hey roger...still kickin' in colrado? happy new year...
...
By Work definition, all manifestations are due to the action of
three Forces called Active, Passive and Neutralizing Forces. Active and
Passive Forces are on the opposites and cancel each other out, as it is
expressed scientifically in Newton's first law of motion: that to every
force there is an equal and opposite force. This law, of course, is not
true as it stands, because if things were like that nothing could take
place—nothing could move. If Newton had added that to every force
there is eventually, in Time, an equal and opposite force, it would
probably not have been necessary for Einstein to bring the Fourth
Dimension of Time into the study of Physics. Yet Physics to-day, even
though introducing the new factor of Time, has not yet reached in any
deep sense the idea that there is actually a Third Force that acts between
the pendulum opposites. The Third or Neutralizing Force in the Work
is defined in many ways. One way is to say that it is the uniting force
—that force that acts between Yes or No, Active or Passive, and makes
something that is neither. You know that in statistics you have laws of
averages. For example, so many people per cent. always die at 50, or
60, and on this statistical law, applying to large numbers, all insurance
is based. On an average you will have so many gas molecules going one
way, so many in another way, out of millions, and as a result you can
make laws about the behaviour of gases under pressure and temperature.
But such laws are based on large numbers and so are called statistical.
If you cast a penny a million times you will get an average of heads and
tails that more or less is an equilibrium. This science of statistics is
really derived from the idea that there is an equilibrium in things,—that
is, it is based on the law of the pendulum. But there is another force,
apart from the opposites, at work in life, in ourselves, and throughout the
Universe. This is the Law of Three Forces. Note carefully, please, here
that average laws, statistical laws, are based only on the idea of there
being two forces at work. The Work says that one of the two ultimate
laws that cannot be reduced to any simpler terms is the Law of Three
Forces. In everything three forces work. In the minute structure of the
atom Active and Passive Forces are found, positive and negative
charges, and so on—but from the Work point of view there is also a
Third Force, an organizing force, a force that creates and organizes
the two primitive chaotic opposite forces that of themselves can create
nothing, since they are antagonists, always at war.
Now I would like to make a few comments on this Third Force, so
difficult to grasp. The Work itself is a Third Force to begin with, but
only when it is acknowledged and felt. Its power is to make the active
Personality passive and the passive undeveloped Essence active—that
is, to change the sign of these two parts of our Being. From this example
you can see how a Third Force can alter the relationship of fixed things
—-just as events do in life, such as war. Everything is turned upside
down. Events in life are Third Force, but they keep Personality active
and Essence passive. The Work as an internal series of events changes
this life-based relation—that is, alters us fundamentally through a
new spirit and a new view. You cannot, of course, understand spiritual
life in this sense from the facts of life. From the Work point of view a
mart whose mind and thought is wholly based on the evidence of his
senses has his brain wrong. The spirit of life—that is, the Third Force
of life—is different from the spirit of the Work. But the spirit of life
—that is, the organizing principle that makes use of the irreconcilable
pendulum forces, active and passive, positive and negative—constructs
organized matter, whether atoms, molecules or cells, and does so on a
basis that cannot be taken in a statistical sense. The cell, especially
the germ-cell, is an example of this, as the physicist Schroedinger points
out in his book that I asked you to read. Schroedinger is willing to
admit that there are other laws in life than those deduced from the
average behaviour of millions of particles whether atoms or human
beings.
In most ancient esoteric writings, which all deal with the organizing
spirit and never with statistics, it is sometimes said that the soul—that
is, the organizing principle in a man, psychologically speaking—is
almost devoured by matter in its descent into the body. The esoteric
alchemists—not the pseudo-gold-seekers—called this imprisoned organ-
izing force hidden in us Mercury. They said that if it were found lead
could be transformed into gold. In the Work this organizing principle
is sometimes called Buried Conscience or Real Conscience—not the
acquired conscience that we follow from what we have been told by
others and learnt from outside. The organizing power in creation,
whether bodily or psychological, exists throughout all things. This is
the Third Force and it seeks to build up by successive stages of separation
something different from that in which it is lodged, so that in our
case the finer matters in us are gradually freed from the heavier, more
chaotic, unorganized matters. It is this Third Force that seeks to bring
about the evolution of all things—to find new and better combinations
and relations between the Active and Passive Forces constituting matter—
or, better expressed, the opposite forces that cannot create alone and so
are comparable to chaos. Organizing Spirit, organizing Third Force,
which itself is buried in material chaos and works always to make
something new out of it and so to free itself ultimately, is what we see right
before us and yet cannot see. A person may be given new ideas, a new
form of Third Force, as in the case of the Work. Do you remember
the man who buried his talent in the Earth? The spirit of the Work is
not a thing you can touch or handle, nor indeed is any form of spirit.
Is the esprit de corps of a regiment a thing you can see? It is real and
invisible. You remember how in the Parable of the Talents some
made more of the spirit given them. One did nothing. He put the
spirit given him into the Earth:
"For it is as when a man, going into another country, called his
own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one
he gave five talents, unto another two, to another one; to each
according to his several ability; and he went on his journey.
Straightway he that received the five talents went and traded
with them, and made other five talents. In like manner he also
that received the two gained other two. But he that received the
one went away and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money.
Now after a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and
maketh a reckoning with them. And he that received the five
talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou
deliveredst unto me five talents: lo, I have gained other five
talents. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful
servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee
over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. And he also
that received the two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst
unto me two talents: lo, I have gained other two talents. His lord
said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast
been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things:
enter thou into the joy of thy lord. And he also that had received
the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew that thou art a hard man,
reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering where thou didst
not scatter: and I was afraid, and went away and hid thy talent
in the earth: lo, thou hast thine own. But his lord answered and
said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest
that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I did not
scatter; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the
bankers, and at my coming I should have received back mine own
with interest. Take ye away therefore the talent from him, and
give it unto him that hath the ten talents. For unto everyone that
hath shall be given: but from him that hath not, even that which
he hath shall be taken away. And cast ye out the unprofitable
servant into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and
the gnashing of teeth." (Matthew XXV 14-30)
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