Play the Master Game

In my search for the Elixir of Life, I did a lot of reading and some traveling. One of the most influential books that kept me out of the pitfalls along the spiritual path was The Master Game by Robert DeRopp. This book impressed me so much that I bought a dozen copies and gave them to friends who also were seekers. What I liked about it was that it was a critical examination of many spiritual practices from the pragmatic perspective of a biochemist. If every seeker were to read this book, destructive cults like Scientology would go out of business.

In The Master Game, DeRopp makes the observation that “what people really need and demand from life is not wealth, comfort, or esteem, but games worth playing.” He advises his readers to “seek, above all, for a game worth playing… Having found the game, play it with intensity – play as if your life and sanity depended on it. (They do depend on it).” DeRopp goes on to divide games into “object” games and “meta” games. Object games have as their goal the attainment of material things such as money, power, a home, and status. Meta games are played for intangibles such as truth, beauty, justice, or knowledge.

At the pinnacle of the meta games is the Master Game: the quest for enlightenment, salvation, awakening, the elixir of life. It’s the game we play against ourselves, our own mind and ego. The ultimate goal is to lose your self and find your Self, your higher nature, which is one with God. DeRopp writes, “The basic idea...is that man is asleep, that he lives amid dreams and delusions, that he cuts himself off from the universal consciousness...to crawl into the narrow shell of a personal ego. To emerge from this narrow shell, to regain union with the universal consciousness, to pass from the darkness of the ego-centered illusion into the light of the non-ego, this was the real aim of the Religion Game as defined by the great teachers, Jesus, Gautama, Krishna, Mahavira, Lao-tze and the Platonic Socrates.”

DeRopp didn’t pull any punches when it came to describing the various types of seekers who play the Master Game. One, in particular, hit home: the dharma bum, who drifts from guru to guru, acquiring bits of wisdom but never making a long-term commitment to any one, never settling down to study, work, and live the dharma. In the summer of 1970, when I read the book, I had visited three different esoteric schools. I decided I had enough bumming around, so I hitchhiked out to Santa Rosa to ask Robert DeRopp if I could join his school.

He was devastatingly frank with me and told me I wasn’t ready and needed to go home, balance karma with my parents, and fulfill part of my dharma. So, I went back to Connecticut and got my degree. After four years of dharma fulfilling and karma balancing, I again left home to follow the spiritual path. This time, I was ready to make a commitment and do some serious spiritual work, or I should say intense playing of the Master Game, thanks to the tough-love guidance and insights I received from Robert DeRopp.