THE GAME (my version of Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game)

'Magister Ludi what is the goal of the Glass Bead Game?' said the postulant.

'To create a new science and art.'

'What are the rules?'

'There is to be no competition with others, all desire for reaching the goal will prevent you from doing so, and the end becomes the beginning.'

'What are the steps?

'The first step:

Remember that science only tells you about everything you see with your senses, these are sensations, feelings. It tells you only about what has 'become'. But this, you see, is only half of 'being'.

You must learn to will your thoughts out of you to meet what is 'becoming' without feelings. That is how you find the spirit. Then you shall know the counterpoint of everything thing - this is a new science.

The Second step:

Observe how the counterpoint makes an impression in you. Allow yourself to be moulded by the spirit in the world. This is the very essence of finding the Art in the game and the game is nothing without it. As long as you try to impress your self onto the spirit of things, you are wounding the spirit - or rather removing it from the things themselves so that they lose their objective truth!

Allow what has entered you to exist and die away without making any image of it. It is only from the silence that the new art is born.

The Third step:

Allow the warmth to fire your limbs to creative deeds - when you have reached this stage in the game you have brought science and art together.

'What is the glass bead?'

'You are the glass bead.'

'What do you mean?'

'A glass bead is completely individual and beautiful alone, but it can only contribute to the beauty of the game when it joins with other beads. The secret is this: it joins the other beads not out of desire, not out of competitiveness, but to create new games. Even so, it never loses its individual beauty and shape. What it becomes is what it was always intended to be. That is how the end becomes the beginning.'