From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 18 - August 1994
See Home Page at http://www.ivymag.org/
The Game of Life and its Laws
By Leonard Dunn, England
The first of the Factors of LRH states that before the Beginning
there is Cause. This could be called First Cause, The Creator, Spirit,
God, The Deity, Source or whatever name you please. The purpose was
the creation of Effect. Perhaps we could call this Effect the Game
of Life.
The second factor emphasises that the decision is To Be and then the
Factors go on to say that the Being goes into action of Creating.
His Axioms reveal that this is accomplished by Thought.
The Ancient Wisdom, or occult sources, put forward the idea that
Spirit (or Source) differentiated into individual spirits who
descended
through three planes of differing existence to reach a fourth and
bottom point of 'Earth'. This we can take to mean the MEST
universe as a whole and not just the particular planet on which we
live. Having learnt the lessons that are needed to be learnt and
gained
such experience as is needed, then the return is made for three other
differing planes to the ultimate return to Spirit and becoming part
of it again, one whole whilst still retaining personal identity. This
process is known as Involution preceding Evolution.
The game
In modern scientology, that looks more widely at Life than does the
C of S, this could be considered to be the Game of Life. The
individualised
spirits, or Statics, become the Players in the Game with the ability
to create other games to play, which would include creating thetans
for them to continue their play in the physical universe and thus
becoming fully involved in the game of MEST whilst still remaining
outside it.
Thus it seems that the first of the Laws of Life, or rules of the
Game, is to create effects, as stated in the Axioms.
The French scientist and philospher Rene Descartes made famous
the saying, 'I think, therefore I am', which is true but an
even truer rendering would be, 'I am, therefore I think'.
All creation is accomplished by thought and not by anything else,
since any action must be preceded by thought.
The players
In any game we can perceive that there are players who are very good
at playing and some who are very poor players and quite incompetent.
In between these extremes are what can be called average players.
The first may have lost interest in the game because there are no
worthwhile opponents for them. The very poor players finally reach
the point, by continually losing, that there is no longer any game
to play. LRH said that one of the two rights of a being is his right
to leave a game; but in the Game of Life, when a player has been
continually
losing, this becomes virtually impossible.
The original stated purpose of scientology was 'To make the able
more able and to pick up the less able later on'. This evolved
from the idea that the original players in the Game came, by bad play,
to be pieces in the game, then broken pieces who are removed from
the board and who then reach a point where they consider that there
is no game.
In the scientology publication The Free Spirit, there was a
channelled communciation from a being known as Bashar who stated that
at the differentiation from Spirit to spirits, half decided, for the
sake of experience, to take the positive path, or 'good',
whilst the others took the negative path, or 'bad'. So here
we have the opponents in the Game.
The opponents
It seems impossible from an experience of my own and even more from
a case that I ran that those who are in one stream may transfer to
the other for a time or, seemingly, permanently. This whole concept
could be the answer to the oft asked question as to why it is that
if God is good, how could evil come about? It may be that there is
no good and no evil but only different ways of reaching full
understanding.
Success breeds success and failure breeds failure since both are ways
of thinking. Positive thinking is that which achieves the things that
one desires whilst negative thinking does the reverse. So one learns
from experience which way of thought works in the direction that we
desire and what doesn't. Whichever way a person operates, this is
still part of the Game of Life since it is all creating. Successful
players in the Game come to realise their own responsibility for
creating
the effects that they do. The losers do not accept that responsibility
but blame others or Life itself for their failure. This is the
difference between learning the easy way and learning the hard way.
The latter keep repeating their mistakes until eventually they learn.
As the mystical poet William Blake wrote, 'If a fool persists
in his folly he will become wise.'
It does seem that there is no way of learning the Game of Life except
by becoming a competent player who eventually reaches the point where
he has learnt all he needs to and no longer needs this particular
game. On the other hand, occult sources have stated that in some,
probably very rare circumstances, a being can achieve what is called
spiritual death. Geoffrey Filbert in Excalibur Re-visited places
this on his very extended Tone Scale to be minus 400. Just how this
operates with a presumably immortal being is something to ponder.
Nevertheless all this occurs by one's own creation and in connection
with the first Law of Life - to create. The quality of one's creation
depends on one's obedience or disobedience in regard to other Laws
of Life or Rules of the Game.
Love
The second of these Laws is love for which the Greeks had a large
number of words to cover its different aspects but these really fall
into three areas. Agape, Philos and Eros.
LRH had one definition of love as being the acceptance of another
as he is without desire to change him but being willing to help him
to change in any way that he desires. This is the Agape level of
spiritual
love that has been so well expressed in 1 Corinthians 13. Do read,
or re-read this in a modern translation. It is almost impossible
to attain fully but exists as an ideal, a goal which we strive to
attain.
This is all-inclusive love.
Another definition of love from LRH is that of setting aside one's
own goal for a time in order to help another achieve his. This
represents
the Philos level - the love of another, friendship, the love of
things and aspects. Philosophy, for example, is the love of wisdom.
The third level of Love - Eros - is its physical aspect. In
the Philadelphia Course lectures and elsewhere LRH denigrated sex
as being as low as a fourth-rate sensation. I have not run across
his making any reference to making love which is vastly different
although making use of the same physical organs. I think that the
distinction can be appreciated only by those who have experienced
it. It is, in fact, a strong link between the body and the thetan
and is just as important as the other two aspects. Eastern religions,
especially those associated with the worship of the Goddess,
understood
this connection and made full use of it in their religious practices.
