L. Ron Hubbard:
Founder of Dianetics and Scientology

The great strides which have forwarded man's cause throughout history have been made by those of genius who have often advanced ideas ahead of their time. It is their work that has significantly advanced civilization.

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, was such a man. Philosopher, author, educator, artist, mariner and explorer — L. Ron Hubbard embraced life in ways that few 20th century figures ever equaled. As a Far East adventurer through the 1920s, he had logged over a quarter of a million miles before the age of 19. As a popular writer in the 1930s, he helped redefine speculative fiction.

He was also an accomplished pilot, a celebrated photographer, an internationally known horticulturist and more. Indeed, notwithstanding popular misconceptions of religious founders as remote and contemplative figures, L. Ron Hubbard was precisely the kind of man who would have founded a religion that encompasses all life.

His body of work on Dianetics and Scientology is the culmination of more than half a century of research and comprises tens of millions of words. His writings and lectures also cover subjects as diverse as drug rehabilitation, education, marriage and family, administration, art and many other aspects of life.

Mr. Hubbard's writings and lectures on the human spirit comprise the Scripture of the Scientology religion. This body of knowledge is an applied religious philosophy which provides a route to spiritual freedom.

When he departed this life on January 24, 1986, Mr. Hubbard had seen the broad application of his work expand to six continents as the spiritual cornerstone for millions. As the sole source of the Scriptures, he has no successor. He is remembered not as one to be idolized or worshipped, but as a great humanitarian and philosopher whose legacy is the technology of mind and spirit he left behind.

Although he once remarked, “I was the lesser part of my project,” the details of his life nonetheless provide some understanding of the tradition of Scientology.

Son of United States naval commander Harry Ross Hubbard and Ledora May Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard was born March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Nebraska. Soon thereafter, the Hubbards settled in the Montana state capital of Helena. There, young Ron Hubbard lived what he later described as a typically Wild West existence with its, “do-and-dare attitudes, its wry humor, cowboy pranks and make nothing of the worst and most dangerous.”

At the same time, he was soon reading well beyond his years under the tutelage of his mother. Also to prove a meaningful influence in later life was his rare friendship with the indigenous Blackfeet, and particularly a tribal medicine man, who was ultimately to honor the 6-year-old Ron with that unique status of blood brother.

The next milestone in his progress came in 1923 with his father's transfer to a Seattle, Washington, naval base and the family's friendship with navy medical corps officer Joseph C. Thompson, the first US naval officer to study under Sigmund Freud in Vienna. Although only 12 at the time, the young Mr. Hubbard was soon intrigued, and informally studied Freudian theory with the commander for many months. It was also through 1923 and 1924 that he entered the Boy Scouts of America and became the nation's youngest Eagle Scout in March 1924.

With his father’s posting to the US naval station on the Island of Guam in 1927, Mr. Hubbard began a period of travel that would consume the next several years. Included were extended voyages throughout the South Pacific and South China Sea as a supercargo aboard a working schooner, and treks across a still remote China. His adventures were both many and exotic, and he became one of the first Americans to gain access to the fabled Tibetan lamaseries in China's Western Hills.