Triads and Laws

Ana Helena Fragomeni
(Presentation at the All & Everything International Humanities Conference, March 2002)

     The first question about the Law of Three is why it is the second in BT — Gurdjieff says it is the second of the fundamental cosmic laws, but before he said it was the first. I think that both these laws, they work together, but for our study we need to separate them.
 

 
       The Law of Three in Higher Worlds is very difficult for us to understand In World 1 there is just one law: it is the mystery of the Holy Trinity, three forces in one. And in World 3 the forces are separated and it is also difficult to understand. We begin to have some clues only in World 6, with the combination of the three forces in six Essential triads.
 

 
       I need to present some of the Worlds here because when we read in the books that talk about triads, they talk about these triads, but these are Essential triads, in the level of Lactea, not on our level.

       We have no Essential forces. We do not use these forces because from World 6 below, when there begin the laws of the Sun; each world emanates its own forces, so at each world that is created the laws are duplicated. Another thing: triads are laws. And not only this: they are orders of laws, many laws.

       I show here the World 12, because here some forces become Existential forces. So, these new triads are not completely essential, but only Essence Dominated — the results of the acts of the Sun enter Existence and begin to be limited by Existence conditions.

       We finish here in the World 96, where we see the 48 laws of the Earth — which is called “Mixtus Orbis” in the Ray of Creation because of the mixture Essential and Existential laws. Continuing, the Earth has its 48 laws and then the Moon duplicates them with 48 negative orders of laws.
 

 
       With so many laws, we may think we live in a deterministic universe. Even Einstein at the beginning didn’t accept Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle, because he didn’t want to accept that the electron could have free will. Even the electron has some limited will. Everything has some will. Einstein asked if God played dice. And I say that He does, and the electron also.

       This is interesting, because dice have six faces, like the prototype triads. We can study the six triads and make the compensation to understand the laws where we live. But in life we don’t play dice, exactly, we play chess. Life is a strategic game, a heuristic game, like chess. At each move you must make your choice and maintain your aim, and change or adapt your strategy at each moment.

       That’s why it is so important for us to learn the rules, to know how to play. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

       ” If we don’t know we cannot help anyone.
 

 
       Gurdjieff liked this triad. He talked a lot about it in his books: making bread [2]. First of all, we see that there is a SEQUENCE: we cannot put water in the fire and then the flour; we cannot put fire in the flour and then the water. We must follow the right sequence. If we don’t begin with the right force, the result will be probably the contrary. And there is HIERARCHY also: the flour commands the triad. Beginning with the quantity and quality of the four, I must adjust the water and the fire.

       The flour here conveys a denying force, a resistance force, but it is commanding the triad. All triad that goes up begins with the denying force. That is why the first element is so important in the triad. How to begin — see, please, the yellow paper I distributed. [3]
 

 
       This is the way I like to study the triads: the Celtic Cross. There are several ways to study them, but I prefer this: two pairs of prototype triads. I find this symbol very interesting, an ancient knowledge.

       Celtic, roman, gothic and orthodox churches, almost all have this cross. We have here the two fundamental triad, Creation and Return, in the vertical axis; Identity and Interaction in the horizontal axis, and Order and Freedom as the circle, in two opposing circular movements. The names of the triads we can discuss later.
 

 
       Here we have the correspondence with numbers: 1 as the Affirmative Force, 2 the Passive Force and 3 the Reconciling Force.

       This approach is according to the position of the Reconciling Impulse in the triad. When the Reconciling Impulse is at the last position, I call them Metabolic Triads; these are the fundamental triads. We will discuss this in the following transparencies. Existential triads are in the horizontal axis, where the two opposite forces 1 and 2 are not in direct contact, so they need a mediator. And Transcendental triads are when the Reconciling Impulse begins and commands the triad — these are a kind of magic triads. Now we will see the three pairs.
 

 
       These I call Metabolic triads because they are about the exchange of energy. This one [Creation 123] transforms pure energy or power in matter, and the other [Return 213] transforms matter back in energy.

