CHAPTER 12- GAMES AND GOALS
If a man ever could walk
away from his greatest triumph with his hand empty and his pocket empty
and with just the shirt on his back, he would live to triumph again and
again."
L. Ron Hubbard
THE SPIRIT OF PLAY
There is a Spirit of Play
which has to be recovered for your preclear. The guy's got no goal when
he steps out of his head. He has no goal. He doesn't think there's anyplace
else to go. He doesn't realize that there is a sensation above any physical
or mental sensation he has ever felt, and that is called the Spirit of
Play. It is more absorbing, more engrossing and headier than any other
kind of activity he can do. It is the first and foremost ingredient which
causes a thetan to come into this universe or start to build his own. What
a child feels as vividness of play is much less interesting and exhilarating
than the commonest feeling of being alive high on the tone scale. Spirit
of Play is the only way we can translate this feeling here.
These things called universes
are games. And really the most valuable thing that a thetan possesses is
his spirit of play. It's sensation of play, and is not just energy. A guy
has practically lost it if he's here on Earth at all. One of the spirits
of play is "let's pretend," which is a very important thing, because of
course the game is a pretense and it couldn't be anything else than pretend.
Space has a great deal to do with "Let's pretend," because when you see
lots of space you know there's lots of room to set up lots of things in
it.
If you want to repair the
ability of a man to pretend or to assume, show him that he can keep manufacturing
space and putting things in it almost ad infinitum. And he'll get more
and more expansive. It's actually more important than anything else to
demonstrate lots of space.
At 20 on the Tone Scale we
find out that space and particles are equally valuable. You have to have
a vastitude of particles and a vastitude of space, really, to start making
this game interesting and really get action. That game could be played
brutally, which is heavy wave, or aesthetically, which would mean very
tiny wave. Very often you will get the aesthetic team versus the brutal
team.
Seriousness is solidity.
Nothing succeeds like insouciance. Never let your preclear get serious
about his sanity.
Anything theta can do, after
it's been corrupted by MEST, turns into a mockery. "We've got to make fun
of it because we can't do it" is a form of apathy, a guy who does that
one has already quit.
When a man loses his Spirit
of Play, he's dead. That means that guys start dying at about 3.0.
All universes are to some
degree games, and no universe would exist if there was not the spirit of
play in the thetan.
On Earth and amongst other
political confederations, the spirit of play is almost forgotten. It's
found in little children and even there it is found in a hectic state.
SELF-DETERMINISM
Basic rights of a thetan
are his right to his own sanity and his right to leave the game. He doesn't
have those two rights in this universe. Where a thetan has those two rights,
you don't get a theta trap of this magnitude setting up. For homo sapiens,
they are the right to his own sanity and a right to his own life.
There is a dichotomy of
some sort from which other data can be extrapolated: Self-determinism as
the highest level, versus Automaticity, the automatic interdependencies
of survival as they work out and affect genus homo sapiens.
The more self-determined
we make a preclear, the better he gets. His self-determinism keeps rising
- he gets better and better.
Self-determinism is the
ability to determine space, time, energy and matter. The self can go out
so far as to include many friends, but when it starts out beyond a group
size of certain dimensions, too much randomity ensues.
It's impossible to operate
in charity, because the individual's self-determinism is already at such
an ebb that he can't support a little less self-respect, when somebody
has to help him. That's the last ditch. Don't believe that there is no
love in the universe, simply because it doesn't work in this society. When
you start to engage upon charity, you'd better take some guns and bayonets
along with you, because before you get through you'll need them. You start
in this society to help people, you get the very definite answer straight
back, "You're trying to tell me that I have to be helped."
Because in trying to help
people, you place them in time and enforce or inhibit their possession,
and so they flash back on it.
Do not tell a man to be certain. Give him a skill, give him an exercise, suggest something for him to do, but do not tell him where he is or what he is doing. Let him tell you and you find out where he is and what he is doing.
Your levels of certainty in his own universe lead directly to knowingness - not conviction. But if you ask him to be convinced by reality, he will go down scale. You can get resurgences by making him suddenly aware of reality. But you're not interested in reality - you're interested in actuality. And the only actuality there is for this man is the actuality of what he can do with his own mind and all of its skills. And you build on certainties, and certainties lie in the field of actuality. (Remark: reality - in the MEST universe; actuality - in one's own universe).
Reason which is afraid of
force, and reason which exists to keep force from hurting one is not reason.
That, too, is a form of slavery. But reason which exists to go up from
the level of force must first be able to confront force. Only then can
such reason take responsibility for those things which reason alone can
produce.
