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andhaṁ tamaḥ praviśanti
ye ’vidyām upāsate
tato bhūya iva te tamo
ya u vidyāyām ratāḥ

SYNONYMS

andham—gross ignorance; tamah—darkness; pravisanti—enter into; ye—those who; avidyam—nescience; upasate—worship; tatah—than that; bhuyah—still more; iva—like; te—they; tamah—darkness; ye—those who; u—also; vidyayam—in the culture of knowledge; ratah—engaged.

TRANSLATION

Those who engage in the culture of nescience shall enter into the darkest region of ignorance. Worse still are those engaged in the culture of so-called knowledge.

PURPORT

Mantra 9 contrasts vidya and avidya. Avidya, ignorance, is dangerous, because an ignorant person has no idea of what they are, or the goal and purpose of human life. But Isopanisad also warns that when vidya or knowledge is based on a wrong platform or used for misguided purposes, it is even more dangerous. And lest we think that Sri Isopanisad is a dated text referring only to the ancient world, this mantra is more salient today than ever.

Materialistic civilization has made great strides in educating the masses; but the result is that people are more and more unfortunate, unhappy and frustrated. This is because modern so-called education is concerned only with material advancement, and neglects the most important aspect of life: spiritual wisdom. Real vidya, or actual education begins with the understanding that the Supreme Lord is the owner and controller of everything. The more a person ignores this most important fact, described in Sri Isopanisad as isavasya, the more he deviates from the actual truth. Therefore, a godless civilization cultivating advancement of so-called knowledge on the basis of spiritual ignorance is far more dangerous to our well-being and happiness than a traditional spiritual culture, where people are less advanced in material and economic advancement, but have a healthy consciousness of the Supreme Lord.

Those who are engaged primarily in activities of material sense gratification are called karmis. In modern Western materialistic civilization, 99.9% of the population are engaged in such temporary activities. These nescient activities have attractive names like capitalism, industrialism, economic development, altruism, idealism, activism, and so forth. But since all these activities are based on satisfaction of the material senses, they neglect the cultivation of God consciousness as described in the first mantra of Isopanisad. Therefore Kṛṣṇa speaks of them in disparaging words:

na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ
prapadyante narādhamāḥ
māyayāpahṛta-jñānā
āsuraṁ bhāvam āśritāḥ

“Those miscreants who are grossly foolish, lowest among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by illusion, and who partake of the atheistic nature of demons, do not surrender unto Me.” [Bhagavad-gita 7.15]

Kṛṣṇa calls the karmis who are engaged in gross sense gratification mudhas—literally, asses, the very symbol of inertia, stupidity and ignorance. According to Sri Isopanisad, those who simply pursue material gratification without any spiritual aim of life are worshiping avidya, or ignorance. And the so-called intellectuals who help engineer the infrastructure of this destructive civilization are actually doing more harm than ignorant people on the platform of gross sense gratification.

The Vedas compare the advancement of learning by godless people to a cobra decorated with a valuable jewel. A beautifully decorated cobra may superficially seem very beautiful, but it is still dangerously poisonous.

“The advancement of education by godless people is compared to decorations on a dead body.” [Hari-bhakti-sudhodaya 3.11.12]

In many cultures, people hold a funeral service for the comfort of the bereaved relatives, featuring a nicely dressed and decorated dead body. But what is the use of decorating a dead body? No amount of gorgeous decoration can make a poisonous cobra safe, or a dead body alive again. Modern materialistic civilization is a patchwork of temporary activities meant to cover over and distract us from the perpetual miseries of material existence. All such activities aimed at denial of the real situation involve an artificial increase of sense gratification.

But the Esoteric Teaching shows us that the mind is above the senses, intelligence is above the mind, and the soul is above the intelligence. Therefore the real aim of education should be realization of the spiritual nature and values of the soul. Education which does not lead to such realization, or even attempts to negate it, must be considered avidya, or nescience. And according to Sri Isopanisad, actively cultivating such nescience leads only to the darkest regions of material consciousness and ignorance.

