Remembrance and Revelation
by J. R. Sommer
Remembrance and revelation precede history: without remembrance, history would not be recorded; without revelation, history would not be made. Because of this, they sit at the core of human experience.
Indo-Āryanism, the best preserver of Āryan spiritual heritage, calls remembrance smṛti (smrih-tee) and revelation śruti (shru-tee). Remembrance (smṛti) is tradition, or the codification of divine revelation (śruti), which is inner perception. Inner perception is jñāna, which is gnosis.1
Absent a balance between remembrance and revelation, man slips into spiritual (human) decay — but this defines the arc of Kali-Yuga. The Kali-Yuga is all recorded history, which means that civilization, or the beginning of recorded history, is a record of imbalance and spiritual decay. Gary Snyder2 memorably wrote that civilization is “ego gone to seed and institutionalized in the form of the State.”3 Civilization — our history — is remembrance increasingly devoid of the revelation it sought to preserve.
History is man’s record of himself — that ego gone to seed. We lose sight (inner perception, or insight) of our reason for remembrance and instead exercise our tremendous faculties for seemingly boundless ego stroking. History is recorded by the victors, so we aim to win. Remembrance is disconnected from its sacred origin and becomes profane: deal making, politics, warmongering. Now we even gamble the spoils of so much profanity in online marketplaces — so that we might win on winning. This is perhaps a new apex of egotism. Not to worry: this peak will be surpassed; the Kali-Yuga is still young.
Indo-Āryanism puts the start of the Kali-Yuga with the Kurukshetra War — that great dharmic struggle between kinsmen recorded in the Mahabharata. The epic Mahabharata is considered smṛti, the written memory of a still older time that was preserved in oral tradition. Some Hindu tradition holds that Manu, the great lawgiver and “father of mankind,” passed the story of the Bhagavad Gitā to his son some 2,005,000 years ago (the 5,000 years in this figure account for recorded history and mark the beginning of the Kali-Yuga). The Kurukshetra War, then, would even predate this. However, the Bhagavad Gitā, the spiritual core of the epic, is often considered apart from its source; that is, the Gitā is something of an honorary śruti, since it encapsulates the essence of the revelatory Upanishads (śruti) and documents the Word of God issuing from Krishna, avatar of Viṣṇu. Viṣṇu, Brahma, and Śiva constitute the Trimurti — the “three forms” of Ultimate Reality: The Trimurti is manifestation of Saguna Brahman, which itself is the emanated “thought” of Nirguna Brahman, the timeless All-Void. Thus, the Gitā and śruti generally are revelation: a glimpse into the changeless Efficient Cause that is everything and nothing. This revelation, sourced in the sacred and defining the essence of a people, was remembered and recorded to light the way to a beginningless end that is the mystery of existence.
If our actions are not governed by the mystery preceding them, then we are adrift in our own answers. We live in a time of Great Knowing — wherein the “great” is terrible and the “knowing” is devoid of the silence preceding its “now.”4 Now we cite and recall past failures (“zeniths” in recorded history, which is but a record of imbalance) to mark the way to a blank future — blank (void) because the sacred (All-Void) is absent and the immense silence is filled with endless answers, gross and not subtle, political and not spiritual. However, this only indicates that we have completely missed the point of remembrance, which is always to preserve the sacred: traditions exist not for themselves, but for their spiritual content, which is man’s revelation to himself. The failure of now is its ceaseless knowing.
If the failure of now is a loud and self-referential authority, how do we determine the authority of revelation? Though its sight is inward, revelation (śruti) is not its own source. Seeing inward, or self-reflection, is to not see the self at all; that is, revelation is a channeling of the transcendent — it is the gross body turned subtle. The Word of God is the structure of jñāna-gnosis, which is finally seeing beyond the gross-self (that record of failure) to the subtle-self, which is beyond all knowing as a record of nothing. History devoid of the sacred is now, and remembrance absent the revelation is always present. Recycling the past is our material practice of saṃsāra, a rote and ritualized march into the broken silence of the future.
Comforting us at the end of this long march (the will-to-machine) is the Überwille: a self unexamined, a sight interned (or seemingly paradoxically, un-in-turned).5 Our memory of this march — undertaken countless times — is unencumbered by revelation; hence our illimitable affinity for clutching recycled failure. It could have been different — Next time will be different: These are mantras of the marching masses, which is to say nearly everyone. How can we hope to be other than our essence?