Too much protest against
handling energy inhibits an individuals willingness and becomes aberrative.
Unable to handle energy, unwilling to handle energy - same thing. The next
thing that comes about is he becomes an effect of energy. If you're unwilling
to handle force, and unwilling to handle energy, just automatically you
become shy of handling material objects - acquiring them, getting rid of
them, placing them around or anything of the sort. Oddly enough, an individual's
perceptions turn off to the degree that he's unwilling to handle energy.
A person who can equally
create and destroy anything finds himself associated with a group and has
actually what could be considered to be the ninth dynamic which will be
aesthetics, and the tenth dynamic, which would probably be ethics, if you
were going to go way out beyond this universe, saying that the eight dynamics
we have apply to this universe
SURVIVAL AS A GAME
The right to leave a game
boils down to the right to have an exertion of self-determinism, and the
right to locate himself in some other universe if he suddenly chooses to.
If people don't have the capability, the right is meaningless. So the right
depends to some extent upon an education about the right.
What's wrong with the MEST
universe? Self-determinism is the placement or location in space and time.
Here the thetan has been located forcefully, convincingly by an exterior,
forceful thing in space and time not of that being's creation. That's all
that's wrong with him.
If you can't play a game,
don't fool with reality. If you were capable of the spirit of play and
playing a game and pretending, if you're capable of action which you postulate
should be undertaken and still know the fact that it's only being undertaken
because you've postulated that it should be, you're in a position where
you can play the game called reality. But the game called reality cannot
be played safely by somebody who is in a state where it is real, important
and serious and where he must agree with it or where he's even abandoned
agreeing with it because it is so strong and powerful.
Intervening distances between
you and other people - that gives you an identity, that gives them an identity.
That gives you something to perceive across.
Let's go downscale and look
at this game called 'being a human being' and we find out that there's
damn little space and terrific number of particles. The game is rendered
utterly
haywire by this factor: People still think they're top scale - guys have
to own lots of particles, space is still of no value. That's really aberrated,
because we're so short on space.
Down here they can play
chess and think it's a game.
Man is trying to survive.
There's no reason why he's trying to survive. It's just a game, it's something
to do and he got in too deep. And then he got to be a broken piece and
then he couldn't help himself out.
I think he could've helped
himself out, myself.
ELEMENTS OF GAMES
The magnitude of the game
depends upon the space-mass ratio involved. If you've got a very little
mass for lots and lots of space, you're going to play a game that is very
airy and of very quick duration - very fast game.
Lightning bolt flashes,
the game has begun and ended.
So you get terrific value
per particle.
Let's crush it down to about
half, and you have the space and the particles balancing in value.
At the beginning of the
game, space is completely without value. There's so much of it, and value
is established by scarcity.
Anybody has a right to play
in some game.
People who are playing a
game have a right to exclude people from playing that game, but they do
not have a right to set it up so that those people can't play in another
game.
The wienie - that's old Hollywood writer slang - is a treasure, the girl, the position or what everybody in the movie was after. You take the wienie out of a picture or story and it goes right straight out of the game classification and ceases to be a story. Inelegant term, but quite expressive. It's got to be an indestructable particle.
NOTES ON GAMES
"The aberration above time
is 'There must be a game'".
Therefore it enters into
a flow, and there must be a game and there must not be a game. So you have
the Un-maker of Games quite as important as the Maker of Games.
"The rules of games are as
follows:
- Limitations on self and
others,
- obedience to rules,
- unconsciousness of rules
to add reality (we pretend the rules are real)
- ARC with others to play
- Pain as a penalty which
will be obeyed (you have to have a penalty that will be obeyed. Otherwise,
nobody will stick with the rules).
- Agreement to rules and
penalties is necessary to continue a game
- Deterioration of a game
until no game (the wienie finally becomes everything there is, and there
is no action even to get the wienie)."
"Work is admission of inability
to play a game of complexity and levels."
The tone scale is such a
game. It's just a map of MEST universe games.
"Peculiarity or liability of a Maker of Games, people attempting to play the game of Maker of Games. The game called Maker of Games results in No Game. And the game called Unmaking Games results in a game. 8008."
"There's a game called Freedom," which is what you're playing right at this minute.
"Games contain trickery and misdirection to win".
"The prize of winning is making a new game, or permitting a new game to be made or making it possible for a new game to be played." Those are all the prizes there are; these wienies - everybody just knows that they're spurious as hell.
"The necessity to have a new game coded before one ends the old game". Otherwise, everybody becomes a maker of games with no game.
"The value of pieces. Ownership
of pieces may be also the ownership of players.
- The difference between
players and pieces.
