This is #1 in a series. You can find chapter #2 here.

Recently I explored whether being American even means anything anymore. But there are much bigger fish to fry. This week a short video of a talk by Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1981 caught my attention, shining a light on the deep-thinking philosopher and founder of the Krishnamurti Foundation in Ojai, California. In the talk he mused on the consequences of computers exceeding humans. He passed on in 1986, but his foundation is still active and his ideas live on through people, books, newsletters, and multimedia. I visited the center for the first time with my family in May 2026 for a campus tour. Honestly I didn’t know much about Krishnamurthi before then.

I’m glad Krishnamurthi finally came across my radar. He belongs to a special club of Indian-born spiritual gurus who migrated to America to spread awareness of ancient Indian practices such as vegetarianism, meditation and yoga in the 1800s and 1900s along with precepts from old texts shedding light on modern physics. Inspired not by the pursuit of material wealth, but by a sense of duty to humanity. They arrived in an America infinitely more hostile and dangerous than today’s for people who looked and sounded like them. This begs a question. They not only managed to get by here… they thrived beyond anything we can imagine way before the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. How?

Vivekanda paved the way to America in 1893 after meditating on a rock in the ocean at India’s Southern tip, which forced into his psyche a vision to head to America for the first time, at age 30. That rock, in a sense, was where the source code was manifested. His influence skyrocketed organically as he toured around America speaking to live audiences, somewhat akin to a brand ambassador for India. He collected well-heeled American friends and followers. Soon he was greeted like a rock star after dazzling Americans of all ages and backgrounds with stunning charisma and brilliant elocution, the likes of which Americans had never witnessed before. Krishnamurthi would follow in his footsteps later.

Within seconds of opening this video, it should become apparent why the words resonate today at least to pause and think, to explore further. It feels as if it’s about us in our moment, because the vibes are timeless. Krishnamurthi was far ahead of his time:

Swami Vivekananda and Swami Abedhananda (Vedanta Society), Swami Prabhupadha (ISKCON aka Hare Krishnas), Paramahansa Yogananda (Self-Realization Fellowship and author of my favorite book Autobiography of a Yogi), Krishnamurthi, and others bootstrapped an almost miraculous awakening to start filling a gaping black chasm in Western culture, the donut hole between hard organized religion and hard science. These were gurus, not religious missionaries aiming to convert strangers or capture territory like so many other colonial-minded leaders of the time.

They sought something more profound and eternal: to share knowledge documented and practiced over thousands of years for the good. If Americans tuned into that knowledge, the entire world would eventually tap into ancient concepts that predated American Empire, British Empire, and Roman Empire.

The Indian spiritual gurus chose a path of non-subversive integration with American customs, which enhanced the new country’s growth decades before ‘Indian-American’ was an idea. Making their marks well before the medical doctors, engineers, taxi drivers, and motel franchise owners arrived. Over time disciples of the movement swelled to include icons such as Nikola Tesla, Aldous Huxley, Elvis Presley, J.D. Salinger, The Beatles, Steve Jobs, Bruce Lee, and countless others. The words of these pioneers helped form the backbone of the 1960s US counterculture and civil rights movements.

These spiritual gurus were America-first polymaths whose influence will extend for centuries to come. They foresaw something almost magical would emerge from the substrate binding East and West, America to India, modern and ancient, like quantum entanglement. America was the only option for the gurus to answer their call of destiny, to lay the foundations for overseas bases of spiritual development for practical application in a modern world. They recognized America approached the pinnacles of political power, media reach, technological innovation, absorption of foreign ideas, and entrepreneurial spirit.

That America’s unrivaled superpower is freedom, including religious and cultural.

The marriage between ancient philosophy and accelerating technology was not nice to have, but needed for survival of the democracy itself. American soil was malnourished by the chase for non-transcendental pleasure based on fortune, power, material objects, and fame. The land is even more contaminated today, just when we Americans desperately must redouble focus on the psychological well-being of individuals at cellular level, and harmony among all nations at organism level, as one species sharing a single living hive. For better and worse, America is the only nation capable of leading our twisted, parasitic species through the coming catastrophic storms. There’s no Plan B. Continued acceleration toward the breakdown of the human world order and devastation of the only ecosystem of our natural planet are coming. Even more egregious, all while seeking reassurance by lying to ourselves that some form of “God” put plants, animals, people, and robots on the planet for humans to exploit, blessed by a disingenuous moral cover.

Right on cue, a threat has emerged to take center stage. Those of us alive today are at the dawn of a new era of uncertainty defined by the dual-use nature of AI. Like nuclear energy AI can be harnessed to wipe out every human, or make life better for every human. Krishnamurthi elegantly laid out a most urgent problem. What will it mean to be human anymore when AI is better at doing everything humans can do? Why are we doing it?

Krishnamurthi discussed concepts typically reserved for fantasy and science-fiction in the 1980s. Wise men and women like Krishnamurthi predicted well before the end of the 20th century the dangers we needed to start reckoning with. Fortunately for us, the American spiritual gurus and cyberpunk novelists built us a detailed roadmap to navigate the technological revolution, if only we’d open it right about now.

Can it be coincidence that AI itself is being driven on the America-India information superhighway? Mathematically impossible, I say.