Okay. Well, not having anything to talk to you about, I think that it's possibly best if we go into a resume of games, and talk a little bit about games and talk briefly about their comparisons and so forth to processing, and the handling of life and preclears as a result thereof. Would you like to hear about that?

Audience: Yes.

All right. The main difficulty in understanding life is the answer to the question "Why?" And let me show you at once why this is a difficult question.

It is obvious that the only thing that does a thetan any good, really - very obvious - is separateness. This is the most obvious thing you ever witnessed. You can put somebody in an auditing room and ask them to get things they are separate from, one after the other, and their tone will start to rise and do a very nice job of coming up the line.

If they don't mess up any energy in any way, if they are run very smoothly with no breaks in the Auditor's Code, actually they just come right on up. It's an almost - has to be almost an impossibly smooth job of auditing however, because somewhere along the line something may happen that lets them slip a little bit.

Well now, if we do that, and if this is very beneficial to the being we call a thetan, to a human being, then we must ask this question: What in the name of common sense is he doing getting all messed up with havingness? Why do we see chaps going around driving these eighty-nine-ton lorries and just loving it, you know? If it's so good for him to be separate, why on earth does he insist on being connected? For if we run "Tell me some part of this room with which you are connected," he goes down, down, down and out the bottom.

So obviously there's no sense to it. There's no sense to any of this. We say, "All right. It's very interesting. An individual goes out and he keeps getting run into and he runs into things and he eventually develops an obsessive inflow. And out of this inflow, he thinks he is being separate when he's being connected and he gets badly mixed up. And after that he doesn't know what he's doing, he merely gets confused, and he becomes a - oh, a human being, a Homo sapiens or something." You understand? All right.

Now, why, though? Why does a thetan who runs only on postulates and considerations - and of this we are very sure - why does this being have such a mechanism that will invert? So you hit him with a bullet, now he wants to be hit with bullets. This is a fact. You could operate on somebody to a point of where he begs to be operated on. I've seen men lying in hospitals, lying there and smiling and so forth; they were all very happy, you know, because they were going to be operated on the next morning. Tzzzuhh! And I have seen - I have seen men lying in hospitals in a white, cold, rage at all the medical doctors around and about, because the medical doctors refused to operate upon them.

Well now, that's a funny state for a being to get into. We must then be able to say, "Well, it must be that he really can't get into any trouble and he's playing a sort of a joke on himself. He's pretending he can get messed up and he really can't get messed up, and really then it's all his fault, and he's as strong as he ever was." Only this doesn't obtain. We start processing this individual and we find him lost somewhere in the shuffle and unable to generate any further power or activity such as he was once capable of doing.

Now, what about this? This sounds completely mad. And it is. Here we have this individual, he does go down Tone Scale, he does need to be picked back up Tone Scale. And the fact of the matter is that whereas he will always exteriorize - when he, to be technical, kicks the bucket - he will always exteriorize. He doesn't leave a bunch of dead, underpowered thetans scattered in the body, he just shoves off. Whereas this does happen, he does need help.

Well, how does this being ever come to need help? How could he possibly? How could anybody ever need any help if at any time that his body expired, he simply went free and there he was in an ideal state, flying around through the clouds or nirvana or someplace?

Now, immediately we have these considerations. We could say to ourselves, "Then it's just a sham. He really never needs any help - he's just - it's something he's doing. I mean, he's just kidding himself. He's just trying to be something." And we could shape these things up and come up with no answer, because we would have missed the one thing a thetan is doing regardless of what level we find him in: He is playing a game. But to us this might mean, superficially, that he is involved in such a way that he cannot really be sincere about it - he's being insincere about what he is doing; he's pretending in some fashion.

No. No, no. Have you ever seen the faces of football players while they were playing a game? Is there anything pretensive about them, hm?

Male voice: No.

Have you ever faced a lineup in a football game, looked at the opposite side? Crash! There you are.

No, he's playing a game in a much wider sense of the word. He is playing a game which he takes more and more seriously and then falls out through the bottom of and gets interiorized into, at which place he finds another game. And he starts playing this game and he starts going down and he falls into and out of that game, and he gets into another game. And he is pan-determined at any level where he is playing a senior game; he is only pan-determined on games lower than the game he is playing. And what do we mean by lower? We mean "of less magnitude."

Thetan gets down to a point of where he's just playing a game with himself. You ask this question of Homo sapiens, you are struck with the answer - the answer is fabulous. You say, "Can you get the idea of fighting with something?"

And he'll say, "Sure."

And if you run this for a short time, "Now, what have you got the idea you're fighting with?"

"Well, myself."

Oh no! Why should a man fight himself'? Why should a man be standing here, evidently at the same time standing here? He's poverty-stricken, he is sick, he can't support his wife, his children, he can't pay his bills, he can't do anything, he's almost totally incapable and disabled, and yet he is engaged in a fight, he says. Fight with who? A fight with himself.

