ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In 1965 L. Ron Hubbard wrote "As I have never seen wisdom do any good kept to oneself, and as I like to see others happy, and as I find the vast majority of the people can and do understand, I will keep on writing and working and teaching as long as I exist." This is truly the way he lived.

From his early days as a boy in the wilds of Montana, Ron threw himself into living, determined to find out about life by experiencing it fully, firsthand. While still a young man in his early twenties, he had traveled all over the world and become proficient in many fields, including those of pilot, mariner, engineer, explorer, and more. But always he was a writer. And, whether fiction or nonfiction, his writing was popular—not just because of his professional skill and broad experience, but because the work reflected his keen and growing knowledge of man and gave others hope that life could actually be lived successfully.

In late 1947 he wrote the first manuscript detailing his discoveries about the mind. Though it was not immediately published, early in 1948 Ron gave copies to some friends who reproduced it and passed it among their friends who then passed it on to others. (This manuscript was formally published in 1951 as the book Dianetics: The Original Thesis and later republished as The Dynamics of Life.) The interest generated by this manuscript prompted a steadily increasing flow of letters asking for further information and requesting that he detail more applications of his new subject. Ron soon found that he was spending all his time answering letters, so he decided to write and publish a comprehensive text on the subject—Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

With the release of Dianetics on May 9, 1950, a complete handbook for the application of Ron's new technology was broadly available for the first time. Public interest spread like wildfire. The book shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and remained there week after week while more than 750 Dianetics study groups sprang up within a few months of its publication.

In the meantime, shortly following the book's release, Ron announced that he would give instruction in his home at 42 Aberdeen Road, Elizabeth, New Jersey. From all over the United States, students came to receive training as auditors. Some simply arrived, parked on Ron's lawn and waited for attention. Thus the first formal auditor training began on June 2nd, 1950. The demand was so great that two more homes were soon taken over for classes, and by July it was necessary to move the training activity to even larger quarters in an office building.

The training of auditors remained one of Ron's primary efforts. By the end of 1952 he had given nearly six hundred lectures to congresses and courses, immediately forwarding his ongoing discoveries directly into the hands of auditors for use.

In October 1953, Ron delivered the 1st Advanced Clinical Course in Camden, New Jersey. It followed a pattern of combined training and research which proved very successful. Over the next eight years Ron continued this pattern, giving ACCs in the US, Australia, England and South Africa. Regarding these Ron said, "The ACC is basically a theory and research course which gives a much further insight into the phenomena of the mind and the rationale of research and investigation.... It is mainly from the ACC that we have learned how to teach other courses." Volumes of invaluable, basic technical data were developed and communicated during these courses.

In early 1961 the unprecedented success of SOP Goals procedure broke new ground for Scientology. Fast, predictable clearing for all was in reach. However, Ron found that delivering this procedure required a higher level of skill and standardness than most auditors possessed. To remedy this, Ron initiated a special project to personally brief and train experienced auditors from around the world. His plan was to bring them to a level of competence and reality which would allow them to not only get results with this tech themselves but also to train others to do the same.

Students from all points rushed to Ron's home at Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex, England, and a new era for Scientology began with the opening of the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course in May of 1961.

For the next five years Ron devoted himself to personally supervising and lecturing the Briefing Course. He gave more than 440 lectures and auditing demonstrations to these students while continuing his research and writing, and overseeing Scientology affairs internationally.

Ron himself could get consistent, fabulous results as an auditor, but he wasn't satisfied as long as others could not get that same level of results. In this concerted push at Saint Hill, he not only forwarded the more advanced levels of the tech, he standardized and simplified the communication of all of the fundamental factors which must be present for auditing to occur. TRs were refined, the auditing comm cycle was codified and Model Session was standardized. The Classification and Gradation Chart was developed at this time, laying a clear and standard path for pcs and auditors.

To further forward understanding and application of the tech, he researched the subject of study, and from that work we now have the complete technology of study itself.

In addition to the above, Ron made other remarkable advances: the exact structure of the reactive mind was mapped out and resolved; the quality of E-Meters was vastly upgraded and the basics of its use were thoroughly communicated; the exact tech of Listing and Nulling was evolved and codified; ethics technology, including PTS/SP tech, was developed and put into use; the basic policy of organization was refined, and much of the policy on which organizations now successfully run was written at this time, including the organizing board and its theory; the tech of assessment and prepared lists was developed; the first workable definition of art was discovered and delineated . . . The full list of Ron's developments during the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course is enormous.

His accomplishments didn't stop there. In the next two decades he blazed the trail to full OT and made it possible for others to follow. At the same time he stretched the lower spans of the Bridge further down and out into the society with dissemination and marketing breakthroughs, refinements of already existing tech, and totally new technology such as the Purification Rundown. When he departed his body on 24 January 1986, Ron left as his legacy the complete technologies of Dianetics and Scientology, through which the native abilities of a thetan can be rehabilitated and freedom restored.

"I'll not always be here on guard," he wrote in 1957. "The stars twinkle in the Milky Way and the wind sighs for songs across the empty fields of a planet a galaxy away.

"You won't always be here. But before you go, whisper this to your sons and their sons—The work was free. Keep it so."

It only remains for us to do the work, to audit, to train, to learn, to fully apply the tech, and Ron's goals of freedom and a better game for all will be achieved.

The editors