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.
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