You say, "Well, that's fine. Then we will just simply process this out so he won't have to fight himself, and he's all set." So we process him and we drop him into a lower game. And now he can't do anything - not even fight himself.

A boxer gets in the ring and starts boxing, and the next thing you know, he's holding his punch a little bit; he's restraining his punch. We know the mechanisms by which this occurs. We know that every forward motion earns for itself some sort of a backflow. So he starts holding that punch a little bit more, a little bit more and a little bit more, and after a while, why, he wouldn't hurt - he wouldn't hurt a pup with his blow. And of course, there he lies on the canvas. But there goes the prize money, too. And afterwards, why, you'll see him hanging around the showers saying, "Well, that big fight I'm going to have tomorrow." He's had his big fight tomorrow - it happened years ago, the big fight he was going to have tomorrow. He's punch-drunk, he's silly. He's still in the middle of that game. That was the last important game that he played. Of course that's in the line of a sport.

How about a scholar? He plays a game called "university." And he goes on playing this game for years called "university." And you find him years afterwards with a crew cut and his nose still stuck in a physics textbook, and still right there in school. You'll find him stuck on the time track in school. It was a fairly successful game, but here and there he lost, and he interiorized into it and he's never gotten out of it. This man is being employed - at the present moment, let us say - he's being employed as an architect. And there he sits, apparently at his architectural bench, happily drawing up plans of this and that. But do you know he never feels satisfied with these plans, because nobody ever comes along and marks an A on them. Fabulous, but we see these manifestations.

A thetan is dead serious about one thing - playing a game. And he gets so serious about playing a game, and he accepts its penalties and its responsibilities to such a degree, that he tumbles into these games and becomes parts of the game. Just like a hockey player becomes his hockey stick, and then after a while of being the hockey stick, which controls at least a puck, becomes the hockey stick and the puck. And because these are both connected with the ice, winds up eventually a chunk of ice. This is a fact. He's just getting into the game deeper and deeper and further and further and further. He is so stupid about this, it's fantastic. He never looks around and says, "The whistle has blown. The gong has rung. The game is done. What am I doing out here in the middle of this arena, lying here as a chunk of ice?" He never says this. He evidently runs on an obsessive line which is strictly thisentirely this: "There must be a game and I must be part of that game."

Fact of the matter is, I seriously doubt if anyone can process a thetan to the total serenity which is considered so wonderful in that game called "sit on a mountaintop" practiced by a bunch of my old friends in India. I seriously doubt this. You could get him to play this game, but examine one of those chaps sitting on the mountaintop, and you don't find him at serenity on the Tone Scale at all. He may be sitting up on a mountaintop, but to an auditor he would be down below minus below! He's playing a game called apathy. "I mustn't have. I must deny my body. I must deny all worldly things. I can't possess any of these things. Something bad about them all. I must therefore be serene."

We get people every once in a while, take Scientometric tests, and they go way up to the top on serenity. Oh, they're right there at the top. In other words, they answer every question in it which puts them at top serenity - 200 percent. We give them a little bit of auditing, and you know what the next point is that we find them on? Zero serenity. Complete agitation. They've gone where they should have gone in the first place, but the test couldn't take them there. And we had to give them some auditing to get them on the ladder. They're totally serene, nothing bothers them.

The criminal is also of this characteristic - nothing bothers the criminal. Nothing. He can go out and slaughter more old ladies, more women and children - it's all right with him, doesn't affect him, affect him, affect himbecause it's part of the game. And part of that game is, "Nothing affects me when I'm cruel." It's fascinating, isn't it?

Now, we can chart the succession of games down through which people fall, and we find that they go down the Tone Scale one right after the other. But the funny part of it is, the Tone Scale only marks one thing about games: It marks the mood of play, the mood of game - that's the only thing the Tone Scale marks. It really doesn't characterize what kind of a game he's playing. That game depends on his relationship to the dynamics from one to eight. And he starts to play inverted games below one.

Now, as you know, the first dynamic consists of the life unit of the bodythe body, the reactive mind, the somatic mind, the various automatic mechanisms, the thetan machinery - this is the first dynamic, the way we look at it. We have to get clear up to the lower order of dynamic seven before we find one of these all by itself, which is to say, the life unit independent of body or mind. It's very curious, very curious.

What is this wild obsession? If it gets a man into this much trouble, why does he do it? Just why does he do it? To play a game. Well, I know, but that's not an adequate reason. Oh yes, it is. The thrill and excitement of playing a game is good recompense. It is all the pay any thetan ever needs. It is an adequate pay to let him go through almost any trouble to achieve it. And he always has the feeling like he himself is inviolate, really, down to the final analysis, and that he himself will somehow or other come off the whole thing in the end. At least this universe someday will run out of time track, and that'll free him from all games. And of course he doesn't want this to happen.

Now, you think that an individual - that an individual is braced into the past because the past was so inviting. Actually, he's braced into the wins and loses of the past. And the wins are as bad as the loses - they're just as bad. I know more preclears who have been processed on loses, loses, loses, were actually stuck in wins. And I tell - I asked an individual, "Is there any time when you won something? Can you recall that?"

