decided to take a chance and ask her for an interview. She was gracious enough to let me in her home and interview her. The following is the LSJ assignment I had completed based on the interview in 2015. Never published this before. Julie I hope you are reading this.. because you havent responded to my emails :-)

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“It took me years and years to understand what UG wanted me to do. It was not to think but act. Act and move on”. Julie Thayer on her 17-year journey with Indian thinker UG Krishnamurthy, who she says, changed her life. 

Feature Profile on Julie Thayer

To schedule a meeting with Julie was easy.  Spending 4 hours with her was even easier.  But before I can say anything about Julie, its important to set the background of the meeting. The world calls him UG. 

The only way I can write a line about UG is by skipping a line and moving on to something else. If you are looking for answers, then he might possibly just make your question meaningless. Not only questioning the phenomenon of enlightenment, but the quest itself as a bogus product sold in the spiritual market place, UG has made many a people, stop and question their search. I am one of them. 

Julie first met UG in California in 1989.  That was her start of the journey with UG until his death in 2007 in Vallecrosia, Italy.  Luckily, she shares part of her journal online at http://www.travelswithug.com  . I stumbled across the journal when reading about UG on the Internet and was fortunate enough to meet her in her house in New Jersey. 

At first, I was not sure when I wrote her an email asking her for an interview of sorts. I wondered, why would she meet a complete stranger. But she politely replied saying she would be happy to meet, but said, interview was too formal a structure for a conversation. 

We met on a sunny Sunday afternoon. She welcomed my wife and I with a smile, not a slightest judgment or apprehension on her face for the first time visitors. As if she knew us.  

She was graceful, light and warm. Using dates on her journal, I had calculated her age as 74 years old.  But she certainly did not look that age and her actions were graceful and effortless.

She was a great person to talk to. The conversation flowed and I knew that time, that conducting a formal interview would have been too awkward. She was forthcoming about everything. I was curious that why she kept only the first year of her meeting with UG in the online journal and questioned about the rest of her journal.  She said, that her diary grew more personal with passing years and thought it best not to share it on the Internet. 

Julie does not write under the pretext of any image at all. The journal tells us as much about Julie as much as UG. For example in the preface, she starts off by describing her state on first meeting UG “My first impression of U.G. was of a small catlike man with a completely disarming way about him, utterly lacking in pretension or guile.  And yet a power emanated from him that turned my brain to slush.  As he talked I heard him as from a great distance, as though my mind was operating in slow motion.  The only thing I could remember thinking was "I want to spend more time with him.” 

I was thrilled of getting to experience some of the things that Julie talked about in the journal. She had made couscous for lunch. She said, UG was a great cook, and this couscous was his recipe. She pointed out to a bed in the drawing room, which UG had used, often in her house in New York.  

I had long forgotten that it was an interview.  She made us feel right at home. In another hour, we had coffee. Julie talks in her journal often of making coffee for UG.  

I had an important question to ask her. She mentioned in her journal, about her visit with UG to a famous Astrologer in South India. The astrologer could only communicate with Julie through UG since she could not understand his language.  The Astrologer predicted that she would meet a Guru in 1989 and also get enlightened through him. I asked her, what happened to the prediction?  She said with a smile, it might have been UGs sense of humor. Telling just the things that Julie wanted to hear. 

It was already 3 in the afternoon and it was time for us to leave. We had talked about range of subjects like God, Life and Happiness. This is what UG answered when asked “Are you happy?” – “You see; that question never occurs to me. I never ask myself if I am happy or not. For all practical purposes, I don't think I ever feel happy at all. That's why I don't even know what happiness is. Therefore, I can never be unhappy either.”