Attend!

Shall have you

Uncover and be still

Life can best be understood by likening it to a game. Since we are exterior to a great number of games we can regard them with a detached eye. If we were exterior to life instead of being involved and immersed in the living of it, it would look to us much like games look to us from our present vantage point.

For his own?

Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game — interest, contest, activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself. When we do this we find nothing left wanting in the panorama of life.

You present here

By game we mean contest of person against person, or team against team. When we say games we mean such games as baseball, polo, chess or any other such pastime. It may at one time have struck you as peculiar that men would risk bodily injury in the field of play just for the sake of “amusement.” So it might strike you as peculiar that people would go on living or would enter into the “game of life” at the risk of all the sorrow, travail, and pain just to have something to do. Evidently there is no greater curse than total idleness. Of course there is that condition where a person continues to play a game in which he is no longer interested.

Do you?

If you will but look about the room and check off items in which you are not interested, you will discover something remarkable. In a short time you will find that there is nothing in the room in which you are not interested. You are interested in everything. However, disinterest itself is one of the mechanisms of play. In order to hide something it is only necessary to make everyone disinterested in the place where the item is hidden. Disinterest is not an immediate result of interest which has worn out. Disinterest is a commodity in itself. It is palpable, it exists.

In this

By studying the elements (factors) of games (contests) we find ourselves in possession of the elements of life.

A holy place.

Life is a game. A game consists of freedom, barriers and purposes. This is a scientific fact, not merely an observation.

(Answer)

Freedom exists amongst barriers. A totality of barriers and a totality of freedom alike are no-game conditions. Each is similarly cruel. Each is similarly purposeless.

For we today

Great revolutionary movements fail. They promise unlimited freedom. That is the road to failure. Only stupid visionaries chant of endless freedom. Only the afraid and ignorant speak of and insist upon unlimited barriers.

Shall marry here

When the relation between freedom and barriers becomes too unbalanced, an unhappiness results.

And do you understand as well

“Freedom from” is alright only so long as there is a place to be free to. An endless freedom from is a perfect trap, a fear of all things.

This groom and bride

Barriers are composed of inhibiting (limiting) ideas, space, energy, masses and time. Freedom in its entirety would be a total absence of these things — but it would also be a freedom without thought or action, an unhappy condition of total nothingness.

That by the customs of our race

Fixed on too many barriers, man yearns to be free. But launched into total freedom he is purposeless and miserable.

And wish them well.

There is freedom amongst barriers. If the barriers are known and the freedoms are known there can be life, living, happiness, a game.

You pledge to him and only him

The restrictions of a government, or a job, give an employee his freedom. Without known restrictions, an employee is a slave, doomed to the fears of uncertainty in all his actions.

Rejoice!

Executives in business and government can fail in three ways and thus bring about a chaos in their department. They can:# Seem to give endless freedom.

Your kiss and your caress?

1. Seem to give endless barriers.

You line of struggling life

Do you? From aeons gone to now

Executive confidence, therefore, consists of imposing and enforcing an adequate balance between their people’s freedom and the unit’s barriers and in being precise and consistent about those freedoms and barriers. Such an executive, adding only in himself initiative and purpose, can have a department with initiative and purpose.

For here again your track is sped

An employee buying and/or insisting upon freedom only will become a slave. Knowing the above facts he must insist upon a workable balance between freedom and barriers.

(Answer)

An examination of the dynamics above will demonstrate the possibility of a combination of teams. Two third dynamics can engage one another as teams. The first dynamic can ally itself with the fifth dynamic against, let us say, the sixth dynamic and so have a game. In other words, the dynamics are an outline of possible teams and interplays. As everyone is engaged in several games an examination of the dynamics will plot for him and clarify for him the various teams he is playing upon. If an individual can discover that he is only playing on the first dynamic and that he belongs to no other team, it is certain that this individual will lose, for he has before him seven remaining dynamics. And the first dynamic is seldom capable of besting by itself all the remaining dynamics. In Scientology we call this condition the “only one.” Here is self- determinism in the guise of selfish determinism and here is an individual who will most certainly be overwhelmed. To enjoy life one must be some part of life.