And he never gets any mock-ups, you know, or anything like this. And he says, "Yes," he said, "I won a - I won a skating contest once."

And I say, "You have any picture?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, that - is that what a facsimile looks like?" He's stuck in the win. Because an absolute win takes the game away from you just like a lose.

The mechanics and the considerations which go along with playing a game are not very complex, but the activity of playing a game may very well be very complex, and is sufficiently complex as to make evidently the entirety of what we call life.

Why does a thetan wish to stay in conjunction and connection with other thetans if he doesn't like anybody? Well, he has a hard time playing a game if there's nobody else present.

Now, let's take the dynamics, and we go from one right straight up the dynamics, and we discover that - without an inversion - that a person is as capable as he can actually work up the dynamics as far as games are concerned. He's just as capable as he can do this.

It takes a very capable man to be a member of a team, actually. The capabilities of his immediate play, such as throwing a football or batting and so on, are not his characteristics with regard to the Tone Scale. Some of these star players are minus and below one. But the fellows who are in fairly good shape can play up there at dynamic three.

Now, how about the fellow who is in an inverted dynamic three? He's a group. He is compulsively, obsessively forced into being a group, like a - oh, like somebody who's been grabbed by the government and thrown in the army. They say, "You're a member of this company." He's on a sort of a reversed third dynamic. He's - you know, he's not there by his own choice, and he's playing a game that isn't quite his game - he doesn't quite believe in it. There is no enemy, the country is at peace, and there he is. And it's a real sour situation to him. He comes out of that and you'll find him a little bit antisocial. See, something has happened to his third dynamic and it is an inverted third now. In other words he's forced to be there.

Now, if he is willing to be there, and if he's capable of being there and if he can carry his own weight as a member of the team, you could say he - and by "member of the team" we mean member of a nation, member of a professional group or anything like that - just call anything a team, any group. And we find that this individual is relatively unstressed by the group. He can exist in groups easily. Groups are of no great concern to him. He'd feel kind of happy if he was all by his lonesome half the time and, you know, that sort of thing. He'd hate to have to fall out of association with his fellow man.

Well, after you've forced him to be in association with his fellow man for a while, then he starts to fall away with groups. Why? The other factor of games has entered in: penalty. And one of the penalties can be "forced to play a game." That's the worst penalty that could occur: to be forced to play a gamewhich is the only thing he wants to do - play a game. But the other ingredient is power of choice. Is he playing this game on his own choice, or is he playing this game on somebody else's choice?

Now, actually, you don't have to introduce too much power of choice into a fellow to make a good team member. At least you have to say, "We pay pretty good in the army. We give you good chow. There are a lot of good fellows in here. Do you want to join? Okay, sign on the dotted line. That's fine. Here you go." At least say that - even if you draft him, say that, for heaven's sakes! Don't say, "Come here, you!" - send him down to the supply sergeant and misfit him. He's had it from there on.

Now, a great many of the current games in which people are involved are unknown to them. All they are is an effect of a game they are not even onesided about. You see, they're effect of a game which is senior to their game. You see that position?

So that this funny thing happens: Here you are, you're playing a game, you're getting along all right - you're playing a game called store, let's say, and you're doing all right. The customers come in, and you sell them stuff, and the store down the street is trying to sell them stuff, and you try to sell them stuff - you know, just a standard game, it's - so on.

Somebody suddenly sweeps in from somewhere who is playing a game that you know not what of, and suddenly tells you that your prices are now double. And you say, "Oh no, double prices, less customers. Oh well, we'll get on with it." And he gets on and plays the game, but he's a little bit leery, because - what's happened to him? He's become aware of another game that he can be influenced by, which he himself can't really influence or play, you see? He doesn't have any real share in playing this other game, but it can affect the game he's playing. Fabulous. He gets along all right, he's a little bit leery about the whole thing.

Then one day somebody comes in and says, "You've been nationalized. You're now part of the national distribution centers for cocoa." And there went his game.

And he says, "Well, you can't do this to me." And he tries to think of a reason. He says, "You'll - you'll - l - I won't - I won't be making any money."

And you say, "Oh, well, yes. Nationalization - everybody makes money. Here, take it! It's all right. You'll get more pay than you had before - than you made in profit. See, you'll get more pay."

The fellow kind of says, "Well, all right." But the efficiency of the store goes down. Why does it go down? Because he didn't have a part in the larger game.

Now, democracy has entered in an ingredient which at least makes this acceptable and permits a game to go on. In democracy he is the one who can - no matter how small that vote is, and microscopic - influence the government, and so he can have a part in the larger game.

Therefore, he always says, "Well, I voted against it and this is what I get. But other fellows had the other idea. And well, I'm stuck with it. All right. We still had a say about it. If I'd gotten out and talked a little bit harder," and so on. But if he did vote for the organization that did nationalize his store, he can then say, "Well, I did it," you know, "I've had it, that's that. Here I am." That's the other game. "Okay, I'll stay in here and play a game." In other words, there's still an observable game.

