View source for Life of L. Ron Hubbard

This is the only authorized LRH Biography

L. Ron Hubbard was barn in Tilden, Nebraska, on 13th March, 1911. His father was Commander Harry Ross Hubbard of the United States Navy. His mother was Dora May Hubbard (nee Waterbury de Wolfe, a thoroughly educated woman, a rarity in her time!)

Ron spent many of his childhood years, on a large cattle ranch in Montana. It was on this ranch that he learned to read and write by the time he was 3 1/2 years old.

L. Ron Hubbard found the life of a young rancher very enjoyable. Long days were spent riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyote and taking his first steps as an explorer.

For it was in Montana that he had his first encounter with another culture - the Blackfoot (Pikuni) Indians. He became a blood brother of the Pikuni and was later to write about them in his first published novel, Buckskin Brigades.

Before Ron was 10 years old, he had become very thoroughly educated both in schools as well as by his mother.

So it was that by the time he was 12 years old L. Ron Hubbard had already read a large number of the world's greatest classics - and his interest in philosophy and religion was born.

Not that the explorer in him had been stilled. Far from it. A Montana newspaper of the period reported thusly on one of Helena's newest high school students:

Ronald Hubbard has the distinction of being the only boy in the country to secure an eagle scout badge at the age of 12 years. He was a boy scout in Washington, D.C., before coming to Helena.

In Washington D.C., he had also become a close friend of President Coolidge's son Calvin Jr., whose early death accelerated L. Ron Hubbard's interest in the mind and spirit of Man.

The following years, from 1925 to 1929, saw the young Mr. Hubbard, between the ages of l4 to 18, as a budding and enthusiastic world traveller and adventurer. His father was sent to the Far East and having the financial support of his wealthy grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard spent these years journeying throughout Asia.

He explored many out-of-the-way places and saw many strange-seeming peoples and customs. But it was in Northern China and India, while studying with holy men, that he became vitally engrossed in the subject of the spiritual destiny of Mankind.

With the death of his grandfather, the Hubbard family returned to the United States, and, after intense study at Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas, Virginia and at Woodward Preparatory school in Washington D.C., he enrolled at the George Washington University Engineering School in the fall of 1930.

At George Washington, L. Ron Hubbard became associate editor of the University newspaper, "The Hatchet", and was a member of many of the University's clubs and societies including the Twentieth Marine Corps Reserve and the George Washington College Company.

It was while at George Washington University that he learned to fly and discovered a particular aptitude as a glider pilot.

Here, also, he was enrolled in one of the first nuclear physics courses ever taught in an American university.

As a student, barely 20 years old, he supported himself by writing and within a very few years he already established himself as a professional photographer and technical article writer in aviation and sports magazines.

He made the time during these same busy college years to act as a director with the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition of 1931.

In 1932, L. Ron Hubbard, aged 21, achieved an ambitious 'first'. Conducting the West Indies Minerals Survey, he made the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico. This was pioneer exploration in the great tradition, opening up a predicatable, accurate body of data for the benefit of others. Later, in other, less materialistic fields, this was to be his way many, many times over.

In the 30's, he became an established writer and published his work in over 90 periodicals and magazines.

His aviation articles in "The Sportsman Pilot" dealing, among other things, with aerial navigation of the Indies, date from this period.

By 1936, at the age of 25, Hubbard was in Hollywood, ready for adventures of a different sort, Working as a scriptwriter on several films, he made his reputation there, appropriately enough, with the highly profitable Columbia production titled "The Secret of Treasure Island".

Hollywood has always been a good place to study "what makes men tick", and the late '30's. were no exception. In fact, L. Ron Hubbard dates his own statement of the discovery of the primary law of life, summarily expressed by the command "Survive:" at 1938. He says, "A work was written at that time which embraced man and his activities". This was the still-unpublished "Excalibur", a sensational volume which was a summation of life based on his analysis of the state of Mankind. The part played in this by his explorations, journeys and experiences in the four corners of the earth, amongst all kinds of men, was crucial.

As a logical consequence of his achievements in the field, L. Ron Hubbard on December 12th, 1939, not yet 30 years old, Was proposed as a Member of the Explorers Club of New York. He was duly elected a Member on February 19th, l940. Now the honors were coming.

In May of that same year, 1940, he was awarded his first Explorers Club flag for conducting the Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition. Carrying the Club's flag on an expedition is one of the highest honors granted.

