What is is not necessarily what should be.

The way a thetan lives is not and never will be the way thetans should live.

The basic reason for this is the desire for randomity, summed up in the desire of the thetan for a game. Infinite wellness is undesirable if it means that the thetan is to be in a state of total knowingness, total serenity, nameless, without ARC or contact with any environment. Evidently a thetan would rather be intelligent in relation to his environment, identified and identifiable, capable of emotion and experience and in ARC of whatever kind, with whatever type of playing field he may fancy. In other words, a thetan believes that he should be involved in a game. The deepest and most basic rationale is understood by the fact that a thetan must be part of the game. If he is not he is unhappy, no matter how purely and beautifully knowing and serene he may become.

However, there is a difference in games which is marked and obvious. There is the matter of playing a game and knowing one is playing a game, and not knowing one is playing a game. Between these two things is a world of difference. A thetan who is engaged in games he does not know he is playing is unhappy, since he does not believe he is playing a game and finds himself nevertheless in motion. This is what the preclear objects to when he comes to the auditor to be audited. The preclear suspects that he is playing a game and does not know what game he is playing. He simply wants to find out. He does not want to stop playing all games. If the auditor proceeds in the direction of making him stop all of his games, if the auditor erases all of the preclear’s games, why, the preclear is resultantly unhappy. The preclear wants to know what game he is playing and that is all there is to it.

In the matter of traps we have in essence a similar condition to the state of mind regarding games. Traps are part of games. That is all they are. To believe that a thetan could not get out of any trap he has gotten into is folly, since it is very difficult for a thetan to maintain and not go through every barrier which presents itself.

Here we have the difference between the ideal and the actual. The thetan who is in a trap could get out of one with ease if it did not violate his condition of games. Were games not a fact and a rationale of life, traps would be non-existent. If games were no object whatever, getting out of a trap would be simplicity itself.

One is trapped by those things to which he will not grant havingness. A game condition demands that one denies havingness. Therefore games trap.

To maintain a games condition in a preclear it is best to run can’t have on objects, valences and people. For example: “Tell me something in this room your mother can’t have” is a highly effective process, particularly if one has first run “What effect could you have on mother?” The “can’t have” on mother is a games condition and runs out the games one has played with mother. Therefore the process is workable. The process runs out exactly what one has done in order to be trapped in the mother’s valence. One has, in playing games with mother, said that mother could not have this and could not have that, since to permit mother to have something is to violate a games condition. Let us be very sharply clear here. Permitting things to have things is to make allies or teammates of those things, and when these do not prove by their conduct to be teammates, one is then guilty of permitting an opponent to have something, which is a no-game condition.

The rule is: Whatever one has denied havingness to has to some degree become a trap.

When one runs “can’t have” on the object, he runs out the original denial of havingness to the object.

Here is where processing meets its biggest obstacle: Running havingness such as “Look around the room and tell me what your mother could have” conflicts with the fact that one has already postulated numerously on the track that mother cannot have things. Running the permission of mother to have things untraps the thetan from mother only so long as it does not cause him to fail in his games condition with mother.

In practice one has to settle the whole question of mother as an opponent before one can have a mother. “Invent an opponent of comparable magnitude to mother,” “Mock up mother in violent motion,” “Look around the room and tell me something mother can’t have” settles this opponent-mother condition. One does not run “can have” on mother, only on self. That one audits out a game condition to obtain a higher tone is a major discovery in auditing and is all that is used today.

It is an easy thing to say “One is trapped by those things to which he has denied havingness,” but the truth of the matter is that if he did not and had not denied havingness, he would not have had a game. It is necessary, then, to settle the games condition on each and every object from which you would untrap a thetan before you then run the havingness process necessary to permit him to grant havingness to the trap. In the first place he and the trap are actually playing a game, and it may be that he has not enough games in order to surrender the game of the trap. If he had enough games in order to surrender the game of the trap, he would theoretically come out of it, and he would certainly come out of it if he was put into a condition whereby he could actually grant havingness to the trap.

Jails, theta traps, pole traps, bodies, each and every thing, large or small, including the MEST universe, which could operate as a trap, follow this same rule.

The basic havingness of course, that the thetan is denying the trap, is denying the trap a thetan — and this, properly worded, works quite well in processing. But unless a thetan denied things himself he would be in a no-game condition — a thing which he cannot and does not tolerate.