Now, let's get two things then. There is the person who is involved in an unobservable game and the person who is involved in an observable game.

In the Western world, we have systems of government which permit the individual to play an observable game wherever he is influenced by the government or otherwise. He still has some little power of choice in there, even though it's just one vote or his speaking up at a meeting of his party or something of the sort, which influences that greater game. If we were to take that away from him, we would get this other situation where the unknown game suddenly sweeps in, knocks out his customers by doubling his prices, suddenly puts everything on a ration - he knows that all the warehouses along the river are jammed with cocoa and they say, "You can only sell one pound per day."

"Oh no," he says, "this is it." So he begins to resist, resist, resist, resist. So he's resisting the games in which he's involved. He doesn't want to play that game.

Now, he may take up hobbies. He may take up something else. But if he's in a government that doesn't permit him to vote, he won't get much chance to do that.

Do you see, then, how the power of choice influences the game? It doesn't much matter how - now get this, get this real straight - it doesn't much matter how tough the game is. It doesn't much matter how thoroughly arduous - you might say, to be colloquial, "hard-boiled" - and mean this game is, how vicious are its penalties, how often he runs across heads hanging from the telephone poles. He can survive in that, don't you see, as long as he has some power of choice. He's - at least belongs to one side - he's a member of the Green Shirts or something of the sort. It's a brutal society but he can still survive in it somehow or another because he has elected to be a member of the Green Shirts and they're fighting the Blue Shirts, you know, and they're hanging everybody. It's still a game, it's an observable game that he sees.

But, supposing everybody makes it very nice for him. Supposing everybody takes care of him. Supposing there's no Green Shirts fighting any Blue Shirts everywhere, and he has all kinds of leisure time. You know he'll get an idea that a brutal game is being hit by a match straw. Do you see what could happen there?

Now, the funny part of it is, if his power of choice is not consulted, and he is put into a position of complete leisure and complete and utter relaxation with no worries at all about food, clothing and shelter, the next thing you know, he's down there in a dark meeting room saying "raw, red revolution." Why? Revolt against what? And do you know ruler after ruler in time immemorial has observed this phenomena and has never quite accounted for it. "He did everything he could for them."

One great industrialist whose name I'm sure that you have heard ofHershey, the maker of chocolates - in his old age spent a moment on the top of his factory (which he had very beautifully built for all of his people) surrounded, if you please, on all sides by howling crowds who had poured out of their special Hershey - built homes to shoot at him with live ammunition. They hated him. Why?

They never had any right in the game whatsoever. They had no rights in the game. They had no power of choice in the game. Economic duress forced them to work in the factory. They never had anything like a staff meeting. They never had anything to say about anything. The next thing you know, why, Hershey in his great benignity would knock down their houses and build another row. Very nice houses, but nobody had asked to move anybody from any other company house to another company house. You get the idea? And those people went into red revolt, and they couldn't have had it better.

So if you just drop out this business of "couldn't have had it better," if you just drop out the idea of what is comfort and what is punishment and what is affluence - if you just drop these out of the computation, we at once see what's happening. We at once see what's happening.

If we have a nation pulling together to pull itself up by its bootstraps, you might say, and if everybody has agreed that we ought to do this, the most terrific stresses can be put upon that nation, or the best prosperity you ever saw could be put upon it, without wrecking its morale. Do you see that?

But the second we tell them to be better for their own sakes because we're going to make them so, or reversely, if we brutalize them without anything being understood by them at all (unobservable game; they're just being brutalized, it's not their game) - either of these two things will cause a revolution because there is no game in progress in which the individual can participate. And he'll make a game every time. You follow me? He'll make a game every time.

So we have one great security about a thetan which tremendously affects your auditing of thetans. One thing we really know: whatever his other reactions are, he will make a game out of anything. No matter what state we find him in, he's going to make a game out of it. And if he is given no power of choice over the game which he really elects to play, no power of choice over it at all, he will then create another side game. Therefore, the idea of nationalization versus non-nationalization would never be a point. Back of those things we would have lingering, "Is it on our say-so or is it on somebody else's say-so?" Do you see that?

Therefore, actually, no democracy has anything really to fear from these "superautocracies" of one kind or another. They really have nothing to fear. In the long run, the autocracy's people will create a game of their own choice. Now that is what establishes the creation of a game.

How far down do we have to go to find that we are doing it on our own choice? And that's the game. How far back do we have to fall, how many penalty ridges do we have to drop through, to at length find something we can do of our own choice? Or how far forward do we have to attack, and how much do we have to destroy, in order to assert our power of choice and our capability in exercising it? And those two reactions can always be counted on and are found in every preclear you audit.

Let's audit this way now: "All right, sit down. No, shut up. Now, I know exactly what's wrong with you. Shut up. You - you're addicted to mother-in-laws. That's the whole thing that's the matter. I know you don't have a mother - shut up. All right. Now, I want you to run (and you better had) - l want you to run things that are right about mother-in-laws because I'm going to sit here and make you like mother-in-laws."

