Therefore, yoga is a conscious determination of the lower by the higher, whether it is in the practice of morality or in the practice of meditation. The yamas therefore are certain restraints we impose purposely on our own selves and which are not imposed on us by someone else. The restrictions that we deliberately impose on our own selves, with an understanding of their necessity, are for establishing a harmony between ourselves and the world outside. There are certain avenues of thinking and action by which we come into conflict with people outside. We may speak certain things which may not be necessary, and this may bring conflict. Many a time not saying anything would be wiser than saying something. These are moral situations which people experience almost every day.

There are various avenues of this expression of thought and action by which social conflict is created, which should be obviated by the practice of the yamas. Love and hatred are the primary channels of self-expression through which we express our partiality to things. Partiality, we know, makes us small-minded. We are not respected in society if we are partial, because to be partial is to ignore some sections of society in preference to certain other sections. The ignored ones will not like that. “Oh, this is a partial gentleman,” which means to say he likes a section of society and he does not like another section. The ignored aspects will have a similar attitude towards him.

The strings of love and hatred which mean so much to us in our practical lives are primary obstacles in the practice of the sublimation of values. Love and hatred take certain peculiar shapes, and when they take a concrete form in the world outside, they may take the shape of pampering one thing and injuring another. Affection can get intensified and then harden into concrete forms. On one side there is pampering, on the other side there is the intention even to harm. Anything that is going to be a hindrance to our affection becomes an object of our hatred, and we take vengeance against it.

First, the vengeance is in the thoughts. “Let it die,” may be our feeling. “Let it be killed, destroyed, perish. Let it go, the earlier the better,” may be the prayer in our hearts if something is going to obstruct the expression of our longings. In our own minds we start internally cursing things which obstruct us, though we may not express the feelings outwardly. We may even admit to ourselves, “How rigid, how stupid, how nonsensical,” and all that, but when the feelings become more tamasic, we may pick up a weapon and attack. Thought, speech and action are the gradual expressions of both love and hatred. Where there is love there is an extremist attitude of over-pampering, and where there is the counterpart of it, namely hatred, there is an anti-social attitude.

By engaging these two strings of love and hatred, we end up cutting the ground from under our own feet. Such a person cannot live happily in society and becomes caught in suffering. There are various subtle as well as gross forms of the expression of this entanglement which are different for each person. These complications must be analysed in the context of the morality of yoga. Love and hatred are concerned with the extreme forms of self-expression, and they may become not only undesirable to human society but even injurious in certain cases. There are also other forms of conflict which arise on account of our peculiar attitudes toward people.

Uttering falsehood has also something to do with the emotions of love and hatred. We tell a lie on account of a false notion in our minds that lies will succeed. What we want is not truth or falsehood, but success. Truth and falsehood become only instruments for the achievement of success. “If truth succeeds, well, I shall tell the truth; if lies succeed, why not tell a lie? Because what I want is success.” The means is not so much important as the ends—that is what people think. The end is success, and to tell a lie is again to come into conflict with the well-being of others in society. It is a kind of deception that we practise. Deception means an action contrary to the good of certain people, in the interest of certain others. The interest may be our own personal pleasure or satisfaction, or the satisfaction of some people concerned with us or circumstances connected with us.

Personal love and personal hatred are one form of emotional conflict. The other side of it is the involvement of emotion, positively or negatively, in persons and things connected with oneself. Sometimes in villages two women may be taking water from the same tap. These village ladies are not usually properly educated and they may speak inappropriate words to one another, which creates a misunderstanding between them that can end in a big battle in the whole village. Using the water tap becomes an occasion for battle, and this type of situation is more common in villages, because the people are in closer contact. People start chatting as a diversion for their minds, and then someone says something inappropriate, and then the argument goes on intensifying itself into very undesirable forms. People who are related to these women end up fighting, while the women who started the argument return quietly to their homes.

Our emotions are not constrained within our own personalities; they take external shapes, move outside to other persons and things, and involve themselves in tremendous complexity. It is not that only things immediately concerned with our personality alone will disturb us—anything can disturb us. Anything that is happening will disturb us, though we are not really concerned with it. We will become so sensitive due to the wandering of emotion in this atmosphere.

These forms of love and hatred which extend their field of activity beyond the personality into the immediate society outside become the causes of the uttering of falsehoods as a normal routine of daily life. There are people who will never tell the truth. Whatever they utter is falsehood, and it becomes so natural that there is no prick of conscience anymore. The conscience gets accustomed to the uttering of falsehood, just as there are some people who are constantly sick and who take that condition of illness as a normalcy of their body. A little temperature is so normal that they do not know what a normal temperature is. This is especially the case in backward areas; people are always sick—they always have some headache and some slight temperature. They are never normal in health, and this is normal for them.

Likewise, we get accustomed to a kind of morbid attitude and we suffer internally on account of a subtle tension which these abnormalities create in our minds. While there are various injunctions given by the teachers of yoga to free ourselves from the entanglement in emotions with the objects outside, five at least are regarded as prominent. These are called the five yamas, mentioned in the system of Patanjali. These are elaborated into many more canons in other texts of yoga. We will not go into too much detail concerning these instructions, because all these elaborations finally boil down to these five instructions.

