I had never heard of Uppaluri Gopala (or “U.G.”) Krishnamurti before seeing the new documentary “The Natural State,” which just had its premiere at this month’s 2026 Telluride Film Festival. U.G. was famous for being an “anti-guru” who, after a long search for enlightenment, decided that such a mission was misguided and even fatuous. Even so, he was sought out the rest of his life by people who believed he actually embodied the spiritual goal they desired and hoped he would teach them how to attain such a “natural state” despite his constant mockery of their attention and support.

One such person was Julie Thayer. A wealthy New York woman, she learned about U.G. in the 1980s and went to his home in the Swiss Alps hoping, as others did, to have their “ego destroyed.” She took along a video camera and recorded hundreds of hours of footage of her subject. Her invaluable work documents one of the most curious spiritual writers of the 20th century, one who cautioned her, “This is the horror of the human monster. We are filled with thought. And thought is evil.”

U.G. had moved to Switzerland in the 1960s and begun a relationship with a consulate employee (one of the first people he met in the country) Valentine de Kerven. Thayer divorced her husband and spent years following U.G., gaining his confidence yet sometimes enduring what followers called his “blasting” episodes, in which he mocked and insulted people for expecting him to teach them something. An hilarious example: as she was helping him to move once she told him she was worried that a spider, missing one leg and living in the bathroom might be killed by the new residents. What should I do, she asked U.G. He said, “Why don’t you knit him a sweater?” Eventually Thayer became so desperate she begged him to take her millions in income and properties, an offer he rejected.

This fascinating documentary is executive produced by filmmaker Jane Campion, who knew U.G. and based Holly Hunter’s mystic character in her TV series “Top of the Lake” on him. Initially impressed by him, she grew to realize he had nothing to teach her. Was he a fraudster? Unlike televangelists he refused to take donations. He lived very simply yet was able to travel extensively with the help of friends. (He lived on a diet of cous-cous and heavy cream; he boasted that he was healthy because he never sought out the help of doctors or cared about nutrition.) And as in Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” these wannabe acolytes’ interest in U.G. perhaps said more about them than it did about U.G. But the director (in the press notes) says he tried to not take sides: “I did not want to make either of the two films this subject usually produces, the exposé or the hagiography. I wanted a spiritual film for a secular audience, one that does not ask anyone to believe anything but also challenges the quick-to-dismiss cynicism of our times.” 

Dougherty was himself born into a fundamentalist Christian cult run by a sexually abusive leader but was rescued from it at a very young age. He spent 16 years collecting the material for the film and makes extensive and exclusive use of Thayer’s videos, but he also employs other footage to tell the story of U.G.’s spiritual education.

Born in Indian in 1918, he joined the Theosophical Society as a teenager and spent years studying meditation, yoga and mysticism. From 1947 to 1953 he attended lectures by the famous Indian spiritual leader Jiddu Krishnamurti. (They were unrelated–it’s a very common Indian name.) They began meeting together and eventually U.G. challenged Jiddu’s ability to teach him anything. After their falling out, and many peripatetic years, he experienced what he called “a calamity” in 1967. For several days his body was wracked by physical and psychological torture. When it subsided he claimed that he had reached his “natural state.” For the rest of his life (he died in 2007) he was visited by people hoping to achieve a similar state of bliss only to be told he couldn’t help. Like the titular character of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” he more or less told them they’d have to just figure it all out by themselves.