What's going to happen? One of two things, established somewhat by his games capability. He is going to fall back in processing to a point that he considers his own game. Got it? See just how far back he's going to fall? Now, he's going to find a point that's his own game and it doesn't include you. And now let's go the other way - let's go the other way forward or he's going to attack you to make a game out of this auditing session wherein you are the opponent. One of those two things will occur.

Now, the apparency to us is that he goes into apathy on the one hand, or goes into violent rage on the other hand, and we have ways to handle this. But what could you predict then?

Now, here's a great oddity. I have an auditing trick that occasionally upsets preclears, particularly preclears that are very propitiative and they just couldn't consider anything ever offending them in their entire lives, you know? You know preclears, they're very … And - particularly this preclear reacts wonderfullythey all react on this somehow or another - but this propitiative preclear reacts wonderfully. We start running something, I've been very gentle, I've observed the Auditor's Code, I've done everything possible, I'm seeing they're comfortable and everything's going along fine. And we open the session very quietly and we bridge every command and we're just doing nicely and so forth.

And then the preclear starts to run a little bit out of havingness or something of the sort, or something like this happens, and starts to dope off. Such a preclear does, rather easily. He's just upset rather easily on his consciousness - his awareness balance is poor. And he all of a sudden starts to dope off. And I ask him, "What have I done wrong?"

This fellow just comes out of it. "What have you done wrong? You mean to say there's somebody in the world that could do?" This is the mechanism: "You mean to say there's somebody in the world that could do something wrong except myself'? You mean you have really wronged me? Let me see, this is a new and interesting idea." And he comes right up out of it. Continues to run the session very smoothly.

A little bit later gets agitated. Runs out of havingness again, you know. The mechanisms are all there, but he gets quite agitated and gets nervous and shifts his feet and so forth. And you know what you've done, but you're just not going to take any time to remedy his havingness.

You say, "What have I done wrong now?"

He'll generally find something a couple of minutes ago that he can say you did wrong. But he comes right out of it. Something occurs as you do this.

Well, what have you done? You've destroyed any idea he had that you and he were opposing teams. You've just overtly destroyed this idea with him. He went down into havingness. He felt he was being reached by you a little bit too tightly. He was trying to dodge a little bit. He thought you were chewing up his masses. His consideration was that you were about to eat him up whole cloth in some way or another and he started to dope or get agitated - and he does this mechanically by running out of havingness, which means something is getting his havingness - the next thing he's going to do is assume it's you.

So you all of a sudden say, "What have I done wrong?" which is, "There isn't this kind of a game going on here." You're saying, "We are interested in putting you into a condition where you are capable of playing any kind of game." We're saying, "We are fixing you up so that you are an acceptable teammate." We're saying, "There's a lot of enemies out in life, and you and I are conniving to just fix their clocks but good." And he comes right up out of it. He feels much - alert and stronger.

An odd mechanism, isn't it? But there are thousands of such mechanisms involved in playing games - just thousands.

Life as a whole is a very hard thing to observe. It has enormous numbers of facets in all directions. There is all kinds of peculiar reactions. Why is it that this being is actually willing to make and guide a caterpillar body and get et up every time it turns around? What fun is there in being eaten every now and then? Occasionally, by accident, being in the wrong place to be run over by a tractor. Just what fun is there in that kind of livingness? Well, I don't know - not ever having been a caterpillar. But I can tell you rather decidedly that there must be some game connected with it. There must be some game connected with it one way or the other, or he wouldn't be there.

And if we had an intimate discussion with a caterpillar, we would say, "What are you doing?"

And he would say, "Well, I'm spinning a web and getting along all right."

"Well I know, but don't you expect you'll be et up?"

"Huh! I have ways to lick that. I have ways to take care of that. Boy, will I give the next guy that eats me indigestion!" All right.

So we get to the level of game which is observably a game to the individual: It's where he has a response to the game play against him. And somewhere a person has a response level, and that is his game level that he considers a game. But the funny part of it is, as you raise him up the Tone Scale he now has a wider response level. In other words, he has the idea that somebody attacks him, he can attack them. Somewhere he has this. And as we go up from there, why, there's more of him can attack more of them bigger. And he can withstand more powerful and treacherous attacks. He can respond on a game level. There is something he can attack, something he can whip. And we put him up higher and higher and higher, and he always is attaining what we call reality. And reality is: What can he protect, and what can he attack? And those two items form his reality.

An individual, then, who can only attack himself, and can only be attacked by himself, must be playing a terrifically low-order game. But it's real. It's a real game to him. That is the game that could be improved. The funny part of it is, he won't let go of that game until he finds a higher game where he can get a response; where he himself is capable of a response to attacks which come in to him.

For instance, we find two little kids - they're eight years old - they're fast friends, they fight all the time. They're inseparable, we just never see them but what they're together. And they fight, fight, fight, fight; we're pulling them off of each other all the time. We part them. One moves away, goes to the other side of the town, both of them become utterly disconsolate. Two little boys will always fight, one way or the other, and they fight with those that they have a good response to.

