Yoga and Morality

Yoga and Morality

The next point that I would pause upon, and ask you to realise,

is the fact that Yoga is a science of psychology. I want further

to point out to you that it is not a science of ethic, though

ethic is certainly the foundation of it. Psychology and ethic are

not the same. The science of psychology is the result of the

study of mind. The science of ethic is the result of the study of

conduct, so as to bring about the harmonious relation of one to

another. Ethic is a science of life, and not an investigation

into the nature of mind and the methods by which the powers of

the mind may be developed and evolved. I pause on this because of

the confusion that exists in many people as regards this point.

If you understand the scope of Yoga aright, such a confusion

ought not to arise. The confused idea makes people think that in

Yoga they ought to find necessarily what are called precepts of

morality, ethic. Though Patanjali gives the universal precepts of

morality and right conduct in the first two angas of Yoga, called

yama and niyama, yet they are subsidiary to the main topic, are

the foundation of it, as just said. No practice of Yoga is

possible unless you possess the ordinary moral attributes summed

up in yama and niyama; that goes without saying. But you should

not expect to find moral precepts in a scientific text book of

psychology, like Yoga. A man studying the science of electricity

is not shocked if he does not find in it moral precepts; why then

should one studying Yoga, as a science of psychology, expect to

find moral precepts in it? I do not say that morality is

unimportant for the Yogi. On the contrary, it is all-important.

It is absolutely necessary in the first stages of Yoga for

everyone. But to a Yogi who has mastered these, it is not

necessary, if he wants to follow the left-hand path. For you must

remember that there is a Yoga of the left-hand path, as well as a

Yoga of the right-hand path. Yoga is there also followed, and

though asceticism is always found in the early stages, and

sometimes in the later, true morality is absent. The black

magician is often as rigid in his morality as any Brother of the

White Lodge.[FN#8: Terms while and black as used here have no

relation to race or colour.] Of the disciples of the black and

white magicians, the disciple of the black magician is often the

more ascetic. His object is not the purification of life for the

sake of humanity, but the purification of the vehicle, that he

may be better able to acquire power. The difference between the

white and the black magician lies in the motive. You might have a

white magician, a follower of the right-hand path, rejecting meat

because the way of obtaining it is against the law of compassion.

The follower of the left-hand path may also reject meat, but for

the reason that be would not be able to work so well with his

vehicle if it were full of the rajasic elements of meat. The

difference is in the motive. The outer action is the same. Both

men may be called moral, if judged by the outer action alone. The

motive marks the path, while the outer actions are often

identical.

It is a moral thing to abstain from meat, because thereby you are

lessening the infliction of suffering; it is not a moral act to

abstain from meat from the yogic standpoint, but only a means to

an end. Some of the greatest yogis in Hindu literature were, and

are, men whom you would rightly call black magicians. But still

they are yogis. One of the greatest yogis of all was Ravana, the

anti-Christ, the Avatara of evil, who summed up all the evil of

the world in his own person in order to oppose the Avatara of

good. He was a great, a marvellous yogi, and by Yoga he gained

his power. Ravana was a typical yogi of the left-hand path, a

great destroyer, and he practiced Yoga to obtain the power of

destruction, in order to force from the hands of the Planetary

Logos the boon that no man should be able to kill him. You may

say: "What a strange thing that a man can force from God such a

power." The laws of Nature are the expression of Divinity, and if

a man follows a law of Nature, he reaps the result which that law

inevitably brings; the question whether he is good or bad to his

fellow men does not touch this matter at all. Whether some other

law is or is not obeyed, is entirely outside the question. It is

a matter of dry fact that the scientific man may be moral or

immoral, provided that his immorality does not upset his eyesight

or nervous system. It is the same with Yoga. Morality matters

profoundly, but it does not affect these particular things, and

if you think it does, you are always getting into bogs and

changing your moral standpoint, either lowering or making it

absurd. Try to understand; that is what the Theosophist should

do; and when you understand, you will not fall into the blunders

nor suffer the bewilderment many do, when you expect laws

belonging to one region of the universe to bring about results in

another. The scientific man understands that. He knows that a

discovery in chemistry does not depend upon his morality, and he

would not think of doing an act of charity with a view to finding

out a new element. He will not fail in a well-wrought experiment,

however vicious his private life may be. The things are in

different regions, and he does not confuse the laws of the two.

As Ishvara is absolutely just, the man who obeys a law reaps the

fruit of that law, whether his actions, in any other fields, are

beneficial to man or not. If you sow rice, you will reap rice; if

you sow weeds, you will reap weeds; rice for rice, and weed for

weed. The harvest is according to the sowing. For this is a

universe of law. By law we conquer, by law we succeed. Where does

morality come in, then? When you are dealing with a magician of

the right-hand path, the servant of the White Lodge, there

morality is an all-important factor. Inasmuch as he is learning

to be a servant of humanity, he must observe the highest

morality, not merely the morality of the world, for the white

magician has to deal with helping on harmonious relations between

man and man. The white magician must be patient. The black

magician may quite well be harsh. The white magician must be

compassionate; compassion widens out his nature, and he is trying

to make his consciousness include the whole of humanity. But not

so the black magician. He can afford to ignore compassion.

A white magician may strive for power. But when he is striving

for power, he seeks it that he may serve humanity and become more

useful to mankind, a more effective servant in the helping of the

world. But not so the brother of the dark side. When he strives

for power, he seeks if for himself, so that he may use it against

the whole world. He may be harsh and cruel. He wants to be

isolated; and harshness and cruelty tend to isolate him. He wants

power; and holding that power for himself, he can put himself

temporarily, as it were, against the Divine Will in evolution.

The end of the one is Nirvana, where all separation has ceased.

The end of the other is Avichi--the uttermost isolation--the

kaivalya of the black magician. Both are yogis, both follow the

science of yoga, and each gets the result of the law he has

followed: one the kaivalya of Nirvana, the other the kaivalya of

Avichi.