Now, a passive Do means that whatever it refers to can be acted on by some-
thing above it in scale. It yields to what is higher than itself. On the
other hand an active Do means that whatever it is, it acts on something
else, and is not acted upon. Consider the food 768 taken into the body.
It is acted on by digestive juices. That is to say, it is passive, because
it submits to their action which breaks the food into finer and, therefore,
cleverer and more useful matters which pass into the blood, while all
that is useless is cast out. This is what the Work should do to us psy-
chologically, if we only would allow it to. But the self-love will do all
it can to prevent this from happening. In the case of the Food-Octave,
the first step consists in passive Do 768—which is ordinary food—being
transformed into the higher matters classified as 384; and so on up-
wards stage by stage to matter 12. If 768 entered as an active Do it could
only go downwards in the scale of matters becoming denser and denser
and, therefore, more stupid and more useless. So it is psychologically
with anyone whose unregenerate, unfaced and unfought self-love is
dominant, for this blocks the way to any ascending octave. Self-love is
not passive and it refuses to be acted on.