Judaism and subsequently Christianity perverted this on account
of the myth of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man - brought
about by the evil of woman since she was considered guilty of bringing
evil and death into being by her succumbing to temptation. This
accounts
for the long established attitude of regarding women as being inferior
to men, which they definitely are not.
Love in all its aspects is essential to the successful playing of
the Game.
Cause and effect
This Law is probably the best known and, often, the least accepted.
'That which a man sows, that also shall he reap'.
It is an essential part of any game that there are rewards for
following
the rules and penalties for failing to do so. This is totally the
case in regard to living on planet Earth although it may not apply
elsewhere. In running cases on whole track I have found that it
certainly
applies to MEST areas and also to some non-MEST.
The American scientologist, Bob Ross, has said in his extended article
on Arbitraries that LRH said that OTs can commit overts without being
penalised. This was a justification for his policy of fair game and
other non-survival activities such as the penalties imposed for
infractions
of the so-called scientology ethics viciously imposed at times.
Details
of this can be found in the book by Bent Corydon L Ron Hubbard,
Messiah or Madman. This work also shows the penalties that LRH
did incur through his disobedience to this law of cause and effect.
Some people regard the penalties as being imposed by God or what
have been called Lords of Karma. The latter seem to me to be very
much aligned with whole track tribunals and I consider that all such
penalties are actually self-imposed. This by virtue of Filbert's 11th
Dynamic - decency. If one recognises that one has done wrong
to another then decency demands that he should do something to
rectify the situation. This occurs when one has taken responsibility
for what one has done. The main thing is that this is a Law, agreed
upon at some time - or outside time - as being a rule in the
game so to disobey must incur a penalty.
The law of responsibility
It is a rule of the Game that one must take full responsibility for
the effects that one has created. A difficult aspect of this for many
is that we are solely and totally responsible for everything that
happens to us even if this is only a matter of agreeing that it can
happen. We have created it as a matter of experience. This can also
be a reaction to the Law of Cause and Effect.
One way of handling it, and probably not the best, is simply to punish
oneself for doing it and often by attracting to oneself a similar
situation to the one which one had created as a means of experiencing
being at the effect of it. This incidentally is found in a number
of cases of implant where a person has been told to punish himself
for the dreadful wrong that he has committed. This I have seen in
case running. The actual fact is that no wrong has been done but this
is used as a trap to keep the subject unable to create.
It is necessary, however, to become aware of what is one's
responsibility
and what isn't. If A says something to B without any intention of
harming him but B is upset about it then this is B's responsibility
and not A's. If, however, A intends to be harmful and B responds in
a way that upsets A then this is A's responsibility. If at the same
time B is upset by A because of this then this is B's responsibility.
In actual fact one cannot harm another unless that other has
considered
that he can be at this unwanted effect. As already indicated, if one
tries to harm another then there may very well be a backlash of some
sort.
In scn's Technical Dictionary the definition of responsibility
is virtually the same as that for control, namely the willingness
and ability to start, change and stop in regard to the matter in hand.
The more that one plays in accordance with the rules of the Game,
the more control one has and, therefore, the greater the measure of
acceptance of responsibility.
The law of acceptance
Stated briefly, whatever the situation is in which one finds oneself
one must be willing to accept the fact of its being so. If one does
so then one can change the situation in course of time if one so
desires.
If one resents it and kicks against it then one remains stuck with
it. This latter is really the well known can't have/must have
situation.
At a deeper level this is, as already mentioned, because one has
created the situation or agreed to be at effect in regard to it so
the answer is to accept responsibility for it. As a matter of
interest,
feeling guilty about anything is a substitute for taking
responsibility
in regard to it.
Closely aligned to this is to be willing to let go. It is a human
failing to want to hold on to things that one has that one desired.
This, again, is a must have situation and usually leads to loss.
It is a common outlook in Eastern religions, especially those of
India, that whatever is, is best. Acceptance is the easy way of
learning
by experience whilst rejection is the hard way. This I have repeated
because it is a basic fundamental and cannot be repeated too often.
Randomity
The whole Game of Life, like all games, is really a great pretence
that we do not know it all, at least this is true at Static level.
In order to have a game one must have part known and part not known.
The best proportion of one to the other is roughly half known and
half unknown. This is known as optimum randomity. If too much is known
then the game becomes too easy and uninteresting. This is why a
chess master may play the game with a number of players
simultaneously.
Played singly he would win every game with opponents of that level.
As said earlier, too little known equally leads to a no-game
situation. This is the situation with many people on planet Earth.
AS LRH said, it is much easier to drop down the dwindling spiral than
to make one's way up after having dropped to a low level of play.
Is your life running well for you, with no too severe obstacles
and is mainly highly enjoyable? If so you are having a good game.
Earth is no trap for such people. If not then you may need some help
to get back into the Game and today there are many practitioners who
have different ways of dealing with this instead of an Only Way as
the c of s. Modern running tends to avoid endless rundowns but to
provide such help as is really needed. Why not get back into the Game?
It's fun.