       This [Creation 123] is like the Second Law of Thermodynamics: here the entropy increases. At the top we can say we have God, and at the bottom, we can say we have God also, and in the middle we have another God. Do you remember the prayer in BT: «Holy God, Holy Firm, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us? [4]

       We can say also that here [the top] is God and here [the bottom] is Devil. Here is Affirmation, and here Denying. Only Denying, the Devil, pushes us up. God has a big force, and pushes everything down. BT is to push us up, to send us up to God. When Gurdjieff says “Begin with what?” — it is very important to know how to begin — he says “Oh, the devil!” [the bottom].

       Here, we have an ASYMMETRY, because this triad down is very, very strong and is the natural process and the natural preference of Nature. If I do nothing and just stand still, Nature puts me down. Just to be here, I must make some effort, a lot of effort. This [Creation 123] is the natural and automatic triad. Everything, left to itself, goes naturally down, like the Ray of Creation.

       Nutrition [Return 213] is the mechanism, the device His Endlessness put in the world, when he changed the laws, to make us want to go up, by the NEEDS. So by the needs of food — we must strive to get food everyday, three or four times a day — we must remember ourselves at least on these occasions. I have needs, so I exist. If I did not have I could forget. So, needs are a device to push us up.
 

 
       On the horizontal axis are the triads balanced by inside. The first, Identity [231] — the name Bennett uses, and he explains it very well in his book — is like thinghood, just to be. This table, just to be, is making an effort; all its atoms are shaking and dynamically moving to make this table be. And also, it has a dependence from the context. This is a table because it has a size and a scale that are useful for me, it has “usefulness”. A stone could be a table here, and a stone could not be a table in another environment and conditions. So, there is dependence.

       And now, Interaction [132]. It is interesting, that these triads, I think, are like LOVE: «Love thy neighbour as thyself.» [5]

       It is interesting also that if I can lift some weight with one hand, with the two hands together I can lift more than the double. If we are two persons together, we can bear too much more than the double than one person alone. So it is very important this interaction.
 

       xxx About the Transcendental triads, one triad [Order 312] looks for keeping order, keeping everything as it is. It is forbidden to change; it becomes very difficult to change, because this triad is powerful, like Creation [123]. So, Nature does this. If someone wants to make something different, like coming to this Conference, his hard-drive will crash and his telephone line will go off, he will find all kind of difficulty to be different and to change.

       This triad [Order 312] works with masses of people, and this triad Freedom [321] works with individuals. Only individuals or small groups can pass trough this triad. Bennett said that Freedom “is the door God left opened” — I find this beautiful.

       This has something to do with PROPORTIONS. These two laws are the regulators of the movement of the universe, basically, the movement of energy. If everything is going too much down, Freedom enters and provides some help. If Freedom is freeing too much people, Order comes and puts them down. So, if we begin a Gurdjieff group with 100,000 people at the end it will be just one.

       But it is interesting in everything in life, because if you see an orchestra, for example, have only one maestro, but needs lot of musicians, a lot of teachers for these musicians, and a lot of people to hear the music, a lot of people to build the theater, and one architect to plan the building. So, if for an orchestra, at one moment, there are two or three maestros, two will not succeed because that’s only place for one. They can be very good, but that’s an accounting, and it is forbidden to have more than one at that place. So, we see, Christ said he was the vine and we were the branches [6]. The tree is more important than the branches. Sometimes we think of ourselves as important, but the important is the whole.

       As I said about the laws, that there are existential forces working, sometimes these laws appear in our life, but not always the reconciling forces come from above; they can come from below, or from ourselves and they can be not so magic at all.
 

 
       In practice, in our life, I think that the most important about the laws is to learn about the Negative Laws. Here, not only existential forces come to work, limited by Existence, but also something is inverted, and we don’t know how to distinguish between them. Also, the whole triad of Creation [123] can be Imagination [-(123)], only imagination. A triad may be Waste, Identification…

       As an example, how can we domesticate an elephant? We take the baby elephant and tie him to a small wooden pole, with a rope. He tries to free himself, and he cannot. He tries again, and again and again. Then he gives up. He doesn’t try anymore. He grows up, he becomes very strong, but at the circus big elephants are tied to a small pole, and they don’t try to escape.

       Paul says in Corinthians 1: “When I was a child” [7], I used to speak like a child, but now I am not a child anymore… And a lot of times we react to things that happened to us when we were a child; we forget that we change, situations change and the laws change, so from certain laws it is very easy to be free.
 

