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. 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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