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.