This paradoxical phrase enshrines one of the most philosophically profound statements in Helena P. BLAVATSKY’S The Secret Doctrine. It is not identical with the concept of the “First Cause” of Thomas Aquinas and Herbert Spencer. This First Cause is brought forward as an argument for the existence of God.

The “first” presupposes necessarily something which is the “first brought forth,” “the first in time, space, and rank” — and therefore finite and conditioned. The “first” cannot be the absolute, for it is a manifestation. Therefore, Eastern Occultism calls the Abstract All the “Causeless One Cause,” the “Rootless Root,” and limits the “First Cause” to the Logos, in the sense that Plato gives to this term (SD I:14-15 fn).

By the term “Causeless Cause,” then, Blavatsky refers to the Absolute or Parabrahman that is beyond all conditioned state. The “First Cause” derives from this “Causeless Cause.” Other equivalent terms are Rootless Root, Eternal Be-ness, the One Reality. It is identical with the Ain Soph of Kabbalah.

V.H.C