Another important, but rather opposite spiritual influence, at the time was J. Krishnamurti. In California I happened to end up for a few years at Ojai, the town where Krishnamurti gave his yearly talks, which I attended regularly. I became familiar with the Krishnamurti community and made friends with several older members of the group, most who were ex-Theosophists. 

Krishnamurti’s thoughts had a logic that appealed to my revolutionary and anti-authority mentality. He was a kind of spiritual anarchist. Though he was in favor of meditation and the spiritual life, he was against gurus and structured practices. Yet given my connections with the Vedas and Vedanta I couldn’t accept his wholesale rejection of tradition and technique, or his criticism of mantra.

Krishnamurti was, on one hand, a typically self-alienated Indian intellectual criticizing his own culture. But, on the other hand, he possessed a genuine meditative mind in harmony with the same tradition, a strange contradiction but one that was appealing to people who could not relate to traditions.