He found time to take his sailing ship (a Ketch) "Magician" which he called "Maggie", along the coasts of Alaska added to the existing knowledge of unfrequented navigational passages and islands in America's northwest ocean waters.

Also in 1940, on 17th December, he earned his "License to Master of Steam and Motor Vessels" from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Within 4 1/2 months he had further obtained a second certificate attesting to his marine skill: "License to Master of Sail Vessels" ("Any Ocean"), for the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office.

In 1941, he was ordered to the Philippines (which he had known as a youngster) at the outbreak of World War II.

He survived the early war in the South Pacific. He saw enough of war at first hand to be sickened by it. In 1944, crippled and blinded he found himself in Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. From Commander Thompson of the Medical Corps of the U.S. Navy, a friend of his father and a personal student of Sigmund Freud, he had received while still young an extensive education in the field of the human mind. He developed techniques that would help him overcome his injuries and regain his abilities.

Altogether, he spent nearly a year at Oak Knoll, during which time he synthesized what he had learned of Eastern philosophy, his understanding of nuclear physics and his experiences among men. He says, "I set out to find from nuclear physics and a knowledge of the physical universe, things entirely lacking in Asian philosophy".

He concluded that the results he was obtaining could help others toward greater ability and happiness, and it was during this period that some of the basic tenets of Dianetics and Scientology were first formulated.

By 1947 he recovered fully.

In 1948 he wrote Dianetics, The Original Thesis, his first formal report of his discoveries about the mind and life. The manuscript was copied out extensively and quickly passed from hand to hand in many countries.

A grass roots interest in Dianetics spread. Letters began to pour in asking for clarifications and advice. Answering them was becoming a full time occupation.

What was needed was a complete popular text on the subject which would answer all question. A publisher, Hermitage House, was anxious to print such a book. There was one condition: the manuscript had to be delivered in six weeks.

The book was written in 6 weeks.

This was the anatomy of the mind, and a technology - called auditing. 180,000 words of breakthrough, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health exploded onto the booklists of May 1950, like a roman candle of life and hope. Providing, as it did, for a truly workable school of the mind which would predicatablv improve the human condition, it leapt to the top of the New York Times best seller list and just stayed there.

Almost immediately, thousands of readers began to apply the data from the book and Dianetics groups sprang up across the country, with and without sanction.

Realizing already at this stage that the mind in itself, no matter how liberated, was limiting and that there was something 'animating' the mind, he permitted the founding in 1950, of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation to facilitate investigation into the realm of the spirit. Thus was Scientology born.

The United States Government at this time attempted to monopolize all his researches and force him to work on a Project "to make man more suggestible" and when he was unwilling, tried to blackmail him by ordering him back to active duty to perform this function. Having many friends he was able to instantly resign from the Navy and escape this trap. The Government never forgave him for this and soon began vicious, covert International attacks upon his work., all of which were proven false and baseless, which were to last 27 years and finally culminated in the Government being sued for 750 million dollars for conspiracy.

The pace of research and writing quickened. To an already crammed schedule, lectures were added. These lectures, usually arranged in a series spread across one or two weeks of intensive meetings, were later to become famous, and many are preserved on tape and in book form.

The Oakland Lecture Series in September of l95O and the Los Angeles Lecture Series in late November of that same year are preserved in book form in Notes on the Lectures.

1951 saw the publication of Self Analysis, a very practical self-help volume giving a way to improve memory, reaction time and general ability.

Also in 1951, Science of Survival was published, a 506-page volume outlining and describing in detail the relationship of Man to the physical universe and an exact pattern for the prediction of human behavior.

In 1952, L. Ron Hubbard published Scientology 8-80, which described the physical manifestations of thought and past identities in terms of flows. and ridges surrounding the body.

A new series of lectures was delivered in Philadelphia, also in 1952, in course format. The Philadelphia Doctorate Course. These lectures, all of which were preserved on tape and are available today, went into great detail about the behavioral patterns of the spirit - a breathtaking delineation of spiritual landscape he was now surveying.

Many awards and honors were offered and conferred on L. Ron Hubbard. He did accept an honorary Doctor of Philosophy given in recognition of his outstanding work on Dianetics and, "as an inspiration to the many people...... who had been inspired by him to take up advanced studies in this field...."

A historic milestone in the history of Dianetics and Scientologv was passed in February 1954, with the founding of the first Church of Scientology. This was in keeping with the religious nature of the tenets dating from the earliest days of research. It was obvious that he had been exploring religious territory right along. And whatever the name given to the technique or study and whatever way it had been interpreted by skeptics or sensation-mongers, it was apparent to those with a sense of history and Man's ages-old spiritual quest that this was indeed the realm of the soul and its havens.

