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(We now return to Dennis’ original words from the original work)
It is a law of all games that overwhelming failure causes the being to compulsively adopt the pan-determined postulate of his opponent. This is the postulate enforced upon him at his end of the comm line. A game, then, can be regarded as a conflict of postulates wherein a being endeavors to convince his opponent of his own pan-determined (PD) postulate, while resisting the (PD) postulate arrayed against him. All games, despite their seeming complexity, can be reduced to this basic simplicity and thus understood.
All games contain conviction. Conviction, by definition, is an enforcement of knowingness. Enforcement of knowingness is called importance. Importance is the basis of all significance. Essentially, importance is a “must”.*
*It's important to note at this time, as Dennis will explain later in this work, that "must" has two meanings in TROM. "Have to" and "Can't help but". I must be known. I have to be known. You must know me. You can't help but know me. Knowing these two meanings of "must" is essential to understanding how postulates change on the Postulate Failure Cycle Chart, like how one is prevented from being known by being overwhelmed, then is left with a compulsion to prevent others from knowing them. First they can't help but being prevented from being known, then they have to prevent others from knowing them. Think of the person who is teased, bullied and rejected at school then decides to hide from others on purpose.
In games of play our four basic abilities become:
SD* PD**
1. Must be known. Must know.
2. Must not be known. Must not know.
3. Must know. Must be known.
4. Must not know. Must not be known.
*Self-Determined
**Pan-Determined
That which is considered important tends to persist and to become more solid. Solidity and persistence - need for - are thus the basic conviction phenomena in games. Things are made more solid and more persistent to convince others of their existence. The mechanism is entirely reversible: that which is persisting and solid is tended to be regarded as important.
Any importance is relative to, and can be evaluated against, any other importance. There is no absolute importance. Thus, what the being considers important is relative to the being and the games he is playing.
Thus, any field of knowledge which postulates an absolute importance is at variance with natural law. (The search for deeper significance into life or the mind is only the search for prior or greater importance. In that all importance is relative to all other importance it is both a fruitless and endless search. Various past researchers in this field have claimed to have discovered basic importances of a more or less absolute nature (‘sex’, ‘survival’, etc.) and then proceeded to develop a therapy based upon their discovery. We can now see clearly why they failed. The “button” is importance. Having now found it we can stop looking for it.
The amount of conviction required to convince a being of the existence of a postulate is relative to the being and the games he is playing. A games rule is an agreement between beings denoting permissible play. However, games rules, being postulates themselves, and being junior to the game’s postulates, also become subject to games play.
Thus, Law, Justice, etc. become themselves a games condition, and are subject to, and junior to the basic laws of games. Thus, any games rule, once introduced, immediately becomes subject to a games condition in its own right. Thus, the only immutable* laws are the four basic abilities of life itself. All else tends to be of a transient nature.
*Immutable: unchanging over time or unable to be changed: "an immutable fact"
Collecting and numbering our four basic SD postulates we get:
1. Must be known. 3. Must know.
2. Must not be known. 4. Must not know.
The basic games are:
These four numbers we shall call the legs of the basic game. The oppositions are shown by the arrows.
In that it is not possible to play a game with an effect until it has been brought into existence, all games with an effect start at (1); due to progressive postulate failure the being progresses round the legs of the basic game in the following manner:
This is forced, for an examination of the situation will now show that all four postulates, both as SD and PD, are now in failure, so no further game with the original effect is any longer playable.
This cycle is known as the Postulate Failure Cycle regarding an effect. The route around the legs is:
The four legs constitute the four legs of the goal ‘To Know’. All other goals* likewise have four legs, but an examination of them will reveal that without exception they are all methods of making known, making not-known, knowing, or not-knowing. Thus, they are junior to the goal ‘To Know’ and we need not consider them.
*By “all other goals” Dennis is talking about ‘junior goals’, like to help, to create, etc. They all can be formulated in the same way as the ‘to know’ goals package. For example, to help, to not help, to be helped, to not be helped, and to create, to not create, to be created and to not be created.
The past of the being, then, will be found to consist of the various vicissitudes* he has encountered on the legs of the goal ‘To Know’ regarding a succession of effects and substitute effects. If desired, this route can be traced back through time.
*Vicissitude: a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant:
"Her husband's sharp vicissitudes of fortune"
ALSO: alternation between opposite or contrasting things: "the vicissitude of the seasons"
Note: The Time Track* runs from 8 to 1. You work from 1 to 8, around and around.
There is a valence shift on the Track between 1 and a new substitute effect entered at 8B.
Also, a valence shift occurs between 5A and 4B.
*The period going from birth to present time.
Confused? This audio lecture with on-screen study help was specifically written for studying this chart and this section of the book.
It is to be noted that valence shifts are always diagonally across the goals package. The valence the being goes into is called the winning valence; the valence he comes out of is called the losing valence. Thus, legs 1 and 3 are winning valences, and legs 2 and 4 are losing valences. Shifts from legs 1 to 2, or 3 to 4, are not valence shifts, they are merely the super-imposition of a Mustn’t postulate over an existing Must postulate, now in failure. All valence shifts involve the adoption of a new identity, whether real or imagined.
The repository* of these experiences on the goal ‘To Know’ regarding a succession of effects and substitute effects we call the mind. Basically, then, the mind is best considered as a collection of past importance.
