Active
Force or force number 1.
Passive Force or force number 2.
Neutralizing Force or force number 3.
One can think of the Active Force as being the force that is acting, the Passive Force as being the thing that is acted upon, and the Neutralizing force as being the thing that allows the other two forces to interact. The combination of reactant, agent and catalyst in chemistry is a general example of the three forces interacting. The fact that catalysts are not used up by the chemical reactions they take part in and their method of allowing the reactions to occur being invisible are general features of the 3rd Force.
It is very important to understand that the forces are not things. They are invisible. Thoughts and desires are good examples of these forces. The forces act through things. This means the same object can have different forces acting through it in different processes. We can build a house out of a block of wood, we can set fire to it, or we can hit someone over the head with it. Thus the three forces are always to do with the particular relation between things.
We must start with ourselves when we wish to observe the three forces, because we are the closest and most constant thing we have to watch. And the only practical way to observe the three forces in ourselves is to try and do something, that is, to try and imitate or personify one of the three forces. One could imitate the Active Force, for example, by struggling with ignorance. One could imitate the Passive Force, by trying not to express one particular negative emotion towards one particular person in one's life. Some typical small, habitual negative emotions are: resenting the fact that one always seems to answer the phone at work, being annoyed by the way one's flat mate sniffs, inwardly seething at the people barring one's way in a busy street, being annoyed by a housemate's habitual greeting, disliking the radio station onesī parents listen to at breakfast, etc.
Psychologically speaking, the Active Force is what one wants, and the Passive Force is what resists one's efforts. It is quite enough to study just these two forces at first, because it is impossible to see 3rd. Force until you can see 1st. and 2nd. Force. To study even one force requires not only that we try something, but also that we remember that we are trying to study a force. So this in itself requires our attention to be divided. We cannot observe a force while we are identified with it.
We must remember that we are attempting something very difficult in studying the three forces:
Do not attempt to try and see the 3rd. Force. It is quite useless at first. But try and see the 1st. Force and then the 2nd. Force. You cannot see the 2nd. Force unless you see the 1st. Force. It is the 1st. Force that makes the 2nd. Force appears. If you want nothing, there is no 2nd. Force, in so far as your desire is concerned. People do not even know what the 1st. Force is in themselves, that is, they do not know what they really want.
One reason why we have so much difficulty in understanding three forces is that we tend to see in everything one force. We think of force as one, and in everything that happens, in any manifestation, in any event, we tend to see merely one force. We attribute it to one force. We see one action in one event. This is partly due to our inability to think of more than one thing at a time as a rule. Sometimes we think in terms of two things, but to think of three things is beyond us.
At a more advanced stage, we can start to consider the different ordering of the Three Forces. Taking the example of trade, with the three forces being Man, products and money, we can see that a man can use money as a tool, he can use it as an end in itself, or he can end up pursuing the product he desires. The three forces are combining in quite different relations here. In relation to others, some processes are better or worse, and some are just different. But at this stage, when we rarely distinguish one force, we should just, observe.
The Three Forces always act, not just when we think we can see them. If there is a struggle going on inside us between `yes' and `no', something may well come along and act as Third Force, with the result that something happens. It does not need to be the Work. The Work will be the Third Force when we resolve a dilemma by following what the Work says. We cannot escape the Law of Tree, but we can choose to place ourselves under a better or worse influence.
For instance, we may be struggling to not express hatred for another member of the group. We might succeed in this struggle because we remember that we are trying to study Second Force. We might succeed because we remember the Food Diagram, and realize we don't want to lose energy. We might remember this is Second Line work. Or we might succeed just because we have an attitude of, 'Must not express negative emotions.' In the latter case, it would be better to understand why one was not expressing negative emotions.
It is difficult to answer questions like, 'Is this the 1st. Force, that the 2nd. Force and the other the 3rd. Force? because we cannot verify them. They may or may not be so. One should concentrate on something practical, on understanding just one of these forces for oneself.