And Dianetics and Scientology were snowballeding across the United States and reaching other shores - England first of all. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, was everywhere. As early as 1951, the publisher Casini had brought out the first Italian edition in Rome.

In 1954 there was another lecture series, in Phoenix, Arizona. These were startling talks on the qualities and fundamental nature of all life. Today they can be studied in book form: The Phoenix Lectures. It was in this series that he described The Axioms of Scientology, those self-evident truths which provide the philosophical foundation for the entire religion.

And in 1955, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia certified that he was a Minister of the Church.

On November 13th 1957, The International Oceanographic Foundation, with headquarters in Miami, Florida, made him a FelLow of the Society, "by virtue of contributions to the advancement and extension of knowledge and discovery in oceanography and the marine sciences":

At the end of the fifties, L. Ron Hubbard moved his home to Saint Hill Manor, a vast and beautiful Georgian residence in the green hills of Sussex, in England. Increasingly effective techniques had been developed for the further liberation of the spirit and the exploration he now conducted was leading inevitably to spiritual freedom, the ages-long quest of Man's greatest religious leaders.

On a literally 'down-to-earth' level, though, L. Ron Hubbard was moving in a direction new even for him. 1959 and 1960 saw him, now firmly established at Saint Hill, conducting a series of revolutionary experiments on plants in a fully-equipped greenhouse laboratory on the Manor grounds. On September 25, 1959, a local paper was able to record that "L. Ron Hubbard....... whose researches in plant life at the Manor look like revolutionizing horticulture, has carried out an experiment which points to the fact that plants react in much the same way to certain situations as do human beings.

His discoveries on the nature of life in plants were described by one Journal as "25 years in advance of today's methods and ideas". This proved prophetic for 13 years subsequent to L. Ron Hubbard's findings, experiments on plant life reaction in Swiss, German, Russian, American, British and Canadian scientific institutions have validated his findings in rigorous test conditions.

In 1961 he set up an educational visit to teach the now standard methods of Dianetics and Scientology to ensure uniform quality of application. Students came from all over the world. And over the next few years returned to their local academies to use study methods which revolutionised the philosophy of education.

Student failures could be recovered. Study barriers by 1965 had been overcome.

For more than two millenia Man had dreamed of a spiritual state where, free of his own mental aberrations, he would be truly himself. L. Ron Hubbard called this state "Clear". And, at Saint Hill, in August of 1966, he announced the attainment of Clear.

The dream of Buddha, attained by the few, was a reality, Man could be Clear.

And the reality which was and is Clear was to be available to all who followed the exact route he had laid out. This route he called The Bridge. For it was as a span across the abyss of misery and degradation and sorrow to a higher plateau of ability and happiness.

In 1966, having paved the way to Clear so that it was safe and sure for others to walk, the Founder resigned from any official administrative capacity in Scientology.

He discovered and developed the astonishing materials above Clear now known as the Advanced Courses. These are the eight OT sections, enabling one who has attained Clear to regain abilities never before accurately credited to the human spirit, as an Operating Thetan, a spiritual being operating independently of the laws of the physical universe.

In July of 1966, OT I and OT II were released and, during the last months of 1967, came the breakthrough of OT III.

A research accomplishment of immense magnitude, OT III has been called "The Wall of Fire". Here are contained the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy. The end result of OT III is truly the stuff of which dreams are spun: the return of full self-determinism and complete freedom from overwhelm.

The formation of a new Scientology group dates from this same period. Hearing of L. Ron Hubbard's plans for further exploration and research into, among other things, past civilisations, many Scientologists wanted to join him and help. They adopted the name "Sea Organization".

January, 1968, saw the release of OT Sections IV, V and VI as a sequence of spiritual abilities to be reached. And, in September of 1970 came OT VII. OT VIII has yet to be released.

These OT Sections and the abilities and awarenesses they restore to the individual are the greatest gifts to Man of an honest man who has retained 'his common touch' and humility.

People all over the world consider that they have no truer friend.

== Document information ==
'''Document type:''' Flag Information Letter
'''Date:''' 31 October 1977
'''Issue:''' 67
'''Distribution:''' Remimeo
'''Destination:''' HQS Course, All Staff
'''Note:''' Taken from SO ED 879 Int.

[[Category:HQS Course]]