The eternal primordial substance from which emanates all material manifestations. It is a term used in Helena P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine where she states that “Root-Essence” is synonymous with ĀKĀŚA, SVABHAVAT or MŪLAPRAKRTI, and so may be defined as “eternal primordial substance from which emanates all material manifestation.”

We find a specific reference to Root Essence in the SD (I:635): “The one Cosmic atom becomes seven atoms on the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and the seven creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence . . . follow one the right, the other the left path, separate until the end of the Kalpa, and yet are in close embrace.”

In her E.S. Instruction No. III (CW XII:624; also in The Esoteric Writings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, pp. 406-7). Blavatsky, after discussing the duality of Manas, states, “To understand this abstruse metaphysical doctrine fully and correctly, one has to be thoroughly impressed with an idea, which I have in vain endeavored to impart to Theosophists at large, namely the great axiomatic truth that the only eternal and living Reality is that which the Hindus call Paramštma and Parabrahman. This is the one ever-existing Root Essence, immutable and unknowable to our physical senses, but manifest and clearly perceptible to our spiritual natures. Once imbued with that basic idea and the further conception that if It is omnipresent, universal and eternal, like abstract Space itself, we must have emanated from it and must, some day, return to it, and all the rest becomes easy.”

P.S.H.

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