************************************************************************ The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers, which is available to all those who subscribe to the printed magazine, International Viewpoints. Home Page: http://home8.inet.tele.dk/ivy/ - with extensive links to FZ! ************************************************************************ X-Authentication-Warning: gem.lightlink.com: majordom set sender to owner-ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com using -f Received: from mx.lightlink.com (mx.lightlink.com [205.232.34.15]) by gem.lightlink.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA15287 for Fri, 9 Aug 2002 19:01:30 -0400 Received: from imo-r03.mx.aol.com (imo-r03.mx.aol.com [152.163.225.99]) by mx.lightlink.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA01559 for Fri, 9 Aug 2002 19:01:26 -0400 From: PJSpickler@aol.com Received: from PJSpickler@aol.com by imo-r03.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v33.5.) id q.28.2adf7236 (17377) for Fri, 9 Aug 2002 19:01:22 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <28.2adf7236.2a85a3c2@aol.com> Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 19:01:22 EDT Subject: IVySubs: The game of life and other lesser games To: ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0.1 for Mac sub 85 Sender: owner-ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com Precedence: bulk ** 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 ** Home Page: http://home8.inet.tele.dk/ivy/ - with extensive links to FZ! ** X-Authentication-Warning: gem.lightlink.com: majordom set sender to owner-ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com using -f Received: from mx.lightlink.com (mx.lightlink.com [205.232.34.15]) by gem.lightlink.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA11785 for Mon, 12 Aug 2002 00:35:02 -0400 Received: from imo-m06.mx.aol.com (imo-m06.mx.aol.com [64.12.136.161]) by mx.lightlink.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA06749 for Mon, 12 Aug 2002 00:34:57 -0400 From: PJSpickler@aol.com Received: from PJSpickler@aol.com by imo-m06.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v33.5.) id q.137.128f9b02 (4402) for Mon, 12 Aug 2002 00:34:54 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <137.128f9b02.2a8894ee@aol.com> Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 00:34:54 EDT Subject: IVySubs: Games and the spirit of play To: ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0.1 for Mac sub 85 Sender: owner-ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com Precedence: bulk ** 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 ** Home Page: http://home8.inet.tele.dk/ivy/ - with extensive links to FZ! ** -- Ant Antony A Phillips ivy@post8.tele.dk tlf: (+45) 45 88 88 69 Box 78 DK - 2800 Lyngby Editor, International Viewpoints (= IVy). See Home Page: http://home8.inet.tele.dk/ivy/ Administrator: trom-l, selfclearing-l, superscio-l, previous-life-scio, dan-know and IVy lists --