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GEORGE BURCH
The "great initial step" is to draw "a clear-cut line between our intuition of the self and our intuition of the not-self.” Besides the external reality given through the senses or in introspection there is another kind of reality, the self. "The whole of Vedanta," Malkani says, "is merely the development of the full significance of this only non-empirical form of reality intuited by all.”.
The first four chapters (Importance of Epistemology, Perception, Body and Soul, Substance versus Process) discuss these basic problems. Epistemology does not explain how knowledge arises but analyzes the knowledge we actually have. Since both perception and thought distort reality, we can know reality in itself only by freeing it from these subjective influences. The appearance of the Self as joined to a body is our primal ignorance, and the cause of all our ills." Reality cannot be mere process but must be substance really existing
The last four chapters (Our Knowledge of Logical Form, of Metaphysical Reality, of Spirit, of Truth) follow the pattern of K. C. Bhattacharya's article "The Concept of Philosophy,” but the content is very different. Bhattacharya's perceived fact, formulable as a judgment and literally thinkable, essentially knowable though perhaps actually unknown, is replaced by Malkani's logical form, theoretically imperfect, valid only pragmatically. Bhattacharya's self-subsistent object, constituted by being spoken but not dependent on any mind, known by contemplation, is replaced by Malkani's metaphysical reality, indescribable, known only by revelation. Bhattacharya's reality, the subject I, enjoyed psychologically as embodied, morally as related to others, or religiously in communion with God, is replaced by Malkani's spirit, the speaking I, unreservedly revealing its whole self for what it is. Bhattacharya's truth, expressible only by the negation of I, selfrevealing, is replaced by Malkani's truth, which is the Self.
The book, consequently, is a criticism and rejection of the article which inspired it. The basic issue between these two philosophers seems to be the validity of the law of excluded middle. For Bhattacharya there are many levels of truth and four planes of reality, besides coordinate alternatives on the same plane. For most Vedantists, including Shankara, the phenomenal world is neither real nor unreal, but something intermediate. But Malkani,