Due to their intrinsic** nature, past importances have a command power over the being in the present. However, as these various past importances are contacted and re-evaluated to present time realities the mind will be found to become progressively less persisting and less and less solid, and will finally vanish. Nevertheless, the being can, at any time, by re-injecting sufficient fresh importance into any part of it, cause it to reappear in any desired solidity. Needless to say, when this stage is reached the mind will no longer have a command power over the being, and his full abilities will be restored. The command power of the mind over the being is only the command power of the postulates it contains. Once these have been contacted and re-evaluated to present time realities the mind, as an entity, will be found to vanish. As the mind contains no postulates that have not been put there by the being during the playing of various games through time, it is of no value to him, and unless required for reference or aesthetic purposes is best kept in a state of vanishment.
*Repository: a place, building, or receptacle where things are or may be stored: "a deep repository for nuclear waste"
**Intrinsic: belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing.
The being enters games at a desire level; they later become an enforcement, and then an inhibition. Thus, the being will be found to be in a games condition regarding his past games. As the repository of these old games is called the mind, the being will be found to be in a games condition with his own mind. As the mind only contains his own past postulates, he cannot possibly ever win the game against his own mind. It is the one game he can only lose. Extreme examples of failure in this game we call insanity. What is called the enigma of the mind is the result of the compulsive games condition that the being is in regarding it. The attitude of the being towards his mind, or any part of it, can only be one or other of the legs of the goal ‘To Know’. Thus, the mind exhibits the following phenomena:
Any attempt to create an effect upon it (Must be known) will cause it to resist the effect (Mustn’t know). The greater the attempt to create an effect upon it the more resistive it becomes.
Any attempt to withdraw from it (Mustn’t be known) will cause the mind to seemingly pursue the being (Must know). Hence, the well-known feeling of being ‘stuck with’ one’s own mind.
Any attempt to know the mind (Must know) will cause the mind to seemingly adopt a ‘Mustn’t be known’ and become progressively more elusive.
Any attempt to resist the mind (Mustn’t know) will cause the mind to immediately enforce itself upon the being (Must be known) and overwhelm him.
It is only this compulsive games condition that a being gets into regarding his own mind, and an ignorance of its true nature, that has defeated past researchers in this field. It has the well-deserved reputation of being the most difficult subject of all to discover anything about. This compulsive games condition between the being and his own mind also accounts for the wide-spread apathy we encounter when the subject of doing something about the mind is mentioned, for most beings have long since fought themselves to a standstill on this subject; they have become resigned to what they consider the inevitable. Thus, it can be clearly seen that the mind can never be resolved by going into a games condition with it, for whichever role the being adopts his mind will invariably overwhelm him.
The key to the resolution of the mind, then, lies in exercising the being in the discovery and creation of complementary postulates; and, transiently, in unraveling the tangled mass of conflicting postulates that his mind has become. The mind, being a repository of old games, which are postulates in conflict, has no defense against the application and re-injection of complementary postulates regarding the effects it contains. In short, we vanish the mind by progressively getting the being to create, and do exercises in, complementary and conflicting postulates; to create and experience overt and motivator overwhelms, play games, and generally bring back under his own determinism these four basic postulates - both as SD and PD - which go to make up the interchange we call life. En route he will discover, or re-discover, all there is to know about life; he will also discover his true nature as a spiritual being.
Knowing the anatomy of games and the Postulate Failure Cycle, it is now possible to list all conceivable classes of overts and motivators regarding an effect. It’s also possible to list them in the order in which they were accumulated through time. Each leg of the goal ‘To Know’ has its own overt and motivator, giving us a total of 8 classes in all.
Leg 1. 1) Forcing to know. (overt).
2) Prevented from being known, (Motivator).
Leg2. 3) Preventing from knowing. (overt).
4) Forced to be known. (motivator).
Leg3 5) Forcing to be known. (overt).
6) Prevented from knowing. (motivator).
Leg4 7) Preventing from being known. (overt).
8) Forced to know. (motivator).
If one wished to address these regarding a specific effect on a being one would, of course, work backwards from 8 to 1, as the most recent experiences tend to occlude the earlier ones. Thus, to remove the command power of any effect from the mind it is only necessary to discharge these various overts and motivators where they appear on the time track. As can be seen, there are only four classes of overwhelm, and each has a common name in our language:
Forcing to know Infliction
Preventing from being known Rejection
Preventing from knowing Deprivation
Forcing to be known Revelation
Infliction/Rejection and Deprivation/Revelation each form a pair, and are associated with one or other of the two basic games. Namely:
Leg 1 commits the overt of Infliction, and suffers the motivator of rejection. Leg 2) commits the overt of Deprivation, and suffers the motivator of Revelation. Leg 3) commits the overt of Revelation, and suffers the motivator of Deprivation. Leg 4) commits the overt of Rejection, and suffers the motivator of Infliction.
Important note: It must be realized that these 4 words are only substitutes for the exact postulates as given in the Postulate Failure Cycle chart, and should only be used with that in mind. Thus, they may prove useful early on, but later the exact postulates as given on the chart must be used if you ever wish to take the mind apart cleanly.
People do tend - repeat tend - to become more or less fixed in one or other of the legs of the basic game, and take on the personality characteristics of the postulate they are dramatizing. Namely:
*In this context, simply means ‘solids’ -Editor
Most people are a composite of the above types, but you will come across an almost ‘pure’ type occasionally. Generally speaking, the more inflexible the personality, the more it will tend towards a ‘pure’ type. It can also be seen that the class of motivators the being complains of not only tells you the type of overts he compulsively commits, the leg of the basic game he is dramatizing, but also just how he got into that leg. Thus, the data is of inestimable value when dealing with the mind.
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