Tat
Tat (IAST)Translation: "That"
From Mandukya Upanishad (Verse 1)
A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy
Sanskrit: तत्
Transliteration: Tat
Translation: "That"
Definition: "A neuter pronoun expressing the indescribable Absolute."
Glossary to the Record of Yoga (Sri Aurobindo)
"Tat – that; “That which escapes definition or description and is yet not only real but attainable,” a word used to indicate Parabrahman as “something utterly Transcendent, something that is unnameable and mentally unknowable, a sheer Absolute.” Since this Absolute “is in itself indefinable by reason, ineffable to the speech,” it can only “be approached through experience,” either “through an absolute negation of existence, as if it were itself a supreme Non-Existence, a mysterious infinite Nihil” (Asat) or else “through an absolute affirmation of all the fundamentals of our own existence,... through an inexpressible absolute of being” (Sat)."
References:
- Grimes, John (1996). A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English. Albany: State University of New York Press
- Hartz, Richard. Glossary to the Record of Yoga (Sri Aurobindo). Retrieved from http://wiki.auroville.org.in/wiki/Glossary_to_the_Record_of_Yoga.
