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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which was available to all those who subscribed to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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Why Confucius smiles
by Phil Spickler
14 Oct 00

Greetings, all --
                  To learn
             And from time to time
               To apply what one
                 Has learned:
              Isn't that a pleasure?
                 -- Confucius, 500 BC

       Well, for gosh sakes!  As you may know, if you have bodies (more than
one) located in different areas in this and other universes, it's a lot of
fun and can provide more interest, if you have a taste for it, than managing
one meat body with a central and specific identity.  However, bodies, meat
and otherwise, have a tendency to attract and be controlled by thetans,
spiritual beings, individual and group consciousnesses, targs, BTs, clusters,
spiritual teammates, etc. etc. etc.  And sometimes you might go visiting one
of your numerous bodies, located in this and other universes, just to enjoy
the diversity of experience possible with the different body possibilities in
different times and different places, a pasttime that those who can do it
really enjoy.

        Well, I recently popped into one of the Earth bodies that I expect
will be kept at my disposal (sort of like having other homes throughout the
world), and usually when I depart a body I leave instructions for the staff,
the surrogate "me's" if you will, to carry on in a style that I have assigned
to this body and its name in connection with all the different dynamics that
I like to play with when I'm at home.

        Well, imagine my surprise when I picked up that well-known character
Phil Spickler + body and found that some characters have broken into this
"home" and were busy using it as a base from which to engage in another round
of a GPM called "religion vs. science," or "science vs. religion."  Well,
this GPM has been going on for quite some time, and there are entities all
over the battlefield, both historically and in present time, who, whenever
they get the chance and sense the opportunity, will engage in the game of
terminal and opposing terminal in a magnificently large Service Fac effort,
driven by the power of goals or purposes in opposition, to prove who's right
and who's wrong.

       Well, finding that someone using my name and body to start a new
edition of this on the IVy list was most disappointing; and I can assure you
that the responsible intelligences have been relocated to an area where this
game is very popular and has endless possibilities and futures for a really
long run.

        And regarding GPMs: if a GPM does get allowed to really achieve its
complete span, eventually those who start out on one side of it and those who
are on the other side in opposition will through time end up opposing their
own original goal or purpose.  So, for example, if you started out on the
religion side with the goal to oppose science, at the end of the GPM you'd
end up as a scientist opposing religion, or if you started out as a scientist
opposing religion you'd end up as a religionist opposing science.  It's all
quite wacky, but does provide for great games, lots of identity, and plenty
of action; and perhaps the GPM works the way it does because of an old rule
that says "You will become that which you resist."  You might add to it, "if
it goes on long enough through time."

       It's possible for an individual to pick up identities from this GPM,
and where they come from in the GPM will determine just how strongly they are
on one side or the other.  Entities from the middle or crossover point of the
GPM will, as might be expected, be ambivalent, and in their expression will
have empathy or pan-determinism to a greater degree about the opposing sides.

      But enough about GPM theory and tech.  Just let me say that the IVy
version is done, ended, complete and finished, concerning what has seemed to
be the thoughts, intentions, and expressions of the one called Phil Spickler
regarding science and its historic opponent, religion.  Although these two
old opponents may have taken on characteristics of each other, it's
unnecessary to prove that science has become a religion in the 20th century,
or that religion has taken on the characteristics of science.  I think the
IVy list has other and better fish to fry.  Hmmm!  that makes me feel hungry.

       My apologies to Tom Fielder for engaging him in such an unseemly
dispute, and anyone else that may have been troubled by the vehemence of the
originally declared "war."

      And so I close, with great hopes for an IVy list with a future free
from restimulated GPMs, and the joys of interesting discourse amongst
good-hearted and well-intentioned folk.

       As ever,
         The one called "Phil"