There are ideas which could stop all quarrels; such an idea is the law of three. ~ P. D. Ouspensky
When I worked at a psychiatric clinic as a young man, I was asked this question by a friend: If you could explain one fourth way idea to your colleagues at the clinic, which idea would it be? He was very surprised by my answer. I said that if the doctors and the nurses at the clinic truly understood the law of three, it would have the potential to change our whole approach.
In a nutshell what the law of three means is that every action requires three forces. When three forces are present, things happen, actions are actualized. But without three forces—with one or two forces—nothing happens. There are different names for each force. The first force is called the active or positive or motivating force. The second force is called the negative or passive or denying force. The third force is called the neutralizing or facilitating or invisible force.
All esoteric laws, like the law of three, work both on the scale of our inner world and on the scale of the world around us, but it is often true that a law will be easier to observe in one or the other. I have personally found that the law of three is easiest to observe in my interactions with other people, so that’s what I’ll talk about here.
It’s generally not hard to observe the first and second force in an interaction. Let’s say that you want to go out to a restaurant or to see friends, and your wife (or your husband) doesn’t want to go out. You want to go out and you don’t want to go alone, but your spouse wants to stay home. You are the positive force, you want to act, but your spouse is the passive or negative force. She (or he) resists you. In this example what the law of three means is that if you do nothing but try to motivate the other person to act, you will only increase their resistance. No amount of first force can overcome second force. What is needed is a third force. In this case the third force can come from you or from the outside. Let’s say that your spouse wanted to stay home to watch a show or to do some research on the internet, and it happens that the internet goes down that night night. Their plan is ruined, and that might be enough to neutralize their denying force. In other words, they may now be willing to go out. The action becomes possible because their denying force was neutralized by what happened. What is more likely is that you will have to provide a third force yourself. You will need to think about the conflict in terms of neutralizing their denying force, not in terms of overcoming their denying force. Perhaps you will offer to do something for them in exchange—accompany them somewhere that they want to go in the next week or make them breakfast the next morning. The point in this example is that if you want a result, you have to stop playing a motivating force and start playing a facilitating force.
Let’s take another example. Let’s say you’re sick and you need to go to the doctor, but you don’t have the money so you do nothing for a number of days. The first or motivating force is being sick. The denying force is having no money. You go round and round in your mind about what to do, then a friend or a family member offers to give you the money. That is the third or facilitating force. Using this same example let’s say that money is not an issue. Let’s say that you mistrust doctors, that you’ve been sick like this before and have gone to a doctor and gotten antibiotics, and that it didn’t help. Again the motivating force is being sick or needing help, but this time the denying force is a lack of knowledge about what will help to make you better. In this case maybe a friend tells you about some herbs or supplements that have helped him in the past or about an acupuncturist. This new knowledge of a different approach neutralizes your apathy and allows you to take action and find a treatment.
The third force is sometimes called the invisible force because we are all third force blind; that is, we tend to focus on the first and second force and miss the necessity for a third force. It is how we think: this is what I want and this is what is keeping me from getting it. This type of thinking was very prevalent at the clinic where I worked. Aims were set for the patients and obstacles were discussed. We often treated depressed patients by motivating them. If they were apathetic, we told them that life was worth the trouble, that it was interesting or fun. We motivated them to act by overwhelming their negative and passive view of the world. The problem with this approach was that, in almost all cases, the patients never learned to motivate themselves, so that as soon as the stimulus that we provided was removed, they fell back into their old habits. If we had been more intelligent in our approach, we would have played a third force, not a first force, and tried to find a way to neutralize the denying force they felt in their lives outside the clinic.
Let’s take one more example: you have an old car, it runs okay, but you’ve been thinking it’s time to get a new one. There are advantages on both sides. The positive force in this decision is having a more dependable and perhaps more fuel-efficient car. The negative force is not wanting to have additional debt. You may go for months in a kind of indecision about what to do. But eventually something will happen. Maybe you will lose your job, and so you will definitely decide to keep the old car and fix it up as you can. Maybe the old car will break down and you will decide that it’s not worth fixing and will buy a new one. Maybe you will find a great deal on a nearly new car and decide to buy that.
The point of all these examples is that before the third force arrives, nothing happens. Again: without three forces—with one or two forces—no action or movement is possible. The first two forces, motivation and resistance, simply circle around each other. They do not move toward an action or a conclusion.
You need to teach yourself to see the law of three. This type of knowledge is not innate or instinctive, but once it’s pointed out, and you begin to see it, you will wonder how you lived without it.
