“Contemporary man, hypnotized by the glitter of his own gadgets, has little contact with his inner world, concerns himself with outer, not inner space. But the Master Game is played entirely in the inner world, a vast and complex territory about which men know very little. The aim of the game is true awakening, full development of the powers latent in man." - Robert S. de Ropp -
In his 'The Master Game - Beyond the Drug Experience' Robert S. de Ropp wrote...
All games are played according to rules. In man-made games such as poker the rules are imposed
by the laws of probability (odds against a straight are 254 to 1, against a flush, 508 to 1) or they are
dependent on special limitations (pawns and other pieces in chess each having its own move). In
life games, rules are imposed by natural, economic or social conditions. The player must both
remember the aim and know the rules. Apart from this, the quality of his game depends on his own
innate characteristics.
Great chess masters are born, not made. Great football players are bound to have certain physical
characteristics. The game a man can play is determined by his type (of which more later). He who
tries to play a game for which his type does not fit him violates his own essence with consequences
that are often disastrous.
Drugs and Delusions
Because teachers are so hard to find in the West, many who wish to play the Master Game try to
become their own teachers and invent their own rules. As a result, they play the game in ways
which cannot possibly give right results. The commonest example of this attempt to play the Master
Game by an unlawful set of rules is provided by the so-called psychedelic movement, of which the
high priest, in the U.S.A. at present, is that intrepid psychologist, Dr. Timothy Leary. This particular
aspect of the game is played with great enthusiasm by young people who find the accepted brands
of religion devoid of nourishment and who seek in "the drug experience" satisfaction of their
hunger for higher states of consciousness.
Because this "drug experience" approach to the Master Game is so popular, a good deal of
prominence has been given to it in the present book. It is a blind alley, a cul de sac, a dead end,
nevertheless its claims must be explored. One cannot appraise realistically any technique of altering
consciousness unless one has had an opportunity to test it personally. Nor is it wise to generalize on
the basis of one's personal experience, for the saying of Hippocrates applies especially to the
psychedelic drugs: one man's meat is another man's poison. The prohibitive legislation now being
enacted to prevent people from determining their own reactions to psychedelics strikes at one of the
most fundamental of all liberties, the liberty of the individual to explore his own inner world by
means of his own choosing. The legislation, moreover, by endowing the psychedelics with an aura
of the forbidden, actually encourages many young people to try them, purely as a gesture of
rebellion against the tyranny of so-called authorities whom they instinctjvely suspect to represent an
assembly of the spiritually dead.
When this writer states that the taking of psychedelics is not a lawful way to play the Master Game,
he speaks from his personal experience. He does not expect anyone to believe him without
personally testing the correctness of the statement. An enlightened legislature would make such
testing possible for people who feel this need to know more about their inner world. Instead of
enacting blanket prohibitions, they would provide proper facilities under which the psychedelic
experience could be studied by any who wished to find out what it had to offer in the way of
insights and illuminations. Such enlightened legislation would avoid the pitfall of making
psychedelics more attractive to the rebellious by endowing them with the aura of the forbidden. It
would prevent a lot of dangerous experimentation with inferior black-market materials, taken
without proper supervision and under wrong conditions. It would be in keeping with those
guarantees of freedom of religion which figure prominently in the Constitution, for it is clear that
devotees of the psychedelic cult regard the drugs as pathways to religious experience. Even the poor
persecuted American Indian has been allowed by the all-powerful whites to use peyote for religious
purposes. If the Indian is allowed to use peyote, why forbid the non-Indian to use LSD or
hashish?
None of which alters the fact that the Master Game, which involves the awakening of the powers
latent in man, can no more be played by swallowing a pill than can a difficult mountain peak be
ascended by sitting in an armchair drinking beer and indulging in daydreams. If the spiritual heights
could be ascended by taking psychedelics, then both the Sufis of Islam and the yogis of India would
long ago have discovered the fact, for the subtlest and most 'spiritual' of all psychedelics (hashish)
has been available in the East for centuries. But neither in the works on yoga nor in the writings of
the Sufis does one find the taking of hashish described as a pathway to liberation. The Sufis sing
the praises of wine (forbidden by the Prophet Mohammed), but the wine to which they refer is a
very special brew, the product of an inward ferment, the result of great effort and inner work. As for
the yogis, they put their trust in intensive and prolonged practices designed to awaken the latent
forces in man.
Of this more later. Here it is sufficient to say that the Master Game can never be made easy to play.
It demands all that a man has, all his feelings, all his thoughts, his entire resources, physical and
spiritual. If he tries to play it in a halfhearted way or tries to get results by unlawful means, he runs
the risk of destroying his own potential. For this reason it is better not to embark on the game at all
than to play it halfheartedly.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
So, do not be surprised if you see in the streets of Berkeley girls wearing the rapt expressions of
Madonnas or sandalled youths with the indrawn air of El Greco saints. Do not assume that the
millennium has arrived or that our population is heading en masse for Nirvana. It merely means that
a shipment of high class 'pot' has been brought in from Mexico or some really potent "hash" has
come in from Beirut. Or one of the local chemists has successfully synthesized a batch of LSD or
extracted some mescaline from peyote. I swear that half the population is high on one drug or
another - and I don't refer to 'beatniks' either. People smoke 'pot' as regularly as they smoke
tobacco. There is a general feeling of unreality. - Robert S. de Ropp - 1968 -
“The basic idea underlying all the great religions is that man is asleep,
that he lives amid dreams and delusions,
that he cuts himself off from the universal consciousness
(the only meaningful definition of God)
to crawl into the narrow shell of a personal ego."
- Robert S. de Ropp -
"Vind mensen, die in zichzelf zowel de motivatie als de aangeboren drijfveer hebben om aan hun Innerlijke Zelf te werken, en we zullen hen gidsen."
- DIMschool vzw, de énige gespecialiseerd in Zelfkennis, zijnde: het kennen van het Zelf -
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