Material objects are like so many zeros, and Kṛṣṇa is like 1. If we place the zeros in front of the 1 (01, 001 etc.) no matter how many zeros we add, the value remains the same. But if we put the 1 first, every zero we add increases the value by a power of ten (1, 10, 100 etc.). Therefore no matter how many material qualifications we may have, without Kṛṣṇa their value is just zero. But when we put Kṛṣṇa first, the value of our material qualifications increases astronomically because they are in proper relation to Him.

yām imāṁ puṣpitāṁ vācaṁ
pravadanty avipaścitaḥ
veda-vāda-ratāḥ pārtha
nānyad astīti vādinaḥ

kāmātmānaḥ svarga-parā
janma-karma-phala-pradām
kriyā-viśeṣa-bahulāṁ
bhogaiśvarya-gatiṁ prati

“Men of small knowledge are very much attached to the flowery words of the Vedas, which recommend various fruitive activities for elevation to heavenly planets, resultant good birth, power, and so forth. Being desirous of sense gratification and opulent life, they say that there is nothing more than this.” [Bhagavad-gita 2.42-43]

Kṛṣṇa labels the mistaken mundane educators as veda-vada-rata, so-called followers of the Vedas or purveyors of counterfeit knowledge. Later on in Bhagavad-gita 7.15, He calls them miscreants (duskrtina), atheistic demons, dwellers in hell (naradhama), the lowest of humans. Those who are veda-vada-rata pose themselves as very learned in various subjects, but unfortunately they are completely diverted from the purpose of the Vedas. And what is that purpose?

vedaiś ca sarvair aham eva vedyo
vedānta-kṛd veda-vid eva cāham

“I am to be known by all the Vedas; indeed I am the compiler of Vedanta, and I am the knower of the Vedas.” [Bhagavad-gita 15.15]

Kṛṣṇa declares that the purpose of all Vedic literature and all cultivation of knowledge is to know the Personality of Godhead and serve His purposes, but the false intellectuals of this world are not interested in serving the Personality of Godhead. They want material fruitive results, such as wealth, power and the attainment of heaven. Instead of serving God, they want God to serve their material desires, and wrongly think they can compel Him to do so by means of religious sacrifices.

Sri Isopanisad states in Mantra 1 that the Personality of Godhead is the proprietor of everything; therefore we should be satisfied with the quota of the necessities of life allotted by our karma. The purpose of the Esoteric Teaching is to awaken God consciousness in the forgetful materially conditioned living beings. This same purpose is presented in the scriptures of the world in various ways to accommodate the understanding of spiritually ignorant people. The difference is that the Esoteric Teaching is the complete and original science of God consciousness.

The ultimate purpose of all religions is to bring all living entities back to eternal existence in the spiritual world. But the neophyte students of the Vedas take it for granted that the attainment of heavenly pleasure for sense gratification is the ultimate end of the Vedas. But this lust for material enjoyment is the cause of material bondage and suffering in the first place. Therefore such confused people simply increase their entanglement in material affairs because they misinterpret, misunderstand and misapply knowledge in general and the Vedic literature in particular.

Sri Isopanisad condemns such false followers of the Vedas in this mantra by the appropriate words vidyayam ratah: “those engaged in the study of the Vedas.” The materialistic students of the Vedas are impressive scholars, but remain ignorant of the actual purpose of the Vedas because they disobey the Master Teachers in the lineage of the Esoteric Teaching. Instead of taking shelter of the authorized instructions of the Esoteric Teaching, they whimsically assign speculative meanings to every word of the Vedas. They do not understand that the Vedic literature is a collection of extraordinary transcendental literature originally spoken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The divine mystery of the Vedas can be understood only by following the chain of disciplic succession from the original source.

To realize the actual purpose of the Vedas—reviving the forgetful soul’s relationship with the Personality of Godhead—one must approach a self-realized spiritual Master Teacher in the lineage of the Esoteric Teaching, and understand the transcendental message of the Vedas from him.

tad-vijnanartham sa gurum evabhigacchet
samit-panih srotriyam brahma-nistham

“To learn the transcendental subject matter, one must approach a spiritual master, offering fuel to burn in sacrifice. The symptom of such a spiritual master is that he is expert in understanding the Vedic conclusion, and therefore he constantly engages in the service of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” [Mundaka Upanisad 1.2.12]

The veda-vada-ratas have their own spiritual teachers who are not in the chain of transcendental succession. Thus they misinterpret the Vedic literature and progress into the darkest region of ignorance. They fall even deeper into ignorance than people who have no spiritual knowledge at all.