Abstract
The monist school of Advaita Vedānta, the “official” philosophy of Hinduism, when dealing with the relation between man and Universe, takes a stand totally opposite to the one of the realistic common sense. Man is not just a part of the Universe, but rather the subject which projects the Universe. The Universe is nothing but illusory experience and it can't be found anywhere else but in the consciousness of the subject which experiences it.
The manifestation of the Universe starts when consciousness gets, first of all, covered by ignorance and, consequently, loses its self-awareness. Instead of comprehending itself, the consciousness thus affected by ignorance starts projecting some successive layers of illusion which represent the personal identity wrongly assumed by consciousness and the experience of the Universe.
The article deals with the successive steps through which consciousness manifests the Universe. Starting with the causal body (kāraṇa śarīra), where consciousness has been only dulled by ignorance (avidyā, ajñāna), the projection of the Universe takes more and more definite forms. It determines itself as an individual at the level of the subtle body (sūkṣma śarīra), which is the psychic structure of the individual being. In its coarsest forms, it manifests as the gross body (sthūla śarīra), the physical Universe, which is only a very dense, compact form of illusion. Materiality is nothing but a particularly opaque form of ignorance.
Thus, the Universe represents a cosmic expansion of the person, the consciousness which goes out of its own nature and, through the intermediary of the psychic structure, projects all forms of “materiality”. Man and Universe can never be separated, both being only different layers of the manifestation of consciousness (cit).