Our concern with society is fivefold, and so it is that morality is fivefold. The yamas are an internal adjustment of ourselves with the people outside in the world in a healthy way, and it is necessary that we should study the implications of all these five ways properly. Patanjali mentions that we are likely to injure people, we are likely to utter falsehoods, we are likely to be incontinent in our nature, we are likely to appropriate things which do not belong to us, and we are likely to accumulate unnecessary wealth. These are the things which are so normal to us—perhaps every one of us has seen this facet of life one day or the other and had occasion to ponder over it. We do not deliberately injure or harm people, but sometimes we feel it is inescapable or unavoidable if our interest is to be served. We harm people or have a tendency to injure the feelings of people on account of a feeling that, if that is not done, my interest is not going to be served. It is a question of accepting defeat or holding on to success.

Personal interest is the primal motive behind this retaliation of the ego in regard to people outside, which means to say—very important to remember—we want to make other people our instruments and use them to serve our own ends. “Other people should be the means, I shall be the one being served.” That is the meaning of self-interest. “The other people are nobodies to me. I am not concerned with them; they are not going to serve my interest. If they are indifferent to my interest, I will be indifferent to them, and if they harm my interests, I will take vengeance against them.”

This is the essence of self-interest. People may possibly be either indifferent towards us or against us, and we have a similar attitude towards them. From this it becomes clear that our relations with other people are purely a relation of give and take. “If you give, I will give. If you take, I will take.” It is a business affair that we establish with people rather than a proper understanding of human nature. We do not respect human life adequately and have no sympathy for people when we utilise them as instruments in our pleasures. This takes the form of slavery of servants, subjugation of employees, wars with nations of hideous proportions—all originating from this simple psychological fact of our desire to use others as a means for our own advantage. The attitude of using others as a means and oneself as an end is the cause of the breaking up of social rules.

We should remember three interesting tenets discovered by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in regard to ethical laws, which have so much in common with yoga morality as to be almost identical. The first tenet is: “Never use another as a means; respond to all people as ends in themselves.” The world is a kingdom of ends rather than of means. If we are an end, why should not others be an end in themselves? Is it not logical to conclude this? Please tell me in what way are one person is different from another person. What is the reason for regarding ourselves as different from another? In what way are we different? It is proper to regard another person also as an end, just as we regard ourselves as an end. If we regard other persons as a means, why should we also not be a means? We should never use the personality either of another or of ourselves as a means. We should not sell others or sell ourselves. We must use the personality of others respectfully—as well as our own, of course. One should not insult another person by making use of them as a kind of means to some ulterior selfish end. The world is a kingdom of ends. Use the personality of all human beings as an end rather than a means. This is one law.

The next law has to do with how to know what is right and what is wrong. Kant says, “It is very easy to understand. If we would like our attitude to be imitated by everybody in the world, then that attitude is all right.” Suppose we tell a lie, and we think it is all right to let everybody in the world only tell lies and to let no single person tell the truth. Will it be all right? Then lies will not succeed. Lies succeed because there are some truthful people in the world, and theft succeeds because there are some people in the world who do not steal. We must consider for ourselves whether our conduct can be imitated by everybody in the world without exception. If we say this same action by everyone is all right, then our conduct is all right. If we think it is not all right, then we are not all right. This is the way to judge our conduct, says Kant.

The third law states that morality does not come from outside—it comes from inside us. If we do not want it, nobody can give it to us. The moral sense is autonomous not heteronomous, meaning that it is not a mandate or an order from somebody else. It is something that we feel as a need in our lives. If we do not want the moral consciousness, nobody can give it to us, as it cannot come to us from any other source. We are the source of morality and not somebody else, and it is we who want to be moral and not somebody else—this is the third law. These are exactly the principles of the yoga morality, expressed of course in a different language and different style.

To use everybody as an end rather than as a means is put beautifully in a verse of the Mahabharata. “What is not good for you, you should not do to another.” It is another way of expressing the same truth of Kant. We should not use anyone as a means. As we are an end, others also are an end. That which is contrary to what you would like for yourself should not be done to another, and not only to people outside but also our own selves. The immoral attitude arises on account of wrong understanding or ignorance, which is called avidya in Sanskrit. Wrong knowledge which we entertain in regard to the world outside is the cause of our involving ourselves in this mess of moral confusion. Inasmuch as we have to live in human society for the practice of yoga, Patanjali and all the other teachers of yoga feel that it is necessary to maintain a harmony in our relations with people. The five canons of morality mentioned by Patanjali are five ways of establishing harmony with the external human atmosphere. Yoga is the system of a graduated establishment of harmony in the different levels of being. Social harmony, personal harmony, vital harmony, sensory harmony, mental harmony, intellectual harmony and spiritual harmony are the various levels of yoga practice.