Our normal experience is that that is what we have at our disposal — smriti — second-hand knowledge, accounts of someone else’s primal experience. We perceive the world, as J Krishnamurti would put it, through the veil of conditioning, which is millions of years old. This is received knowledge, not fresh perception. We cannot see ourselves as we are and the world as it is because of this interference of the past. In Krishnamurti’s scheme, then, smriti or tradition is the obstruction, the veil, the screen between reality and ourselves. It is only when we rend the veil, when we begin really to see things in their true light, are we liberated. All past, all received notions, all smritis, whether good or bad, are ultimately limited and binding. Nothing short of a radical rupture from our past will release us into the eternity of the present — smriti is caught up in the movement of time, while only sruti is the release into timelessness.

For Krishnamurti, smriti, memory and tradition are the problems; it is they that interfere with reality. But such interference may be superseded by direct experience, sruti, just as the actual taste of the proverbial pudding is in the eating. If sruti is more powerful than smriti, then we need not see the latter as the villain. Moreover, without any direction or understanding from the past, many feel disoriented and confused. Finally, who is utterly free from conditioning, from memory, from the burdens of the past? No one—to that extent, being immersed in the moment can be only that, momentary. Then the action of memory, of the past, re-establishes itself.

We are, once again, inserted into older narratives, subject once more to the tyranny of time. That is why sruti and smriti are not dichotomous or oppositional but complementary and continuous. Sruti, direct perception, is primary, while smriti, memory, is secondary. I interpret Krishnamurti’s work as an attempt to restore this rightful order even if entails a radical denial of tradition. Krishnamurti reminds us that sruti is available to each of us, if we are alert. He warns us not to be contented merely with smriti. Such denial itself, inevitably, sets itself into another sort of tradition. After his passing, most of Krishnamurti’s followers get by with listening to his tapes and reading his books. It is smriti which is available; sruti remains beyond their reach. In time, some of these followers, listening and reading his work, also form their own rigid interpretations, including some who exclude others from their sampradaya (sect). In the name of radical freedom, freedom comes to be denied.

In direct opposition to Krishnamurti’s position, the Bhagawad Gita in Chapter 2 says that loss of memory leads to the destruction of the intellect, which in turn results in total annihilation. Here, memory refers to the seed of enlightenment, the knowledge of our own ultimate nature, which we already possess. It is anger that leads to delusion, delusion to memory loss, which in turn leads to utter destruction.

Directly linked to sruti, memory or smriti reminds us who we are and arrests our fall from grace. Smriti here is saviour, not sinner. The present is, after all, that which replaces not the past, but another present, which has, from the point of view of time, just elapsed.

We therefore have two distinct views of the relationship between sruti and smriti. One view implies continuity and consonance between the two, while the other, discontinuity and opposition. The former is, to my mind, the traditional view, while the latter is the modern one. Both are, to varying degrees, justified. When smriti works against sruti, as is often the case, then the modern view is right. Then we need a Krishnamurti to cleanse and deconstruct tradition so that something new may emerge. The stream of sruti cannot flow if its course is dammed or overrun with obstacles. Someone must perform the task of desilting the channel so that the flow or sruti resumes.

Who will cleanse the channels of grace, throwing all the soil and mud out? The critical modernist does such a job. However, the revolutionary or radical modernist goes too far in destroying too much, good as well as bad. But when smriti transmits what is right and good, then to overthrow it would be not just disruptive, but undesirable. The traditionalist defines parampara as that which is the custodian and conveyer of truth, wishing to preserve it at all costs. By the latter definition, anything that departs from smriti also departs from tradition. Our view of the problem will depend, as I said earlier, on which of the definitions we accept.

I think that the most useful and enabling position is one that allows us to see tradition as the repository of both good and bad, both the positive and the negative. A critical traditionalist, while leaning to the good in his tradition is, nonetheless, critical of what is bad, whether it is really a part of his tradition or goes by that name. Similarly, a critical modernist will have the capacity to critique modernity when it departs from its proclaimed objectives. A traditionalist, when he critiques tradition, will have to take recourse to either tradition or modernity; likewise, when a modernist critiques modernity, he will have to find alternatives either in modernity or tradition. In either case, the two do not function dichotomously, but dialogically.

In a certain sense, sruti itself is the ever-new, if not the modern, because it is the contemporary, the immediate, the instantaneous, while smriti properly belongs to the old, the remembered, once contemporary, but now historical. However, while modernity, not of the Indian (that is, traditional) but of the Western variety, always needs something to oppose, something to Other, something to destroy, sruti is inclusive and self-sufficient. Similarly, tradition in its original, wider sense as parampara is self-renewing, self-critical, and self-regulatory. Made up of both sruti and smriti, it is a broader system of integrated wisdom, which includes both tradition and modernity. That is why parampara cannot be identified with tradition; properly understood, it has no Other.

Only a society entirely constituted by enlightened beings can afford to dispense with smriti. All other social arrangements need both sruti and smriti. Some think that they can function only on the basis of smriti, remaining content with some revelation in the past. Such societies, too, are doomed to failure because they have lost the capacity to renew themselves or critically examine their pasts. A healthy society combines the riches of both sruti and smriti. The possibility of “new” sruti should always be present, even if its vanguard consists of a few chosen individuals, while smriti can be collective as well as individual.

The problem of tradition can be solved if we see it as the basis of our own realisation, not if we regard it as the sole custodian of ultimate truth. Tradition can guide us, but merely repeating what we have inherited will not suffice. We have to add to it, to grow beyond it, to discover our own truths. Tradition is, indeed, the repository of truth, but it does not restrict or close truth’s domain. In fact, it yields itself only to someone who undertakes the discipline to understand it. This process of tapas or askesis serves to duplicate or at least to replicate the conditions which made the original revelation possible. Thus, tradition is renewed; sruti flows again; smriti is revitalised. Unless such renewal takes place periodically, tradition is lost. Like a path on which no one walks anymore, it will be covered with weeds and brambles.

(To be continued)