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CONTEMPORARY VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, CONTINUED
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When it is intuited, it offers no further problems. The nonduality of the self, formerly understood but now intuited, implies the truths that Brahman is the only reality, the self is Brahman, and the world is illusory. What we really know is that we really are.
The distinction between reality and illusion, the basic principle of Advaita Vedanta, is valid only from the point of view of ignorance. The higher truth, from the point of view of knowledge, asserts the reality of Brahman but denies the illusoriness of the world, maintaning that there is no world at all, and even the illusion is illusory. The world, the empirical consciousness which perceives it, and the individual which has this consciousness are equally unreal. Really there is no creation and so no world even illusory, no bondage by illusion and so no release from illusion. Since there is no world to explain, there is no theoretical problem to solve, and since there is no freedom to attain, there is no practical problem to solve. There is only the self (Atman or Brahman). This higher view, called ajativada (no-creationism), is not a theory. According to Professor Malkani, ekajivavada is "the most satisfactory philosophical theory"; ajativada is "the last kick of philosophy" before it lapses into the silence which alone can express the truth.
6. R. Das.
The certitude of Professor Malkani's speculative rationalism has its extreme opposite in the agnosticism of Professor R. Das's critical rationalism. Professor Das has complete confidence in reason, both in its speculative and in its critical functions, as the only way of knowledge. He rejects all religion as mere superstition, and considers philosophy, which is knowledge of truth and guidance of life by reason, as the highest human activity. But he is sceptical about the success of this activity.
Rasvihary Das, a Bengali Hindu, was born in 1894, and educated at Calcutta, where he studied under B. N. Seal and K. C. Bhattacharya. After receiving the M.A. degree in 1920, he went to the Indian Institute of Philosophy at Amalner for 26 years. Since
