About the Author

As the Founder of Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard’s discoveries on the subjects of man, the mind and spirit have helped people all over the world to better understand themselves and others.

"To know life,” he once wrote, “you’ve got to be part of life. You must get down there and look, you must get into the nooks and crannies of existence, and you must rub elbows with all kinds and types of men before you can finally establish what man is.”

And throughout his long and adventurous pursuit of knowledge, L. Ron Hubbard did just that, in the process also becoming one of the twentieth century’s most influential authors, with more than 160 million copies of his works in worldwide circulation.

His interest in the human mind was initially sparked when, at the age of twelve, he studied under Commander Joseph C. Thompson — an early student of psychoanalysis and the first United States naval officer to study with Freud in Vienna. Although Ron would ultimately reject Freudian theory as both impractical and unworkable, he nonetheless reached one pivotal conclusion: “Something can be done about the mind.”

Pursuing his search across the South Pacific to Asia, Ron became one of the few Americans admitted into holy Tibetan lamaseries in the Western Hills of China. He additionally studied with the last in the line of royal magicians from the court of Kublai Khan. Yet for all the fabled wisdom of the East, he found aching poverty and abject despair, and could only conclude, “Learning locked in mildewed books is of little use to anyone and therefore of no value unless it can be used.”

Returning to the United States, Ron pursued a course of study in engineering, mathematics and nuclear physics at George Washington University — all disciplines that would serve him well through his later inquiry into the nature and principles of life. In point of fact, he was the first to rigorously employ Western scientific methods to the study of the mind and spirit, beginning with his university research into subjects as diverse as human memory storage and the nature of aesthetics. Yet beyond basic methodology and thus a yardstick for further inquiry, university offered no real answers.

Indeed, as he later wrote, “It was very obvious that I was dealing with and living in a culture which knew less about the mind than the lowest primitive tribe I had ever come in contact with.” Consequently, he added, “I knew I would have to do a lot of research.”

That research consumed the next several decades, with the world as his laboratory. Without access to comfortable “research grants,” and supported only by his own acclaimed literary career, Ron studied some 21 races and cultures – from Pacific Northwest Indian tribes and Philippine Tagalogs to the Jibaros of Puerto Rico. (In consequence, he is also remembered today on the rosters of the prestigious New York Explorers Club in which he was a flag bearing member.)

The Second World War proved both an interruption of his research and a further impetus to develop an actual technology of the human mind. The first procedures he developed were tested at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Northern California where a then-Lieutenant L. Ron Hubbard received treatment for wounds suffered in combat. His research cases were former prisoners of Japanese internment camps — whom medical science had all but given up on. Yet with the employment of Dianetics techniques, each of those Ron worked with quickly and quite remarkably, regained health.

With the restoration of peace, Ron set out to further test the workability of Dianetics, among hundreds of individuals from all walks of life. In 1947, after developing a uniquely effective technology, one tested thoroughly in this real–world laboratory, he collected notes drawn from numerous case histories amassed through preceding years of testing, and prepared a thesis detailing both underlying theory and techniques. Copies of the manuscript were distributed to medical and scientific circles, then eagerly recopied and passed to friends. In that way, Ron’s original thesis on Dianetics saw immediate and wide circulation.

To meet the veritable flood of inquiries from readers, Ron was next urged to author a definitive text on the subject. Accordingly, he began work on Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, the first comprehensive text ever written about the human mind.

Its release on May 9, 1950 became a landmark event in publishing history, capturing wide public interest and acclaim. The work immediately topped The New York Times bestseller list and remained there week after week. It has since become the most widely read and used book on the human mind in history, with 20 million copies in circulation. Today, Dianetics is a worldwide phenomenon, used by millions in more than 150 nations and in excess of 50 languages.

Although most men might have been satisfied with such an accomplishment, L. Ron Hubbard did not stop at Dianetics. Yes, he had solved the riddle of the human mind, but there still remained unsolved questions regarding the nature of the human being himself, outstanding puzzles concerning that long-sought-after “something” we call life. And from his methodical and wholly scientific research into this problem came further answers — offering not only greater happiness and ability, but also solutions to such seemingly hopeless social problems as drug abuse, the decline of moral standards and illiteracy.

L. Ron Hubbard arrived in South Africa in April of 1960, where he stayed at his home on Linksfield Ridge. Initial days were spent lecturing at a then newly established Dianetics centre in Joubert Park, while evenings were very significantly devoted to broader national concerns.

What was finally to come from these evenings was a then fairly remarkable document: an L. Ron Hubbard constitution calling for a universal African right to vote. His point, and even conservative circles could hardly dispute it: if South Africa was to enjoy foreign investment, she must end her repression of the Black.

His recommended constitution for the then Southern African nation of Rhodesia (where he landed in March 1966 to establish a Dianetics centre and research base near Salisbury) contained the same argument. Quite apart from inherent inequity of apartheid, he maintained, no nation can hope for a stable economic/political climate when the majority of citizens are not afforded fundamental human rights. Hence, his repeated appeal for what he described as “One Man — One Vote,” regardless of race, color or creed.

Inevitably, of course, Ron’s stance on what ruling Whites termed the “native question” led to considerable trouble. That is to say, Ron was to be effectively barred from Rhodesia as a willful threat to white supremacy. And, in fact, the charge was valid.

What he stood for and what he fought for was, indeed, nothing less than political and spiritual freedom for all African people. Which, incidentally, accounts for why he was so thoroughly gratified when, a decade later, his educational tools were introduced into native schools for the benefit of some two million Black African children.

There are only two tests of a life well lived L. Ron Hubbard once remarked: Did one do as one intended? And were people glad one lived? In testament to the first stands the full body of his life’s work, including the more than 5,000 writings and 3,000 tape recorded lectures on the mind and life. In evidence of the second are the tens of millions of individuals whose lives have been demonstrably bettered because he lived.

Who are they? Well, there are the more than 26 million children now reading because of L. Ron Hubbard’s educational discoveries; the millions of men and women freed from substance abuse through his breakthroughs in drug rehabilitation; the more than 59 million who have been touched by his non-religious moral code; and many more still.

Although best known for Dianetics, Ron, or LRH, as he is known to millions, cannot be so simply categorized. Bantu tribesmen in southern Africa, for example, who know nothing of Dianetics, know Ron the Educator. Likewise, factory workers in Albania know him only for his administrative discoveries; children in China know him only as the author of their moral code, and readers in a dozen languages know him only for his novels. So, no, LRH is not an easy man to categorize. Yet the more one comes to know this man and his achievements, the more one comes to realize he was precisely the sort of person to have brought us Dianetics. He was larger than life, attracted to people, liked by people, dynamic, charismatic and immensely capable in two dozen fields.

“I like to help others” he once said, “and count it as my greatest pleasure in life to see a person free himself of the shadows which darken his days.

“These shadows look so thick to him and weigh him down so that when he finds they are shadows and that he can see through them, walk through them and be again in the sun, he is enormously delighted. And I am afraid I am just as delighted as he is.”