The game of life and other lesser games

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Subject: IVySubs: The game of life and other lesser games
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** ivy-subscribers relaying **

Hello, anyone, and others also --
Starting with the game of life: that's the one that Mr. Hubbard describes
in one of his famous Axioms, and although axioms are defined as self-evident
truths, it sometimes requires that one stretch oneself a good bit, and
possibly through intellect or cognition, direct perception, the self-evident
aspect of the axiom becomes present.

Now then: if, and only if, Mr. Hubbard's Axiom about the game of life is
true, and nothing but the truth, I think it's then fair to say that all of
us, whether we be conscious of it or not, are playing the game of life as
defined in that Axiom in which Theta solves the problems of theta as MEST.

Now if that's correct, it's a nice thing to know, because that could be
how one might acount for what's really going on in all that spare time (see
Axiom regarding Time as the basic source of untruth) that we either possess
or don't (he said, laughing loudly). I don't really know what "spare time"
is, but if someone or anyone has read this far and has a definition for spare
time, please send it in.

Well anyway, having removed my tongue from my cheek and my foot from my
mouth, I'd like to talk a little bit about why all games are aberrative. I
could spend some time, and perhaps should, attempting to define "aberration,"
as well as its adjective "aberrative," but suffice it to say that it's a word
that L. Ron Hubbard claimed ownership of, and used it to refer to all the
mental and spiritual and perhaps physical distortions, or non-optimum states,
or out-of-focus or unclear perceptions, that make for "unhealthy" mental or
spiritual or physical states. Under the word "aberration" we have such
things as the Reactive Mind, we have the expanded reactive mind, we have the
reactive minds of others impinging on others, we even have that well-known
maniac Phil Spickler include Life under the heading of case, and "case," as
you well remember, was that which made a person aberrated.

Well, that's a lot of words to say that a pretty good synonym for
aberration is what makes someone or something crazy, although that might be
too limited a definition and is sure to offend some of the really neat things
that make people seem to be crazy, like love and money and time and material
possessions and other people. But all right -- enough on that line.

Speaking again about games and why they're all aberrative, one must
assume the context as well as the definitions that Mr. Hubbard has assigned
to the word "game." The Philadelphia Lecture Series has all that information
in an easy-to-understand and well-described form. The lecture series and the
Scientology Doctorate Course were given, I believe, in the year 1952, and at
that time L. Ron Hubbard was around 41 years old and was a rather young,
extremely dynamic, highly energized, extraordinarily creative, genius-type
person. THAT Hubbard was not serious nor solid, and was given to laughing a
great deal and generating super-neat amounts of humor, and was very busily
engaged in what might be considered an important project, which was to help a
few people successfully go through the steps of 8-8008. You ask what are
these steps? I'll tell you.

Each of the "8's" is really an infinity sign standing up on its bottom or
top, and each of the "0's'" stands for null or nothing, and the formula went
something like this: to take the apparent infinity of the physical universe
and reduce that infinity to zero, and take the zero of the person's universe
and raise it back to infinity. Well, that was a very ambitious, wild, and
wonderful idea, to reverse the dwindling spiral that finally brings a being
into such complete agreement with the MEST or physical universe that an
individual's own universe, with its own laws and rules and possibilities, has
vanished so completely that many folks are wandering around not even knowing
that they once possessed a universe and that it could be regained.

But enough of that. In the Philadelphis Lecture Series, Ron talked quite
a bit about games, what is a game, and what is a no-game. Brevity forbids me
from trying to cover completely all that was said aobut these matters, but
under the heading of "game" we have things like a playing field, we have
self-determinism, we have opponents and fighting; there are goals, there are
rules, in case I didn't mention it there are players, there is winning and
losing. There is Have and Not-Have. So what is it then that makes a game,
as so defined, aberrative?

Well, first and foremost is the urge or intention to defeat, to cause to
lose, to destroy, another individual or team -- an intention and urge that,
within the rules of the game, makes it possible for you to do everything you
can to win while causing another or others to lose. And in order to get the
other team or invdividual to lose, you must by force or whatever convince the
other team that they can't win, that they aren't good enough to win, that
their best efforts are failures, and so you see you're doing all these things
in order to win that we would normally think of as suppressive or repressive
or inhibitory or damaging.

And who are you doing it to? You're doing it to the other individual or
team; and who is the other individual? who is the other team? Well, it's
one or more of your own dynamics! For sure you're attacking your fourth
dynamic, humankind, your fellow humans; and you're certainly going after the
spiritual throat of the other team; and so, as the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu
points out, being victorious should be celebrated as though it were a funeral.

So anyway, if, in order to be the victor, in order to be number one, in
order to be the champion, you have to do everything you can to another or
others to make them feel defeated, to make them feel less worthwhile and less
able and less intelligent, etc. etc., the more you do of this, the more you
are harming life as your own dynamics. In other words, you are continuously
committing, in the name of the game, overt or harmful acts in order to be
victorious.