Now these two, oddly enough, will turn outward and fight others who attack them. And we have a fairly good picture of brothers and sisters andtwo sisters and so forth. Let somebody attack them as a duo and they become a team. There's another game in progress. But with that game lacking, they attack and counterattack each other, quite naturally. Therefore, a game is in progress.

It's quite interesting to behold that an individual who has gone down to the point of game where he can only respond to himself, where he can only attack himself, still does so. That's what's fabulous - he still does so. He can attack himself, he does. But if he does, he will figure out a way for himself to attack himself. You got the idea? Because that's his level of game, he's got it going both ways. And if he has it going both ways, it's actually a game level and therefore responds to all the rules of game. All the rules of game then apply.

Now, why do we use games anyhow? Why do we use this mechanism? Because it's the most observable mechanism of life as a whole which we can regard in a microcosm. Datum of gradient magnitude.

Things are comprehensible when understood by a datum of comparable magnitude. We can understand God because we know about the Devil. We understand God all by himself, and people say, "There is only one God, and then the Devil." They have to say, "and then the Devil," because nobody would ever grasp the idea of one God unless there were other gods by which to evaluate it.

You would have a difficult time grasping the idea of the livingness of another person if you yourself were not alive. You do have a difficult time grasping the deadness of a rock if you are not a rock. You say, "Well, that's a pretty dead rock." In earlier times, rocks were supposed to have talked and walked and everything else - it was trying to understand rocks. Well, maybe people could mock up rocks that talked and walked, we won't worry about that. But certainly, one rock all by itself sitting in the world would become a mystery - become a complete mystery. Everybody would go and look at it. They'd say, "Look at that uh, that - what is it?"

People would say, "Its name is a rock."

"How do you - how do you pronounce it? Oh, it's a rock."

That's an effort to get a datum of comparable magnitude - a syllable called rock that will compare with a solid object called rock. But people will still go and look at it, because there isn't another datum. This is a two-pole universe, because it's a game universe. All right.

So they go down to Mecca and they see this lodestone which used to float in the air, and there was only one like it anywhere in the world and it formed a great mystery - completely aside from the fact that it was supposed to float in the air. Actually there's no evidence that the holy stone down there ever floated in the air - no evidence. But there is ample evidence that demonstrates that there wa's an Emanator back on the track which was one stone hanging in the middle of the air which gave out atomic radiation and knocked guys flat when they looked at it. Good recruiting mechanism, too, for somebody else's team somewhere.

Now, we must, at once, then, observe this fact about this universe - that this universe is only as good and as visible as it is co-owned. That universe which you mock up all by yourself, knowing you mocked it up all by yourself, gets very thin and goes pffff! Unless you introduce this other mechanism: You mock it up saying, "It's Joe's, he created it." And then you've got it. Now that's just one mechanism. Well, that's by consideration too, you know. But that one mechanism can be worked into an enormous number of mechanisms, because it's the dual mechanism.

You say, "The other team's got it." Or you say, "The other team are trying to get this and it's mine." And you didn't have anything to do with creating it at all, see. But boy, is it solid. It's the nicest, solidest thing you ever saw in your life, this mass that you have there of some kind or another. It's being misowned. It takes actually two sides to observe a playing field. Now, don't tell me that happened by accident.

Datum of gradient magnitude is a little bit different. We understand this big thing because we understand this little thing which contains all the parts of this big one, see? So when we say "games," we are saying just that. There are goal posts - you could figure out a game that had twenty opposing goal posts, while you only had one goal post. But there are goal posts, there are teams, and you're trying to get to the other fellow's goal post and he's trying to get to your goal post, and you are opposing him and he is opposing you. There is a playing field and there's usually something to play with - such as a ball, something like this. That's an elementary game.

Now, there are many other kinds of games, but they don't exceed the laws of games. They require opposition, they require a bit of randomity, and they require some mass connected with it. Do you see? It just requires certain elements. Oddly enough, the elements are freedom, problems and havingness - with a consequence below each one of penalties - and mood of game.

Freedom can be a penalty: "You, Jones, will now leave the field."

A problem can be a penalty. Football men sometimes sit up all night worrying about the enemy tactics. They finally get to a point of where it is actually a penalty. They figure-figure and worry-worry and worry-worry-worry, and it starts them worrying about life at large and themselves in peculiar. Now, here we have a problem as a penalty: "You've got to solve this problem. If you don't, that's the end of you. Now you sit out there on the sidelines, Jones, until you finally get the signals straight."

And havingness: "Jones, turn in your suit. Do not set foot in that locker room again." You get the idea?

Now, penalties, then, fit under each one of these things of freedom, problems and havingness. Now, we look at life at large and we take freedom, problems and havingness and we stack them up on each dynamic, and we find then how each dynamic can become a game. Freedom, problems and havingness together can be a game, sort of mixed up on the "only one" basis. The individual's fighting himself and he's fighting something else, and we're not quite sure what he's fighting but he's sure fighting something and it's sure fighting him. And there he sits with an horrible expression on his face when we say, "Go over that again."