In reading your article, it reminded me that the third force is the third eye, and it is just possible to appear after a battle between two opposites forces in the realm bellow, may be between two features, like non-existence and willfulness, two opposite “I’s within oneself, they will lead oneself to two different intent for the same external act. and after so many battles here and there, as the higher centers becomes stronger, one can remove oneself from the two opposites, the “personal”, and reach “above” from these two forces against each other and the third eye will appear. More one practices this less one will see life as personal and more one will live it as divine. Thank you for the article, quiet inspiring…
Tania thank you as well.
What you wrote helped me understand and work with a situation i was in.
Nitzan from Tel Aviv center.
Wow………. Im mind blown in the wind literally at this amazing article as we, i, am speaking…..
I intuitively understand it, but still cannot find the third force in order to use it. Your examples are good, but supposing you deliberately, consciously want to use it to make something happen, something to change, something almost impossible. Yet possible, like changing your life, oh in so many ways. I see this force almost daily accidentally but have never been able to use it consciously. Supposing I have serious problems with my neighbours. They are very selfish and corrupt. How can I get them off my back and leave me alone. I have no freedom.|And supposing you have a mean daughter who won’t even call you and doesn’t care even whether you live or die? Or supposing you just want to get along with people eveywhere. Not for personal gain in any way but just because you need it. You need good things to happen at least when you go out. Am I clear, how can I use the thrd force, how can I see it?
Marina, I have had some of these issues and to me the third force is what I call the universe. Others may use different words like God, or energy or whatever. I discovered I simply had to ask – kind of ‘invoke’ – the assistance of the third force(universe). In regard to my DaughterIL I asked how do I fix this situation? (Not: how can I get her to like me or back off or change) I then had to act on the (unlikely) idea that came to me and it worked perfectly. Once you get a feel for it, the force becomes clearer. I use it all the time – I have a blog called xfiles444@blogspot.com with some other stories
It has just occurred to me that the Law of Three is found in India in the trinity of Shiva (husband), Parvati (wife) and Ganesha (son). Ganesha is famed for being the “remover of obstacles” and is often invoked for this purpose. He is the facilitating force in the equation.
Marina,
In the example with the mother and daughter, I would suggest that the mother is probably trying to play a first force in her daughter’s life, and the daughter is reacting by playing a second force. The way to stop the daughter from playing the negative force is for the mother to begin to play a third force. This require a certain amount of passivity and acceptance on the mother’s part. Playing a third force means that you try to see what the other person wants, instead of telling them what they want. Once you’ve accepted their aims, then you do whatever you can to neutralize their denying force.
With the neighbors perhaps a third party is necessary to negotiate. I don’t know it depends on how bad the relations are.
It’s very telling that all your examples have to do with changing other people. You might find it more profitable to observe inner considering and to learn to practice external considering.
Here’s a link to article on this subject. http://bepresentfirst.com/being-present-and-other-people/
When I read of the “different processes”, it is how the three forces may combine
to give rise to altogether different events and results, and sufficiently understood them, I found it a whole-resolutive idea for me, for my life: I became very much less concerned about “what to do”, as usually we regard it, and much more in “how to do”. I began keeping care not to ‘slip’ in a wrong triad, that would waste me and, of course, give not any good result. And the “how” is the real “what”, in the sense that it’s the process, which is actually occurring. Someone said that many ‘pieces of poetry’ are written with the same triad in which you may cut wood with an axe (it is: destruction). Thus it had not been ‘writing a piece of poetry’, but ‘destroying down the pen on the paper’; and they aren’t ‘pieces of poetry’, but splinters.
So, any the conditions, whatever they may be, and for how more or less explicit knowledge I may have of, I mostly try to watch on mine, it is which forces are /in me/, and which the process.
“to make things in the right way, just be sure not to make them in the wrong way”
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
thank you for the article
Would it be correct in saying that all shocks come from 3rd forces?
Dean, it’s a good question. For the sake of our inner work we hope that shocks for the most part play a third force, but really it depends on us. A shock can just as easily play a second force or a first force.
Triads are extremely variable. In some cases the same shock can play a second force and a third force. Let’s say you’re going shopping in your car, and your car breaks down. Now in relation to getting your shopping done, you’re car breaking down is clearly a denying force. But at the same time, it may be a reminder to remember yourself. So in that sense it’s a third force.