Seeking to harm one's own dynamics is a sure-fire way to not only become
aberrated or crazy, but sooner or later the reverse vector, at some point in
one's life, comes back on the other flow and one ends up collecting lots of
harm and pain in the other direction.

A quick look at this can be found in the subject of War, which is a game
by definition, and we can use Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich to get a very
good picture of just how a game works and how it ends up aberrating the
players, both the winners and the losers. And in auditing you can use many
processes that have been designed to help people remember games they've been
part of, games they've been stuck in, games they've forgotten about that
they're still playing, etc. etc., and do wonders in restoring the mental and
spiritual and physical health of folks, including one of the fairly early
Clear procedures, which was simply to restore the ability of someone to
invent a game.

Briefly, a no-game is all about pan-determinism, not self-determinism but
pan-determinism, and it's all about help and understanding and non-opposition
to one's self and one's dynamics. A good example of pan-determinism is for
an adult to play a game of tennis or ping-pong with a child, and to
selflessly or pan-determinedly do whatever it takes to give the child the
feeling that they're doing very well, even winning quite a bit and losing a
little, but in any event, everyone coming out of the game feeling that it was
just for the fun of the play -- no winners, no losers, everyone playing in
order to create enjoyment and pleasure for all concerned. Yes, just hitting
a tennis ball back and forth, without keeping score, without trying to make
the other person miss the ball, but both people seeing how long they can keep
the ball in play while enjoying the spirit of the moment. That's
pan-determinism. Get it? got it? Good. And that's a no-game, versus a real
game with opponents and fighting and a victor. One is aberrative, the other
is de-aberrative.

Does all this mean that we should never play any real games? No, no, it
doesn't mean anything of the kind, because hidden behind the victors and the
losers are real immortals who can't truly be damaged, except by their own
agreement. And if you do play games and you do get aberrated from doing so,
it's an easy matter to become de-aberrated. And we are not trying, at least
with Dianetics and Scientology, to cause people to exit the game called life
and sit for eternities on Cloud 29 being nothing and no one, we simply want
to take folks who have been so wounded in the game called life that they have
assumed the beingness of spectator or wounded player or someone who spends
most of their time lecturing against games and their evil, and restore enough
sense of spiritual balance, proportion, and guts, to where the person can and
does enjoyably play real games, thus validating what they're being, doing,
and having at this time in this location.

Much more could be said about these matters, but not at this time.
Thanks to anyone for listening; and don't forget, the play's the thing.

Goodnight!
--Phil

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Subject: IVySubs: Games and the spirit of play
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** ivy-subscribers relaying **

Dear Friends,

It may be possible to say more words about games and additionally the
spirit of play, and I sure hope so, because that's what I, or someone using
my name, is about to do. And so, for better or for worse --

There is a famous Hubbard quote, "All games are aberrative, some are
fun," and in my last posting I didn't talk about the part of that quote that
says "Some are fun." Well, I truly think that's true: there are definitely,
observably, some games that are fun, although they involve opponents, they
keep score, and there is winning and losing. It's my firm conviction that
anyone reading these words can probably name a fair number of games they have
played or are still playing that are real games, by Mr. Hubbard's definition,
and yet are fun to play. Why, I myself used to love to play chess, and I
found it quite a bit of fun, even though I played to win and enjoyed
conquering or defeating my chess opponent, and I disliked most strongly being
beaten by better, stronger players; and at different times in my threescore
and ten-plus, I've gotten somewhat aberrated over the game, and at other
times have played it in such a way as to ensure someone else would win, at
which point it ceased to be a game with real opponents and produced the
tremendously good feelings Thai pan-determinism and no-game but playing just
for fun can produce.

Which came first, games or GPMs, or polarities, or Codes, is anybody's
guess. But forces or beings in opposition is the hallmark of real
self-determined games and gamesmanship Nevertheless, at times, even in the
most vicious of games, individuals and groups so engaged report having a lot
of fun. During World War II, there was a famous battle fought in the skies,
mostly over England, that small island with such a large and amazing history.
Anyway, it was called the Battle of Britain, and there were these fine
English lads flying Super Marine Spitfires, and sometimes a Hawker Hurricane
-- these were very fine fighter airplanes that had one pilot per plane.
Anyway, they engaged in what is called aerial combat or dogfighting with fine
young German men flying Messerschmitt 109s and other fine aircraft-fighter
planes, the product of excellent German engineering. I didn't have a chance
or particular desire to interview any of the German pilots, but many years
ago I worked in close company with a chap who had been a squadron leader in
the Royal Air Force, flying the famous and historic Super Marine Spitfire;
and often after work, we would repair to a bar, or as the English say pub,
and have one or two draft beers, which my English friend would do his best to
warm up a bit before drinking, since the British drink their excellent beers
and ales at a temperature that is not designed to freeze one's tonsils or
back teeth.

