The Mysterious Third Force
Awakening the emotional centre
As always, the material here assumes familiarity with fundamental fourth way literature, terminology and ideas. For reading guidance, and for full citations of abbreviated references, please see Introduction and Bibliography.
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This post continues from "No one, of course, understands," which began with the question, "What is the third force of Work as opposed to the third force of life?" and ended with another question: "What about thinking of all this in terms of the digestion of impressions?" These questions are continued here.
In the first quotation in the last post,1 Maurice Nicoll seemed to be saying that the third force of work is about understanding the work, and that this can only be done by applying it to our being. He also implies that the competing third force, or neutralising force, of life is where "life and imagination are the source of meaning for you." We can recall that Nicoll also says, elsewhere his Commentaries, that "there is no greater force we can create in ourselves than understanding,"2 and that "Meaning gives force," particularly through the awakening of the emotional centre.3 So perhaps this distinction between the third force of work and the third force of life, two very different agents of change, is, at least partly, about where and how I derive my meaning. To apply the work to my being is to begin to understand the work - in turn, from this understanding, I derive meaning and thus force for my being.
I wondered if it could be possible during the course of an ordinary day, moment by moment even, to distinguish for myself whether the process of my life is impelled and enabled by the third force of life or the third force of work. It seems that the juxtaposition of opposing forces is relatively lacking in ordinary mechanical life, and I would say occurs more or less randomly. Or, at least, these occurrences tend to be arbitrary concerning the person, when things are, as usual, mechanical. Inner work, however, by very definition, would seem to be about a striving to bring together these contraries.
Can I catch the switch from a less conscious state to a more conscious state, and, vice versa? It seems that the latter has to be done retrospectively, even if it is just the previous second, but the former must be at the very moment as well as with memory. Unconscious states and their results are so destroyed by a greater consciousness that they can become forgotten when in a better state. There is a need to remember the way. These transition states, the jolt to awakening, can be so fleeting, but I must also get to know them intimately. Nicoll seemed to hint at this in the last quotation in the previous post, talking about making and breaking "our inner continuity with the Work," when he said, "This is quite a definite experience," when we open again to "the influences of the Work."4
It is as easy as anywhere else for the fundamental formulations and terminology that exist in this teaching to become empty and mechanical repetitions without a living thought and feeling animating them to make them grow and flourish in oneself. But giving them attention and spending time chewing on them, and weighing, valuing, sifting, can bring about fruitful consequences.
One question that is connected with this is simply, What is Work, anyway? It's necessary often, it seems, to put oneself in the position of the fool, of the rank beginner, no matter how many years one thinks one has been working, and ask such foolish questions as this.
It seems to me that before I can do something, doing being that great attribute of the real man or woman, before I can truly act consciously from my own initiative,5 I must first see. Seeing is about receiving impressions; doing must be about a conscious willed manifestation. The famous formulation, "Man cannot do,"6 seems to have as one of its fundamental causes, that we do not see. Reality is perceived topsy-turvy.7 My inner world is conditioned by pseudo-seeing and pseudo-doing. That is, there is a slavery to associations, to the interconnected series of previously perceived and fixed impressions.
So where is the third force when it comes to seeing, both in the case of seeing truly and in that of perceiving reality topsy-turvy?
No one, of course, understands the work. We know a little about it. But few have applied it to their being. That is, the Work is not third force for us. Life is. Only in a vague way and at times and by means of another's help, is the work third force for anyone—that is, a neutralising force stronger than the neutralising force of life and the forms of imagination derived from life. It is very difficult to change and no change is possible as long as life and imagination are the source of meaning for you.
Nicoll - Commentaries, Vol.I, p.66.
Nicoll – Commentaries, Vol.V, p.1630.
Nicoll – Commentaries, Vol.I, p.31.
Ibid., p.319.
BT p.1202.
Ouspensky - The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution, p.14, and many similar formulations of Gurdjieff, from which this is no doubt derived, e.g., ISM p.59.
BT p.88.