Now, freedom, problems and havingness add up this way: Havingness on the first dynamic would be the body, its mass. Problems would be the mind, including the reactive bank, the somatic mind, and the ridges and bric-a-brac and anchor points and stuff and junk, you know? It isn't quite observable and it isn't quite mass, but there it is; and it certainly co-mixes into a considerable problem. And then under freedom, we have here, "thetan." We actually have these three parts being kept up in the individual at any given moment. These are the three parts of a game.

The mind, if we consider a mind the thinkingness action of a thetan upon a body, assisted by various mechanical energy responses - if that is a mind, and we could define it just that way - we would find that it was capable of problems. It thought. It could pose problems to itself and solve problems.

Thetan all by himself can go out there eighty-nine feet back of his head and know all about it. No game. Total knowingness equals no game. Total notknowingness equals no game. An absolute lose would be "Never play the game again." An absolute win would be "This man is the champ. No opponents."

Champion tennis player trots down to the court - he wants a little bit of exercise, you know. He's all slicked up, and got the jersey on in which he won the national finals of something, you know. And he goes down there, and an old battered racket, and he's going to just fix everything up fine.

He says, "Well boys, how about batting a few across the net?"

No game. Nobody to play tennis with. He's too good. Somebody humors him finally, bats some balls at him, watches them come back with the velocity of a high-explosive bullet. This fellow, after a while, he's going to say, "Hm, now wait a minute here. I'm not getting any game. There's nobody playing tennis with me at all. Well, I know what I'll do," and I've actually seen a golfer do this, by the way, "I'll strap up my arm because it's so bad off, and play golf with one hand." And he got a game that way. His golf was never any good afterwards, either. But he could play lots of golf, couldn't he? But having made the fatal postulate "I shall limit the game," he then may continue to limit his game. All right.

So we make a stable Theta Clear out of a preclear. We just sleek them up - boy, are they smooth. And they go back to their group, and the group says, "Boy, do you look good."

And the person says, "Yes, I certainly do feel good. I feel fine. Haven't got a problem in the world."

And the group starts talking amongst itself, and one of them is saying, "Oh, I'm having the most horrible time. You know what she said to me last night? She said to me you (mumble) just one more time and I'll just - boom!"

And the other one says, "Yes, I know how that is. I'm having an awful lot of trouble with my husband, he's having a terrible time," and so forth.

And they're talking back and forth. And this person sits there, gaahhhh, saying, "I feel wonderful" - listens to this for a little while. And you the auditor, a short time later, you pick up this preclear and this preclear is duhhh. You say, "Be three feet back of your head," and they say, "What head?"

You've educated them into what problems they can actually have. They can have problems in performance. You've given them a new category of problems, and they expertly can fix themselves up with these problems. How? Very neat - neat but not gaudy, and very smooth.

What must have happened was that you audited them to a point of no game. So we have as an actual technical term in Games Processing, a no-game condition. And this occurs when one wins completely or when loses - when one loses utterly. It's a no-game condition.

The fellow who still has to drive an automobile after his fifth accident with automobiles - you know, trying to get away at the traffic lights first, that was his game with an automobile, and he just - well, after the fifth accident, he … He's still driving an automobile. But what do you know? It's a no-game condition, even though he continues to drive an automobile.

Now, you see what fools us in life. He can tell us, "Once upon a time I used to enjoy driving" - after a while he'll forget even this, you see - " but I used to enjoy driving and now it's just drudgery. I don't know what's happened." Trouble is, he's still playing the game that he lost. He's lost this game so well that he knows he lost it, and he's still playing it, so it is not a game.

And that is the only kind of livingness that is not a game: It's a game that you're continuing to play after a totality of win or lose which removes it from your reality of games, because you cannot any longer really respond while doing it. You can be attacked without response, and therefore it is not a game, and therefore it is not your idea of what to do. And you haven't got any idea this is a good thing to do anymore. The fellow knows he's just going to go to pieces if he keeps on driving this automobile. He'll do anything he can think of to get out of driving the automobile, but he has to go on driving the automobile. It's sheer drudgery. The thought of taking a long trip is the most miserable thing to him that possibly could happen. He's playing a game that he has lost.

And a race driver who has just cleaned up everything everywhere gets into his pleasure car - he can beat all the drivers in the world, and he's got to drive fifty miles up the line, and you'd think that somebody was going to beat him the whole distance the way he grues about it. He has been a champion. Maybe he's still champion, but he's no longer driving races. And he's then no longer driving. Don't you see? So you can go out the spout either way.

What your preclear objects to, then, is a no-game condition. And beware, because the preclear, just as - just as soon as not, just as soon as looking at you, will make a game out of auditing instead of using auditing to find another game.

