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I have left Frank Gordon's essay intact below in case any Trommers
neglected to read it over the silly season. It was posted by Pete on
30/Nov/2008.
My only comment is that Scientology fails to distinguish between
Compulsive and non-compulsive games and then further fails to recognise
that Auditing in effect can eventually become a compulsive game. This of
course in addition to the compulsive games both the therapist and the
patient have with their own minds.
They have no method of dealing with these games as we do in TROM using
complementary postulates.
From TROM:
"Complementary postulates enhance life; conflicting postulates detract
from it. Thus, games, although considered fun, have the liability of
lessening the "amount" of life the being possesses.
Games, by their very nature, can become compulsive, and result in a
lessening of life - to such a degree that the true nature of life,
postulates and games themselves become unknown to the being. This state
of affairs is only resolved, in the final instance, by the application
of complementary postulates. Thus complementary postulates, when
applied, have the ability to dissolve all games."
Martin
>From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 9 - November 1992
> Can Games be Processed Directly?
> By Frank Gordon, USA
>
> (From Frank Gordon's Terra Incognita. A Collection of Scientological
> Essays, manuscript edition 1988)
>
> In "Scn: A new Slant on Life", games are discussed in the chapter,
> "The Reason Why", and the answer is to have a game. Thus: "Life is a
> game. A game consists of freedom, barriers and purposes". p. 38.
>
> Given the central importance of life as a game, one looks for
> processes which address this directly. The only clear-cut one appears
> in "Dianetics 55" on p. 158 as a One-Shot clear process:
>
> "Having established the fact that an auditing session is in progress,
> and established some slight communication with the preclear, the
> auditor says, 'Invent a game'. When the communication lag on this is
> flat the auditor then uses the command, 'Mock up somebody else
> inventing a game'".
>
> " .. It is a workable process, it does function, it is fast, but .. it
> has the frailty of the ability of the auditor. It has the frailty of
> failing when a two-way communication is not maintained with the
> preclear .."
>
> I have not run this process on a pc, nor have I heard of anyone else
> using it. I did, however, attempt to invent an actual game for sale,
> similar to "Monopoly" called "Stock Market". This was shortly after I
> had received a copy (#713) of "Dianetics 55", while working in Indiana
> as a research biochemist.
>
> Curiously, I initially ran into a very heavy apathy while trying to
> invent this, but after I interested a fellow worker, a chemical
> engineer, in helping me, we came up with a playable board game, but
> did not pursue it further.
>
> Ron noted in Tech Vol II, p. 417: "It is evidently true that no part
> of games is processable and the entering into games is not necessarily
> therapeutic except this idea of overwhelming things". "This process is
> 'What would you permit to overwhelm?' 'What would you permit to be
> overwhelmed?'"
>
> These were to be run alternately, and in an impersonal detached way.
> At this point, it appeared that games could not be processed directly.
>
> Processing games directly?
>
> I've had some experiences which might provide an opening wedge into
> processing games more directly. The first hint on this line came while
> playing checkers with another independent. I told him that my goal was
> to win. He replied, "Mine is to play well". This reflects the British
> public school code of "good form". "It isn't whether you win or lose,
> it's how you play the game", which forms a code of ethics and personal
> pride.
>
> Next, I noted that while playing checkers there were special times
> when a new quality and depth came into the game.
>
> Checkers can be just "pushing wood"; but occasionally it gets very
> subtle and complex. Possibilities open up with certain positions, and
> the situation becomes intensely interesting. A feeling of enhanced
> vitality and absorbed attention appears. One term which captures the
> feel of this is resonance.
>
> "In chemistry -resonance- is the number of possible configurations
> which a compound can assume. A compound gains stability (and
> flexibility) in ratio to this resonance. An example would be the
> benzene ring, (Also called benzene nucleus. There is a famous story
> about benzene, C6Hc. Kekul could not figure out what structure it
> could have until he dreamed of a serpent swallowing its tail, giving a
> circular ring of carbon atoms.) where stability is enhanced by the
> interchange of single and double bonds.
>
> One may go from chemistry to radio in looking at resonance. If one
> relates freedom of choice (or lack of limits) to self-determinism the
> result is similar to curves for resonant circuits. Thus:
>
> This illustrates an optimum balance of freedom and barriers. If I can
> do -anything-, this is not interesting, and if I can do -nothing- this
> is apathy. But if I can do some things easily and with a little
> ingenuity, many others: this new factor emerges.
>
> Resonance can be used as a term for this new factor, which implies a
> richer connectedness and includes the presence of higher and lower
> harmonics. These add depth and richness to a sound or event, as they
> do to life. Thus a thetan gains stability and flexibility in ratio to
> the number of possible realities and beingnesses that he knows are
> available.
>
> Most important in games
>
> In games, the important thing to the player is not that he might win
> or lose, but positioning himself delicately on the edge of either
> winning or losing: thus raising the quality of the game and becoming
> alert, expectant, and energized. The game fills with richness and
> meaning. He is not concerned so much with losing the game, but of
> losing the -vitalness- of the game.