So much of understanding triads depends on observing our aims. In this example if your only aim is to get your shopping back to your house, then this shock will only be a negative force. But if you have an aim to ‘remember yourself always and everywhere’ then the same shock can play the role of interrupting your sleep. In the first case the first force is the desire to complete your shopping, the second is your car breaking down, and the third is (possibly) calling a friend to come and get you. In the second case the first force is your desire to remember yourself, the second is your sleep, and the third is the shock of your car breaking down.
This seems more complicated than it actually is. When you begin to find examples in your day to day life it becomes easier to see.
Equilibrium does not “neutralize” anything. The proper example is a light bulb. The electricity is the active force. The resistance of the filament is the resisting force. If there is too much electricity the filament will pop. If there is too much resistance the bulb will not light up. The equilibrating force locates the point at which the active and passive principles synergize to produce a result, in this case, light. Neither of the initial two forces is “neutralized” by the third.
The law of three can be seen in many kinds of examples, as it is a universal law. The different forces can sometimes be described in a particular way for understanding. In psychological examples the third force often plays a ‘neutralizing’ role. It’s all just a way of talking. The second force is sometimes call the negative force, which of course makes no sense. A force can not be negative in an ordinary sense.
This suggests that there are at least two triangles at play. A life triangle (everyday events) and a higher learning triangle (esoteric).
This has been very enlightening. I work in psychiatry and I’m fascinated to discover I’ve been using this law with my patients (albeit haphazardly). Looking forward to harnessing and using this knowledge.
This is my take on the Law of 3. My ego doesn’t like it when I am not behaving in a way that makes other people think I am great (internal considering). Let’s say I am depressed, now I could call this the affirming force. But my ego hates the fact that I am depressed, I can’t do anything, I am unmotivated etc, this self judgement is the 2nd force or denying force. I am denying my depression. So I have these two warring parties inside me, which may i say add to the intolerableness of the situation. UNTIL a third force can come along, which is the ACCEPTANCE of howsoever I am, it accepts the depression, it accepts the judgement. This acceptance creates a sense of Oneness, Because I am ‘habits’ (Gurdjieff), this self criticism goes on and on so I have to make the ‘conscious effort’ to continually surrender/accept/allow ie bring in the third force.
I accidentally bumped into this article, very inspiring! I myself practice Aikido, a Japanese martial art, when I read the explanation and example of the law of 3 in this article, it reminds me of the tori (the one who apply the technique) and uke (attacker) relations. In most of the Aikido basic training, the interaction rely on the switching role of the tori and uke, first the uke attack as a positive force, then the tori as the negative force in the moment, change the angle or position as a neutralise force and enter as a positive force to apply the technique on the uke, while the uke change the position from positive force to a negative force, accept the technique and fall. So anyway, it apply to the self switching force from either positive or/and negative to the 3rd neutralise force. And I wonder from the psychological perspective, when the 1st or 2nd forces change/ switch themselves to the 3rd force, should they keep their original motive/ intention, together with the 3rd forces perspective? or should they let go of the original motive totally?
It’s a good example. In this case, I would think that the attacker would be the first force, and the one who applies the technique would be the second force, and that third force would be something like the rules or the code of ethics that govern aikido. Of course, that is just one possibility. One thing to remember is that the third force often comes from the outside, and it is the force that brings resolution. This is especially true in a conflict. It can be seen very clearly in games, where you have an offense and a defense. The game is resolved because there are rules that determine the winner. Without those rules, there can be no resolution.
Thank you for this article and for the website. I have been working with Law of 3 in conflict transformation and mediation work for a number of years and I am very interested in finding more writings and teachings that specifically work with conflict between people. I read Nicoll’s commentaries (have been re-reading them for 20 years now) and I do find things in Nicoll’s talks that apply. If anyone has found writings on the Law of 3 in peace-making and conflict transformation, I would be very interested.
The law of three is a good beginning in the kind of work you describe, but there are other lines that are equally important. A solid understanding of type and of the differences between personality, essence, and higher centers spiring to mind immediately.
I am focusing on necessary changes and action in my life, and altho Gurdjieff/Ousepnsky is not my way, I have been in a Gurdjieff school decades ago (-with one of his ‘disciples’) – and know he/it is genuine and a rather alternative but neverthelss real way to Truth and Being, etc.
I just want an example from our own experiential life when we are ‘doing’: I believe (-tho we never discussed it there) I used to observe or witness this ‘third force’ quite subtly – but now I am not sure, I cannot get ‘hold’ of a concrete example!
Thanks!
This blog is my weekly dose of inspiration. Don’t halt sharing!
Your insights make me issue, discover, and increase. Thank you for that!