You as an auditor can audit this preclear with very little success, if the game becomes auditing only, unless you break this and rehabilitate his ability to play a game. Now, you are trying to put people back in the game. You are not trying to free people. You are not trying to get an opponent going. I'm sure you're not trying to make slaves. If we ever wanted to make any slaves, god help the human race. We don't. You can't play a game in that way.

There are enough native and natural, as you might say, natural-born enemies to the human race to provide enough opponents for a long time to come. We could sit here and discuss possible opponents for hours and hours and hours, doing nothing but listing them. Nothing but listing them. Man has more enemies than you could easily account for.

But in view of the fact that the individual man has no great response value toward any one of these enemies - in other words, flu bugs attack you, you certainly don't do much talking about and attacking flu bugs, see? You get the idea? They can reach you, you can't reach them, therefore that's a no-game condition. You've lost too often about the subject of flu, colds. See? You know that can reach you, so it's not a game, the combating of flu bugs. It then becomes an unsolvable problem or some such category. Or "Somebody else is working on it. I can't do anything about it," you see? You get the no-responsibility. It's then a no-game. And the person sick with flu is in a no-game condition. Now, why is he in a no-game condition? Because he has no response towards flu bugs. Isn't this fascinating? Very fascinating.

Everywhere we look, we see that the individual complains about one thing: a no-game condition. Therefore, would it follow that if we processed only the parts of games, will we have a preclear then that wasn't protesting? Will we have a preclear that'd be happy? Will we have a preclear that would remain stable where we put him? Is that what would happen? And the answer is, yes.

One, he stops playing a game with auditing. In other words, he stops fooling around. He stops saying, "Well, you've broken the Auditor's Code." He knows he has you in a certain set of restrictions whereby you can't claw him. He knows the rules. He knows he's got a certain level of response here. He knows you're not supposed to overwhelm him. All of a sudden he will become more and more expert on the rules. He'll get so he knows the Auditor's Code better than you ever did. You just watch a preclear doing that.

Now, a Scientologist being processed by a Scientologist happens to know the rules of the game - all too well. And he is very capable himself of making a game out of auditing. Instead of a rehabilitation of a no-game condition, he takes the game where he finds it, which is right there in the auditing chair. And he uses that as a game. Now the funny part of it is, is auditing doesn't work as a game. The maker and unmaker of games - Scientology - of course is not itself, amongst Scientologists, susceptible of game condition. You get the idea?

You as auditors then find that you are doing something else than Scientology when you start to use Scientology as a give and take: "Now I am going to be preclear and you're auditor, that's fine. Now you reach me - touch! Oh no, that's a break - I mean, that technique is not supposed to run like that. I heard it, I know - I read it in the book, the book's over here. Look-look, says it right there: 'What kind of a body couldn't you spit on?'"

"Well, there you are now, running down my havingness - I'm shot. I'll be a wreck all night. Touch, we got the auditor that time!"

The auditor finally says, "This guy is a Scientologist, he shouldn't behave like this. I'm trying to put him back in the running so he'll do a good job of it and so forth," and he starts to reach the preclear. Game condition, see? "Let's see if we can bury that thetan just a little deeper." That, of course, is the automatic response to putting auditing on a game condition.

You audit people to knock out a no-game condition, you see, in order to create an additional teammate against another team. If you do it that way, it runs like a shot. You never saw a guy audit so well as, "Just as soon as I get you swamped up a little bit, we've got to start in on an assembly line of preclears. You know, here they all are. All right. Now I want you to run out and remedy your havingness of preclears so that you'll have an easy time."

Zing, zing, zing - runs easily, "Let's go audit the preclear," see?

It wasn't a game that was occurring, because we're working as a team in the creation of a team for a game which is going on, do you see? Whereas auditing is the one thing which would make a game possible once more, and keeps a game going at the same time. So it's very, very interesting what occurs.

Do you realize that the psychoanalyst trying to reach deep and pick up that childhood incident is simply trying to reach the goal being protected by the patient. Do you see that analogy? He wants to reach a goal of some sort.

Well, you're not therefore trying to find something wrong with a preclearyou want to raise his capabilities. And you don't have to find any goal in the preclear to raise his capabilities, you just exercise him through his capabilities and he comes up and all of a sudden he's able, and that's that.

Now, do you see what little bug we've been facing, then? Now, does it look like - can you look back at some of the cases you've had to do with and see that there might be a little something in what I'm saying here, hm? It's fascinating, but it seems that looking at this thing called games, in all of its parts, that we are looking at the macrocosm of life. And so looking, maybe we can learn a great deal more about life than we knew before. And we can certainly do a lot better job of auditing. The auditing that's been going on lately is fantastic. I mean, we're auditing faster and more surely than we've ever audited before, using the component parts of a game.

We find the reality of the human race is penalties. And they can be audited on penalties. And then pretty soon, having been audited on penalties, they come up into a game condition, and they become happy then, even though it's just shoveling coal. Okay?

Audience: Yes.

Well, I hope you can use the material. Want you to look it over and see what you make of it. Okay?

Audience: Okay.

Good night.

Thank you.

Thank you.