Isavasya 12 Translation Fantasia

andhaṁ tamaḥ praviśanti ye’sambhūtimupāsate, tato bhūya iva te tamo ya u sambhūtyāgṁratāḥ.

अन्धम् – blindening; तमः – darkness; प्रविशन्ति – enter into, fall; ये – who; असम्भूतिम् – unmanifest (prakṛti, the primal material cause); उपासते – worship; ततः – than that; भूयः – greater; इव – as though; ते – they; तमः – darkness; य – who; उ – verily; सम्भूत्याग्म् – in the manifest (Brahman meaning Hiraṇyagarbha – see commentary); रताः – devoted

They fall into blindening darkness who worship the unmanifest (prakṛti); but those who devote themselves to the manifest (Hiraṇyagarbha) fall, as though, into greater darkness.

Mantras 12, 13 and 14 are again another triad in which the same idea described earlier has been brought out for the purpose of better clarification. It is so very important that it is necessary for every seeker of Vedānta to understand correctly what is the exact relationship between vidyā and avidyā.

The pair of words used in this section is unmanifest (asambhūti) and manifest (sambhūti). The ‘unmanifest’ would be easier for you all to understand as the impersonal God, and the ‘manifest’ as the personal God.

Just as we have seen that there is no controversy between vidyā and avidyā and that they are complementary to each other, so too, jñāna and bhakti are not contradictory. In fact, each in the lap of the other grows stronger and gets more established.

~Chinmayananda

They fall into blind darkness who worship the Unmanifested and they fall into greater darkness who worship the manifested.

This particular Upanishad deals chiefly with the Invisible Cause and the visible manifestation, and the whole trend of its teaching is to show that they are one and the same, one being the outcome of the other hence no perfect knowledge is possible without simultaneous comprehension of both.

~Paramananda

Into blinding darkness enter those who worship the unmanifest and into still greater darkness, as it were, enter those who delight in the manifesst!

There are those who worship the unmanifest. They also enter into darkness, but not as great a darkness as those who worship only the manifest. ‘Worshipping the unmanifest’ means worshipping that which is the cause of the manifest world. The Upanishadic teaching is that one has to transcend both, the manifest and the unmanifest. 

When they speak of the unmanifest they are speaking about the Supreme Reality as a creator, destroyer and so on. It is unmanifest because it is behind the manifestations that we see before us. It is the operator of all that operates. The Upanishad says that you can remain at that level, but the Truth, which is Light, is beyond both, the manifest as well as the unmanifest.

~Sri M

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Non-Birth, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Birth alone.

Exclusive attachment to Non-Birth leads to a dissolution into indiscriminate Nature or into the Nihil, into the Void, and both of these are states of blind darkness. For the Nihil is an attempt not to transcend the state of existence in birth, but to annul it, not to pass from a limited into an illimitable existence, but from existence into its opposite. The opposite of existence can only be the Night of negative consciousness, a state of ignorance and not of release.

On the other hand, attachment to Birth in the body means a constant self-limitation and an interminable round of egoistic births in the tower forms of egoism without issue or release. This is, from a certain point of view, a worse darkness than the other; for it is ignorant even of the impulse of release. It is not an error in the grasping after truth, but a perpetual contentment with the state of blindness. It cannot lead even eventually to any greater good, because it does not dream of any higher condition.

~Aurobindo