- The difficulty of pieces
becoming players. (you've got to hide the rules from the pieces, otherwise
this is going to happen).
"The caste system of games
consists of this:
- The Maker of Games: he
has no rules, he runs by no rules;
- The Player of the Game,
rules known but he obeys them; (remark: to avoid the penalty)
- The assistant players
merely obey the players;
- The pieces obey the rules
as dictated by players, but they don't know the rules.
- There's broken pieces,
and they aren't even in the game, but they're still in the game. They're
in a terrible maybe: 'Am I in the game or am I not in the game?'"
"How to make a piece:
- First, deny there is a
game.
- Second, hide the rules
from them.
- Three, give them all penalties
and no wins.
- Four, remove all goals.
- Enforce their playing.
(Inhibit their enjoying. Make them look like but forbid their being like
players)".
"To make a piece continue
to be a piece, permit it to associate only with pieces and deny the existence
of players." Never let the pieces find out that there are players.
DISCUSSION
There's an aberration, if
you might call it that - an enforcement and a necessity just above havingness,
just above time - and that is this: there must be a game. That is your
highest level Desire there is - "There must be a game".
The limitation contained
in the rules of games, on self and others, is necessary for there to be
an interplay. That limitation can be as light as an ethical understanding
only. When you have an unlimited thing, in order to produce any action
or randomity you've got to limit it to some degree.
A game which has no rules
is no game. The game only becomes very upsetting when the agreements become
compulsions on individuals. A piece then degenerates into a broken piece
- nothing is making any sense to him.
The broken piece continually
asks to be needed. He wants to be wanted. That's sub-zero on the tone scale.
A good rule is a rule which
aligns action and permits compliance. A rule which doesn't apply to all
hands isn't much of a rule. Then you've got a specialized caste system
going which is too complex.
Unconsciousness of rules
to add reality.
After you've got the rules
(ceased to be a piece and become a player) if they're real good rules you
can duck 'em.
Pain is penalty which will
be obeyed. How do you enforce the rules? You put an automatic enforcement
around that everybody desires to use. The second everybody desires to use
the enforcement, they will obey it too. They obey it to set an example.
Pain is the enforcer in this universe.
Agreement to rules and penalties
is necessary to continue a game. Fellow has to agree to a game before he
can participate in it.
You have to get a more interesting
game, before you end an old game. Why does your preclear stay around his
body? He hasn't found, one, that his mock-ups are more interesting than
reality, and, two, communication, in the state which he is in, with others.
So he feels there couldn't be any ARC and he's liable to cut himself off
completely. These things have to be rehabilitated.
In the state of Theta Clear
he can still operate as a mortal, and be immortal. And boy, that's sure
having your cake and eating it too.
A poor goal is better than
none. There is no goal vast enough to absorb your total capabilities. Because
your total capabilities are so vast that they make goals. Goals set up
in the capacities of Be, Do and Have. The start of a goal is beingness,
and the end of the goal is havingness, in this universe.
FREEDOM FROM GAMES
Out of these you're going
to get games. Here's a process that has to do with the making of games,
and all this process adds up to, is you just address those factors which
I just gave you, run Change Postulates and any Creative Process that you
can think of and shift postulates around - you get a whole process.
Remember that up at the
top of it there is a big postulate, "There must be a game". Therefore if
you want to regain the Spirit of Play, people have got to unmake postulates
they've made all along, saying,
- There mustn't be a game.
- It can't be a game.
- Don't play with me.
- I mustn't be played with.
- Life is serious.
- This isn't a game.
- We're playing for keeps.
- I'll never get out of
this.
and so forth. In other words,
postulates which they've made to convince themselves that these are the
rules and the only rules that can be played, and these that I've just read
off to you. It's actually the backbone of what we are doing.
The hardest thing for any
liberator to face is the fact that a large percentage of the people he
was trying to free wanted desperately to be slaves. But the guys he did
liberate were worth liberating.
There are universes which
know every law you've got in the MEST universe. And don't know the rules
of games. So you could set yourself up to be an inter-universal umpire
team. You could. And get away with it.
GOALS
It's an incredible thing that anything like the MEST universe could be built on a 180 degree reverse vector. Never give a win without giving a lose. Never let anybody get ahead unless they're backwards.
You very often find your preclear suddenly complaining that every time he goes into a between-lives area, or what he calls that, he's being promised that if he goes back just one more time, he'll practically be ruler of the universe. And this time he has to accomplish a very specific goal. And then they booby-trap it. They give him this goal and then give him an aberration that makes it impossible to accomplish that goal.
Actually, who's they? They are people remarkably like theee and me, a little further down or a little further up on the tone scale, what you call a player, an assistant player - the game divides down into players, assistant players, pieces and broken pieces.
