9 Aha! Moments that blow Oprah off the Screen
1922: J. Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti was groomed as an adolescent to become the new messiah by the Theosophists, a society founded by utopian activists during the Gilded Age in New York (Waldorf school founder, Rudolf Steiner, was a disciple). But Krishnamurti renounced Theosophy — and all organized religion — after an epiphany in Ojai, California at the age of 29.
According to eye-witnesses, Krishnamurti was struck by an extraordinary pain in the nape of his neck, which swelled like a golf-ball. He went delirious with pain. After a couple of days, he fell unconsciousness but later recounted that he was very much aware of his surroundings — and experienced a “mystical union.” The episode climaxed with intense pain combined with a sense of “immense peace.” Krishnamurti was revered by George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley and Deepak Chopra. His dialogues with David Bohm, a nuclear phsycisist and Einstein protege, were instrumental in fusing eastern mysticism with western cosmology.
IN HIS OWN WORDS, Krishnamurti's Aha! Moment:
I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters and my thirst was appeased. I have seen the Light. I have touched compassion, which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world. Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.
Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution.
When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts, he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in the mind.
NEXT: Albert Einstein, 1907
Not knowing is an aha moment, too. I am not sure about Katie. She calls what she does The Work. That descriptive phrase belongs to Gurdjieff if you ask me. He shoulda trademarked it. Life is only real when I am, he said,and I am paraphrasing him a tad.
Let’s face it. People begin as genuinely as they can and if they stay at it long enough, they become genuine fakes, a la Alan Watts. I watch O for the entertainment value. True inner work is not done by buying a bestseller, a pack of Postit notes and a highlighter (that according to a wisecracking friend of mine). Or by watching YouTubes of the masters. Oy.