And winged into a future fate

There is the principle in Scientology called pan-determinism. This could be loosely defined as determining the activities of two or more sides in a game simultaneously. For instance, a person playing chess is being self-determined and is playing chess against an opponent. A person who is pan-determined on the subject of chess could play both sides of the board. One is pan-determined about any game to which he is senior. He is self-determined only in any game to which he is junior. For instance, a general of an army is pan-determined concerning an argument between two privates or even two companies of his command. He is pan-determined in this case, but when he confronts another army led by another general, he becomes self-determined. The game in this wise could be said to be larger than himself. The game becomes even larger than this when the general seeks to play the parts of all the political heads which should be above him. This is the main reason why dictatorship doesn’t work. It is all but impossible for one man to be pan-determined about the entire system of games which comprise a nation. He starts taking sides and then to that degree becomes much less than the government which he is seeking to run.

A union of a man and bride

It has been stylish in past ages to insist only upon freedom. The French Revolution furnishes an excellent example for this. In the late part of the 18th century, the nobles of France became so self-determined against the remainder of the country and were so incapable of taking the parts of the populace that the nobles were destroyed. Immediately the populace itself sought to take over the government and, being trained and being intensely antipathetic to any and all restraints, their war cry became “Freedom.” They had no further restrictions or barriers. The rules of government were thrown aside. Theft and brigandage took the place of economics. The populace, therefore, found itself in a deeper trap and discovered itself to be involved with a dictatorship which was far more restrictive than anything they had experienced before the Revolution.

Well then

Although man continually uses “Freedom” for his war cry he only succeeds in establishing further entrapment for himself. The reason for this is a very simple one. A game consists of freedom and barriers and purposes. When man drops the idea of restrictions or barriers he loses at once control over barriers. He becomes selfdetermined about barriers and not pan-determined, thus he cannot control the barriers. The barriers left uncontrolled then and there trap him.

Whose child shall pace

The dwindling spiral of the apparency create-survive-destroy comes about directly that man shuns barriers. If he considers all restrictions and barriers his enemies he is of course refusing to control them in any way and thus he starts his own dwindling spiral. A race which is educated to think in terms of freedom only is very easily entrapped. No one in the nation will take responsibility for restrictions, therefore restrictions apparently become less and less. As these restrictions lessen so lessens the freedom of the individual. One cannot be free from a wall unless there is a wall. Lacking any restrictions life becomes purposeless, random, chaotic.

Know that Life is stark

A good manager must be capable of taking responsibility for restrictions, in that freedom, to exist, must have barriers. A failure to take initiative on the subject of restrictions or barriers causes these things to arise all by themselves and exist without consent or direction.

A further span

There are various states of mind which bring about happiness. That state of mind which insists only upon freedom can bring about nothing but unhappiness. It would be better to develop a thought pattern which looked for new ways to be entrapped and things to be trapped in than to suffer the eventual total entrapment of dwelling upon freedom only. A man who is willing to accept restrictions and barriers and is not afraid of them is free. A man who fights restrictions and barriers will always be trapped.

And often somewhat grim

As it can be seen in any game, purposes become counter-posed. There is the matter of purpose-counter-purpose in almost any game played in a field with two teams. One team has the idea of reaching the goal of the other, and the other has the idea of reaching the goal of the first. Their purposes are at war and this warring of purposes makes a game.

Of Destiny

The war of purposes gives us what we call problems. A problem has the anatomy of purposes. A problem consists of two or more purposes opposed. It does not matter what problem you face or have faced, the basic anatomy of that problem is purpose- counter-purpose.

And tiredness

In actual testing in Scientology it has been discovered that a person begins to suffer from problems when he does not have enough of them. There is the old saw (maxim) that if you want a thing done give it to a busy man to do. Similarly, if you want a happy associate make sure that he is a man who can have lots of problems.

And Life.

From this we get the oddity of a high incidence of neurosis in the families of the rich. These people have very little to do and have very few problems. The basic problems of food, clothing and shelter are already solved for them. We would suppose, then, if it were true that an individual’s happiness depended only upon his freedom, these people would be happy. However, they are not happy. What brings about their unhappiness? It is the lack of problems. Although successful processing in Scientology would depend upon taking all three elements of games into consideration — and indeed that is the secret of bettering people: taking freedom, barriers and purposes into consideration and balancing them — it could be said that you could make a man well simply by sitting down with him and asking him to invent problems, one after the other. The invention of synthetic problems would be found to free his mind and make him more able. Of course, there is another factor involved in this in that it is he who is inventing the problems and therefore he is becoming pan-determined about problems rather than being in one place with all problems opposed to him.

And fret and pain

An unhappy man is one who is considering continually how to become free. One sees this in the clerk who is continually trying to avoid work. Although he has a great deal of leisure time he is not enjoying any part of it. He is trying to avoid contact with masses and energies and spaces. He eventually becomes trapped in some sort of a lethargy. If this man could merely change his mind and start “worrying” about how he could get more work to do, his happiness level would increase markedly. One who is plotting continually how to get out of things will be miserable. One who is plotting how to get into things has a much better chance of becoming happy.

