A Sanskrit pronoun simply meaning “that,” but philosophically meaning the Absolute: “that” which is beyond all speculation. “That one” (tadekam) first appears in the most famous creation hymn of the Rg Veda as “That One that breathed breathlessly by THAT Itself” (Rg Veda, X, 129.2). This is the Vedic Causeless Cause of all Causes i.e. “the one life-breath of the gods breathed forth” (Rg Veda, X, 121.7).

As Helena P. BLAVATSKY says, “In the earliest MSS. of Indian literature this Unrevealed, Abstract Deity has no name. It is generally “That” (Tad [actually tat] in Sanskrit), and means all that is, was, and will be, or that can be so received by the human mind” (SD I:77). She further writes,

Let us put aside such human conceptions as a personal God and hold to the purely divine, to that which underlies all and everything in boundless Nature. It is called by its Sanskrit esoteric name in the Vedas TAD (or THAT), a term for the unknowable rootless Root.

If we do so, we may answer these seven questions of the Esoteric Catechism thus:

(1) Q. — What is the Eternal Absolute? A. — That.

(2) Q. — How came Kosmos into being? A. —Through That.

(3) Q. — How, or what will it be when it falls back into Pralaya? A. — In That.

(4) Q. — Whence all the animate, and suppositionally, the “inanimate” nature? A. — From That.

(5) Q. — What is the Substance and Essence of which the Universe is formed? A. — That.

(6) Q. — Into what has it been and will be again and again resolved? A. — Into That.

(7) Q. — Is That then both the instrumental and material cause of the Universe? A. — What else is it or can it be than That? (CW XII:524/5).

J.Mr.

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