The Law of Three and Triads

The Law of Three and Triads

The Law of Three states that, for anything to happen, there must be three forces at the given point of space and time. They are known as active, passive or denying, and neutralizing, or simply as first, second, and third forces.

There are six combinations of these three forces, known as triads. While there is some material in the works of Ouspensky, the best source for this information is Rodney Collin’s The Theory of Celestial Influence. He provides examples for each triad, on different scales.

Ouspensky remarks, in The Fourth Way, “To build a house, effort is needed at every moment, every single brick must be put into place with a certain effort; no triad passes into another triad without effort. At last the house is built and furnished. Then, if you want to burn it, you just strike a match and put it to something inflammable, and the house is burnt. If you go deeper into it you will see that these are two different activities. You cannot build a house by the same activity as you burn it. In the second case one triad passes into another without any effort, automatically, after the first initial effort of striking a match.

“Examples of the third kind of triad, in our experience, can be found only in conscious work, not identified work, or in some activity that has a peculiar quality of its own that cannot be imitated by others, such as artistic creation. Efforts at self-remembering and not identifying belong to this category. If you think about it you will understand that in order to paint a good picture, for instance, one must use a different triad from the one used in building a house or the one used for burning a house; something else is needed. Another triad may be called invention, discovery, craft. If you think about these four different activities, they will give you material for observing and comparing. Try to see why and in what they are different.”

In ordinary thinking, we first decide to do something and then we simply go ahead and do it. Sure, sometimes it doesn't happen but, often enough, we accomplish what we set out to do. It doesn't enter into our thinking that for some results we cannot be the active force, we must be a passive force. The idea of triads proposes that there are actually six different ways that things happen.

So often in life we wonder why things that we wish to happen do not happen. Sometimes this is because there is no third force for them. Often, we use the wrong triad to accomplish something, for example a destructive triad, such as expressing negative emotions, cannot help if we want a constructive result, such as healing or growth.

“All the absurdities of life depend on the fact that people do not understand that certain things can be done with only one kind of triad. They use a wrong triad, a wrong kind of action, and are surprised that the results are not what they wanted. For instance, it is no good trying to teach by beating, or trying to persuade with machine-guns.”, says Ouspensky in The Fourth Way.

David Tuttle

Join the discussion

The Fable of Arachne, Diego Valazquez