Anyhow, we talked about World War II and what it was like flying against
"Jerry." Now this chap had obviously survived World War II at a time when
the life expectancy of a fighter pilot was very short. But when he would be
telling me about a particular engagement and using his hands to describe the
activity, his face was frequently wreathed with smiles, his indicators were
very good, and he reported that once he got used to the wildness of it all it
was FUN.

So as you can see, even games to the death can be and are fun for those
willing to play them .

So, some games are fun, perhaps quite a few -- it depends to some degree
whether it's a game you've chosen to play, versus just getting dumped into
it, a la the Existential philosophers' explanation for being here, in which
case, since you've had no choice if they're correct, it's possible not to see
the game called Life as one of those games that are fun.

Well, yes, it's probably true that any enforced reality could take the
fun out of whatever it is.

I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to say a few words about L. Ron Hubbard
himself in connection with games. In my opinion, one of the best and most
easily perceived things about Mr. Hubbard is that he unquestionably and most
observably had the ability and the willingness to invent a game, a real game,
and to play that game. It has been said with some degree of accuracy that
you can tell a lot about the size of a being and their tone level by the
opponents that they select to play games with. Those few words, as no
others, might give you a sense of Mr. Hubbard's ability to be big and
high-toned, when you think of the magnitude of the opponents that he selected
to play with and the tremendous forces at their disposal to engage in
opposing him in the games that he involved them in.

Let's just take a look for a moment at some of the groups and/or
individuals that Mr. Hubbard challenged to play. Well, in this country, the
United States of America, he took on the American Medical Association, one of
its offshoots, the American Psychiatric Association, and last and perhaps
least the American Psychological Association. And at the time he involved
them in a game, there was just Mr. Hubbard, really, his incredible pen, and a
rather tiny group of people without very much money but with some very, very
powerful ideas regarding spiritual, mental, and physical health.

The game was being played to decide whether these various associations
would continue to own the territory of spiritual, mental, and physical
health. These groups by law virtually held a monopoly to that territory, and
had become and to some degree still are so corrupted by their power over the
territory and its inhabitants that the possibility of dislodging them and
winning the day in such a game was most formidable indeed.

To say that Mr. Hubbard had a lot of fun playing this game would be an
understatement. There were some many years when he both enjoyed and reveled
in the contest. There were, along the way, many wins and a fair number of
losses; but throughout this all, his team and its resources became larger,
more powerful, and more affluent. It might be said that Mr. Hubbard played
at this game too long, and that his intentions to prevail against his
opponents and enemies became too serious and too solid, and his overts of
omission and commission became legion, and so in the end, having never
achieved a state of pan-determinism with these dynamics that had been
arbitrarily chosen as opponents, as predicted by his own insight circa 1952,
he ended up becoming extremely aberrated and a force within his own
organization that brought about further extensions of that aberration.

So we have the short history of a great player, who took on large
opponents in a very good game, with the victory for Mr. Hubbard promising a
better break for mankind, a greater freedom and understanding and possibly
even a better future. But at last, getting de-aberrated about that game, the
"whatever" that was necessary to help him to that state, simply did not
occur. Nevertheless, some of us who achieved and attained some degree of
beingness in the playing of Mr. Hubbard's game did reap very large rewards,
and many of us were able to get past the playing of that particular game and
achieve a viewpoint of pan-determinism, and de-aberrate from the intentions
and the goals that generated, and are probably still generating, a GPM, a
Goals Problems Mass, between Hubbard's organizations and numerous others on
this planet.

The ability to invent or postulate a game, play it for awhile, have some
fun, and then to let that goal or intention for that game cease to exist, is
an ability that makes it possible to play and have a lot of fun without
getting stuck, without creating a GPM that may go on for enormous amounts of
time. Outside of games and goals, there is something called the spirit of
play in which winning and losing are not as important as playing just for the
sake of play, inventing and discarding valences and beingnesses at will and
thrilling to the freedom of the inventiveness the way children do when
they've been playing for all they're worth and suddenly Mother calls and
says, "Stop playing now and come in and have dinner!" at which point the
children simply throw away being the cops or the robbers or the good guys or
the bad guys and become hungry children. You may even hear some of them
saying, "Oh gee, Mom, do we have to stop? We were having so much fun!"

So the spirit of play is a beautiful thing, and we must look to the
young, who are born to it and who can invent and un-invent games at will.
And so children can play games all day long and have fun, mostly throughout
that whole time, because they haven't put on solid identities with solid
goals, with long-term intentions.

Well, I've run out of words at this point. I hope others might have
something to say about these matters, and will. If we were all Spanish I
would say, "Buenas noches," and let that suffice for this evening.
--Phil

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