Over the course of its existence, śruti assumed a geometrical meaning. In addition to being that which is perceived (or “heard,” in this case), śruti became synonymous with karṇa (“ear”), which was the word chosen for the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Even if only chosen for poetical reasons, there is yet spirit (serendipity) behind the selection of śruti as the diagonal bisecting a rectangle. The essence of a rectangle is its two pairs of opposing parallel sides joined at right angles. Veering from this essence, deviating from the perimetric rut, a path links two distal corners; the path forms a line and one becomes two (or three). The new side opposite the right angle (90º) halves two similar angles (45º), leaving us with the sacred triangle (180º). Before the bisection, the conventional path between opposing corners was long and tedious; but insight — jñāna-gnosis — a new path — connected that which was distant, and a new shape was made, dynamic and fundamental to any parallelogramic form. We note too the angular serendipity of the right triangle, wherein all paths lead to 9 — that number so special to both Indo-Āryan and Germanic cultures. There are yet signs of the sacred in this Kali-Yuga, the shortest of all the yugas at 432,000 years.
432,000 can be distilled to 9 — the sacred, Āryan 9 that permeates Germanic mythos. Nine realms comprise the known-unknown world. Wotan sacrificed himself for nine nights, hanging on Yggdrasil for the revelation of the runes and nine mighty songs. The ninth sign learned by Wotan sleeps the sea. Heimdall, watchman of the gods, has nine mothers. Thor eats an ox and eight salmon in his attempt to retrieve Mjölnir. And on goes the myth, haven for the gods. Another number, 18, can be distilled to 9. The Mahabharata contains 18 parvas [books]. The Bhagavad Gitā has 18 chapters. The Pandavas lost their belongings to the Kauravas in 18 dice games. The Kurukshetra war is fought for 18 days with 18 armies. Each of the four commanders of the Kaurava army fought for 10, 5, 2, and 1 day(s), successively — each span halving the one before it — to match the 18 days. The Mahabharata is an epic invigorating the philosophy of the Vedas.6
The Vedas are śruti; the Mahabharata is smṛti. Remembrance animates the revelation. If materiality ensures our essence as blank marchers to the tune of mechanistic will, our only hope to escape this path — even if only temporarily — is to embrace the revelation that fashions a new form.
Recycling is not salvation but enslavement. Do not be content to simply recycle your steps on the perimetric path. Discover the insight that comes with overcoming the self (which was never really your self at all).7 But rest easy in the grim reality that “not everyone can reach enlightenment.”
The world is not full of Buddhas; if it were, the Buddha would have never existed — nothing would have. If we fail in this life, then our penance is rebirth — likely (though not necessarily) one worse than its predecessor. If we fail in this life, then we hardly deserve liberation; instead, we deserve to return — perhaps as some worldly hero destined to save things in the world from final destruction. Is there any worse fate than to be responsible for the continuation of will on earth?
So look at life’s heroes; look at them and feel pity — not because you are better than they are, but because they are destined for a fate beyond this world. For Überwille or the beyond-the-beyond, for good or ill, who can say? Is the hero genuinely good, or is he good because he wills and wants something grand? Only the former can claim a Buddhistic life. When done admiring others, examine yourself. What destiny is promised to you? Well, be genuine in your action; be genuine and avoid evil. What is evil? Evil is your desire to perpetuate the will.8
One’s desire to perpetuate the will rests squarely in the godless remembrance that animates the revelation of a future void: herein lies saṃsāra. God — the sacred — śruti and a balanced smṛti — these define the human experience, and they are found only on the diagonal path.9
READ MORE by J. R. Sommer, published by Arktos.
Supreme Being: The Spiritual Foundations of Multipolarity, the third installment of his trilogy, is forthcoming in Fall 2026.
Sommer, “Knowledge, Gnosis, and Jñāna: The Path to God,” Arktos Journal (Jan. 2026).
Sommer, “Dharma Slums and the Esoteric-Exoteric Struggle,” PRAV Perspectives (Apr. 2026).
Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, “Good, Wild, Sacred.”
Sommer, “Knowledge, Gnosis, and Jñāna: The Path to God,” Arktos Journal (Jan. 2026).
For more on the will-to-machine, see The New Colossus: Heidegger and the Will-to-Machine (Arktos, 2025). For more on the Überwille, see The Electric Will (Arktos, 2026).
Martin Friedrich, Hitlerism (Clemens & Blair, 2023), “The Figurative World.”
This theme is developed over the course of my Arktos trilogy: The New Colossus, The Electric Will, and Supreme Being.
Sommer, The Electric Will (Arktos, 2026), “Beyond the Beyond.”
Sommer, The Electric Will (Arktos, 2026), “Preface.”