>
> One might form a variant of Clausius' famous dictum: "Das entropie den
> Welt streibt ein maximum zu". ("The entropy of the world strives
> towards a maximum") and state: The basic impulse behind every game is
> to make it as intense, rich, vital and beautiful as possible; to
> establish a plexus of fascinating interplays, and to interweave and
> interlock them into a flowing expression of completed beingness.
>
> More briefly: the basic impulse behind every game is to attain and
> maximize resonance. This resonance is the essential heart of the magic
> of communication. When it is not present (flat rote acks for example),
> the magic is gone.
>
> Violence is an inability to play a particular game, not knowing what
> the game is, or not knowing it's rules. In checkers one could upset
> the board.
>
> Absorbed pleasure in the game is the important thing. The goal is
> secondary, as are winning and losing. These are justifications for
> doing something that is fun. The more a game is made to look like
> work, the more acceptable it is to others. Perhaps the ideal way to
> live is to appear to be working very hard, but to be bursting with
> repressed inner laughter.
>
> Absolutes
>
> Optimal Game Design would maximize interesting interplays and
> possibilities that stretch and challenge one's abilities, increase
> one's self-determinism, and gratify and exercise one's faculties.
>
> >From this standpoint: "clear" is a kind of absolute, an endpoint. One
> could ask "Clear about what?" but it's an end of game. I've arrived! I
> am now well-fixed, I've made it. Now I can lie down, curl up, and
> cuddle myself.
>
> But what about the continuing action of "clearing". Ahhh! This is
> different, the game goes on. But how? By dully sitting still,
> confronting the bank, with hands immobilized by clutching tin cans?
>
> Or is it exploring where the most intriguing, fascinating, enthralling
> -Aliveness- can be found? Something indicated! "There's gold in them
> thar hills, pardner".
>
> Actually, the CCH "game" isn't just to touch the walls (the apparent
> goal), but to experience and handle the feel of good control feedback
> loops, and to free up from past stuck cycles.
>
> Many games are zero-sum: if one wins, the other loses. The best game
> occurs when, whether one wins or loses, both players gain. This -
> mutual gain- is the key element, if one is to make game theory work,
> and it introduces a cooperative element.
>
> Good games
>
> Good games help the players to become more self-confident, competent,
> self-determined, -and- cooperative. Thus auditing can be defined as
> being -both- teammates, -and- "cooperative opponents", with just
> enough opposition to wake up the pc's self-determinism.
>
> On the affinity of life for "aliveness", Herbert Spencer's "Social
> Statics", 1851, p.5, paperback, has this to say (Happiness =
> Aliveness):
>
> "Happiness signifies a gratified state of the faculties. The
> gratification of a faculty is produced by its exercise. To be
> agreeable that exercise must be proportionate to the power of the
> faculty; if it is insufficient discontent arises, and its excess
> produces weariness. Hence, to have complete felicity is to have all
> the faculties exerted in the ratio of their several developments; and
> such an ideal arrangement of circumstances calculated to secure this
> constitutes the standard of 'greatest happiness'."
>
> As Spencer uses the term "happiness", it corresponds to Aliveness or -
> elan vitale-. The optimum exercise of a faculty (the ability to do or
> make) results in Aliveness. A game which promotes and encourages the
> maximum attainable exercise of all of one's faculties or abilities is
> the one which life seeks to play.
>
> "Gratification" has been downgraded to mean: "indulgent immoral
> pleasure". A better translation of the way Spencer uses it, would be
> "the experiencing of moral pleasure".
>
> Examples
>
> There is an urge to be fully alive in a state of work-play. I
> experienced this as a youth:
>
> My brother Don and I were helping Dad pick squash, and we made a game
> of it. I would pick them, toss them to Don on the truck, and it was
> fun. Dad told us to stop, that I would have to trudge to the truck and
> -carefully- hand them to Don. Fail-safe stuff. All the fun went out of
> it. Now there was no rhythm, no -swing-, no rambunctiousness, no play.
> It became dull.
>
> Many positive aspects of games appear when one is unstuck from win or
> lose: such as mutual gain, productivity, and the acquiring of skills.
>
> I once skied down a difficult slope, and was poised on the -edge of
> control-, exerting my attention and skill to the limit. One mistake
> would have meant disaster. I've had similar feelings when sailing,
> when a nice judgement is required as to just how far one can go
> without capsizing.
>
> In both of the above there was this sense of vital and exultant life
> which is what games are all about.
>
> I could have broken my leg skiing, or almost drowned when sailing, and
> then -run out- the injuries. But in back of any injury lies the
> interrupted intention to exult. Parallel to -prior ARC-, and the
> aesthetic, when this is recaptured, the failure seems to reduce in
> importance and fall away.
>
> When 14, I fell out of the top of a tall maple, and was nearly killed,
> but somehow caught myself halfway down. I've had this run as an engram
> several times, but it seemed to -hang on-. Then in a solo session I
> ran my intense joy in the prior competence and control I had
> experienced previously while climbing trees, with good BDs and a
> relaxation on the subject.
>
> The above preliminary observations indicate that it may be possible in
> this way to -run- games directly.
>
>
>
>
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