Forbear!

There is, of course, the matter of being forced to play games in which one has no interest — a war into which one is drafted is an excellent example of this. One is not interested in the purposes of the war and yet one finds himself fighting it. Thus there must be an additional element and this element is “the power of choice.”

And sickness do beget

One could say, then, that life is a game and that the ability to play a game consists of tolerance for freedom and barriers and an insight into purposes, with the power of choice over participation.

A state of mind where spring romance

These four elements — freedom, barriers, purposes and power of choice — are the guiding elements of life. There are only two factors above these and both of them are related to these. The first is the ability to create with of course its negative, the ability to uncreate, and the second is the ability to make a postulate (to consider, to say a thing and have it be true). This, then, is the broad picture of life, and in bringing life into focus and in making it less confusing these elements are used for the analysis.

For here shall be

(Continued in PAB 85 on page 428.)

Is far away and dead

No calumny

And yet for valor and for strength

You must abide and

Or whispered word against

Create still

Or Woman thouHis health, his purpose and repose.

For this the union you contract

Do you.

Does wipe away

All sorrow

(Answer)

Of the past.

And do you take

Speak out then now

His fortune

If any man

At its prime and ebb

Or girl would speak

And see

And say here a

With him his best fortune

Reason why

For us all?

These two should not

Do you? Be wed.

And silence heard

(Answer)

Does speak out plain

There’re none.

Good then Tam

I’m sure you will

So now

And surer yet you’ll fare

My Tam

Full well and staunchly

Stand steady here

As a wife.

Do you today intend

Now Jay listen well.

For him beside you there

The tides of fortune and of life

To be to him a wife!

Are sometimes fair or grim

And in this life the young man seeks

(Answer)

For victory afar

And often scants the fireside

And do you ken

And turns away from home’s sweet face

That Jay hereAnd thinks

His loved ones cannot fare

To keep her well or ill?

At allDo you?

Beside his side.

And thinking thus they go.

(Answer)

You know this.

Then be cautioned so

And when she’s older

And take thy ownDo you then

E’en though they sleep

Keep her still? Do you? Beneath foul straw

And eat

(Answer)

Thin bread

And walk a pavement less than kind

Now Jay, girls need clothes

And keep thy wife and they who come

And food and

Beside thy side.

Tender happiness and frills

Keep them, Jay, by your side

A pan, a comb, perhaps a cat

In rain or sleet

All caprice if you will

Or summer sun

But still

And comfort them

They need them.

And give them care

Do you then

And share with them thy life.

Provide?

For times are changed

Do you? And woman’s place

Is not a hearth or home

(Answer)

But striding out to victory

Beside her husband’s side.

Hear well, sweet Tam

This, Jay, is a modern world

For promise binds

And Man

Young men are free and may forget

Has changed.

Remind him then

But Jay let’s think on it well

That you may have

For if stands aught in you

Necessities and follies, too.

Of doubt

Now Jay!

That you can take and keep

Attend! And love her well this wife

Then stay your handDo you best man possess a ring?

And we shall sayJay take it please

No more,

And Tam

For fatal and of full tight bind

Your hand he will enclasp

Are these the words

We have it now.

I next will speak.

Repeat!

Shall I go on?

“I, Tam”

(Answer) (Answer)

“Do hereby take”

And you Tam listen well

(Answer)

And you, Jay answer swift

“You, Jay”

Prepared?

(Answer)

“For my husband”

(Answer) (Answer)

Jay, do you pledge to take

And, Jay

This woman for your lawful wife?

Do now repeat “I, Jay”

(Answer) (Answer)

“Do hereby take”

Do you, Jay Camp(Answer)

Make promise here

“You, Tam”

Before us all

(Answer)

“For my lawful wedded wife.

”Now Jay kiss your bride

(Answer)

And hug her well

And all of you

Put on the ring!

Come toast and drink

Rejoice all here

Their health

For we have wed

That it may last

Our Jay and our Tam

Until that day when death

And wish them well.

Itself,

The severer of all ties

All here repeat!

Shall end

Are they by witness

The thing which we have done

Man and wife?

Today.

(Answer)

Rejoice and go your many ways

Dismiss.

[The above Scientology Wedding Ceremony was originally issued as part of PAB 84, 15 May 1956, page 421]