You can take any preclear
- they don't know anything about past lives or between-lives or anything
of the sort - you put them on the E-meter and you say, "All right, do you
have any basic goals?" And the fellow says, "Oh, I don't know," - the E-meter
goes bang! And you say, "Well, at the beginning of this life, did you have
a certain job to do? "Well, I kinda felt like it, I've often often had
the idea," and the E-meter goes, bang, bang! And you say, "Did anybody
tell you, before you were born, that you should do so-and-so and so-and-so?
And the E-meter will go off its pins.
Tracing this down you find
out that all his life this individual has been trying to accomplish this
thing, but he can't accomplish it because he has an aberration does not
permit him to accomplish this goal.
The individual who is given a basic goal in any between-lives area is also given much more abundantly the reasons he has to lose. And you will trace for any lifetime or for spirals or for the whole track, these various efforts to get something done. The pc definitely has the idea that he is an integral part of a large goal, that something is really trying to be done in this universe. And the most upsetting thing is that he has never at any time on the track been able to accomplish wholly one goal, because every goal he has ever been given has a big lose tacked to it.
His whole modus operandi keeps getting jammed and he can't figure out quite why this is. Well, he'll jam it himself. You watch this odd phenomenon of a fellow going around right straight toward a goal and he's just evidently succeeding beautifully on this goal and then, the next thing you know, bong! He's wrecked his car or he's thrown something in there. Something weird has entered in suddenly that kept him from reaching that tall cliff.
Of course, if any piece won, that piece would be a player. Here on Earth, by and large, you don't even have pieces, you have broken pieces. And a fellow gets up to being a piece again and he wants to go right into action unless you've pulled the trip on this goal.
This goal is a phony. The
big secret about the MEST universe is that there is no secret.
Ron tells a story, by Lord
Dunseny, of a monastery that fell, according to prophecy, on a certain
day.
The body that's held in pawn,
the goals which are extended to him, these big volunteer projects, started
out something in this fashion. There was a big building, he was curious...
This is an incident called the Emanator. He finds this enormous stone hanging
suspended in the middle of a room. The Mohammedan Lode Stone is a mock-up
of the Emanator. Only the Emanator is bright, not black. And your volunteer
goes in and this thing in the middle of the room is going wong, wong, wong,
and he says, "Isn't that pretty?" It sure is. And then he says, "Neeeooow,
ponk." They cart him from there and they take him in and they do a transposition
of beingness, which would be taking the person who is here and under influence
of hypnosis or something of the sort, persuading him to be somewhere else
and then monitoring him somewhere else by addressing the body which is
kept in a state of trance or drugs here.
Your preclear as you're
processing him on mock-ups will occasionally open his eye and look around
the room just to make sure he's here.
If the fellow is ill, you'll wonder why spaçation, mocking up anchor points, makes a fellow feel so much better. Actually, most of your people have been transported and supertransported too wildly for their own credibility. He doesn't have any other anchor points than his own anchor points, but somebody could come along with trickery and drugs and persuasion and shift him from one place to another just grandly, and here you have, then, your preclear losing space and appearing in one space and in another space.
This material becomes deadly when your psychotic is faced with it. He has adequate reason to be completely fruitcake, anybody has. But a psycho, all of a sudden, faced with some terrible problem in his life, starts to look for the answer, God help him, in his facsimiles. And he knows less and less, because he's finding out past identities, but these identities were not his identity.
Your preclear will try to hold on to something because he's liked some of it and you proces him for a little while and all of a sudden - boom. He finds out that wasn't the case, that he had himself kidded one way or another about that.
When you look at your preclear,
you're looking at a puzzle that every time an individual started to go
in one direction to meet a goal, the game was so rigged that he wound up
with just exactly the opposite polarity of goal.
Believe me, it can get a
lot wilder than I'm talking.
You've got somebody that
every time he postulated a goal, he postulated simultaneously his failure
in the goal and didn't know it. He wanted to do this and this, and he'll
find himself finally having accomplished something that now has an opposite
meaning. The goal is pleasure, so you have pain. The goal is pain, you'll
have pleasure - goes in opposites.
We can bust that cycle.
We can break it to smithereens. All you're got to do is just step off that
line. Just step off that endless belt, just skip its idea of every time
you win you've got to lose, and every time you lose there's some win connected
with it and it's all parity and that sort of thing. You can actually turn
around just off of that (throgh) use of creative processing and the rehabilitation
of your own universe and your own capabilities.
THE FILECLERK'S GUIDE TO THE PDC
CHAPTER 12