 
       Now, I think that the most important triad is the Return [213]. Bennett calls it Evolution. The most difficult thing in this study is the words. You see, Darwin talks about “human evolution”. When the stars create the elements and the red giant blows up, scientists call this “stars evolution”. But it is not, it is “involution” [123], because energy is becoming matter.” So, I prefer to use “Return” for 213.

       Fish must make effort just to stay in the river. To maintain their species, they must swim against the current, to the head of the river, to put their eggs. In Brazil we call this phenomenon “Piracema” — I don’t know how to say in English. So, like in Piracema, in the Bible Jacob wrestled God, and had his name changed to Israel, because he had changed. That is what we must do: to fight with God — although it sounds very strange.
 

 
       I like these two enneagrams side by side. In reality, they should be superposed, because the things go all together; all the laws are here. Creation and Interaction, Freedom and everything else are here. I think these two basic examples [The Ray-of-Creation and Nutrition] are very important for us to know.
 

 
       We call this one [SS] Order [312], the counterclockwise law. The name is very difficult to understand. I have discussed this name with Nick Tereshchenko, I wanted to change it with Nature, but he didn’t agree easily, so I continued to call this triad like Bennett did in DU. Nick told me that Bennett in former works used these names on the contrary and changed them afterwards. That’s why I think we must not to attach ourselves too much on words, and it is better to work with symbols.

       We can notice that Hitler’s swastika was an “SS” [8], counterclockwise. This deals with masses. I used to ask myself why Lenin, with all his charm — everybody liked him, like everybody liked Hitler at the beginning, and Mussolini too — why didn’t they put their charisma at work for constructive aims, to make good things? Why didn’t they say to people: “Go to agriculture, go to your houses and work for everybody”? — Because that is impossible for masses.

       If you have a group of adolescents and say to them “Put fire on a house!”, they like it and they do it. But if you say: “Let’s build a house!”, they would say: “Oh, no, I am tired now…” because everything that goes up requires a lot of effort from every individual. And I see that my major sin, laziness, is the major sin for almost everybody, because we don’t want to make effort.

       Well, to build a house you must do this movement [clockwise], and each individual brick must have some part of consciousness.
 

 
       There are three ways we deal with emotions, in an analogy with the waves on the sea. If you do nothing, no effort, the waves carry you down. The emotion can be anger, impulsiveness. You see that Affirmation is here [123, 312] and Affirmation is submitting the other impulses. When Affirmation comes first it pushes things down. If you say to your children: “You must study, because I want you to study”, they would not study. They must recognize that they NEED to study. Study is a triad like Nutrition [213], which refines energies.

       The other situation is when I strive to stay with my head out of the water. It is very difficult already. So, I make a lot of effort and I stay at the same place, but it is better than going with the impulsive emotion. This emotion can be even love — “I love you and I want to help you!” — but I am ignorant, I don’t know anything, so I will only disturb you. My love is not a pure one, for I am contaminated by Existence, so it is not good.

       And the third example is when I stop, and then I act, and I learn how to use the force of emotion so I can swim or surf on the emotion. For example, it is very strong the force of anger — when I want to do something difficult, I can call my anger, I must be angry with that disorder to put order on it. So, anger can be very useful, if I don’t let it command me.
 

 
       To finish, as we want to achieve Freedom, we can make an analogy with Robotics, being compared with tools and robots.

       First of all, we can be a screwdriver, a tool for anyone, then we can be a photoelectric cell, that only recognizes one aspect, light. An on-off switch, that only answers with two reactions. Then we can be a CD-player — like I am being now… Then, we can be a computer and think that we think. Or we can be a self-improved intelligent robot, but not yet a man.

       Then, when we begin to be a man, there are several gradations. And here is interesting, because in Robotics and Industrial Automation, good robots must have only 6 degrees of freedom. An ARM is a good robot. Sometimes, you see, the finger, it has one degree of freedom, but it think it is free, then all the fingers think they are free, but the hand carries them. Then the wrist carries the hand, the elbow carries the shoulder and the shoulder carries them all. But “I” carry the shoulder it is the same with us; a lot of times we think we are free and we are not.

       I think it is this, and I thank you for listening.