Showing results by author "L. Ron Hubbard" in All Categories

What is life? Such was the central question Ron posed when setting out to unravel the riddle of human existence. After examining all aspects and elements of existence, he arrived at an altogether startling discovery - one which suddenly clarified all life’s various phenomena: Life is a game. In this lecture, Ron explains why life is best understood by likening it to a game, whereupon he defines both its prerequisites and conditions, showing that it follows the rules of any game.

"If the world around him is bad, then he is unwilling to grant life. If the world around him he conceives to be good, he is willing to grant life to it. A world with life granted to it runs well. A world with no life granted to it goes into chaos and disappears. Now, this is the riddle of the centuries." - L. Ron Hubbard

Since the deployment of the first atomic weapons, people everywhere have lived with the possibility that everything they hold dear - their lives, their families, their careers, and even the human species itself - could be extinguished in a few moments of devastation. Such consequences would be so overwhelming that, for many, the only defense is a hope it will never happen. Yet as the number of countries with atomic and nuclear weapons has risen and an international black market actively trades nuclear materials, action is likely to prove a far stronger deterrent than hope.

It betrays the brightest hopes of individuals, drives families apart, incites organizational turmoil and pitches nations into chaos. What malignant seed grows in the human mind that not only prevents individuals from "thinking straight", but forces them to act out their irrationalities? Man's failure over many millennia to find the cause of aberration has exacted an incalculable toll in personal unhappiness and ruined lives. But were the answer found, the horizons would be unlimited.

Today weapons exist powerful enough to annihilate whole nations. And violence has become commonplace, often in disregard of human life. Why has there been such a lessening of moral responsibility and, most important, what can be done about it? In providing the answers to these questions, Ron explores the history of Man’s research and investigation in the field of the human spirit.

Since time immemorial, Man has sought to liberate the soul from the body and so achieve immortality. In this account of the religious heritage that stands behind Scientology, Ron recounts the extraordinary story of Man's epic quest for a way to attain that goal. Embracing a tradition from the very dawn of civilization, here is the history of Man's relentless pursuit of the knowledge which inspired this planet's great philosophies and religions.

Every human being seeks to know the truth about himself and to resolve to his own satisfaction the mysteries of life. And therefore, for many thousands of years, countless philosophical and religious teachings have sought to enlighten people with answers. But where their practitioners insisted - indeed, demanded - that their answers must be the answers, they blocked the road to greater freedom for millions of people.

To overcome tyranny is to win freedom as a people, anation or even Mankind. Toward the full attainment of that better future, here is Ron’s personal story of how he kept his discoveries about the human mind out of the harness of a modern tyranny. And, in consequence, how individuals today can achieve a level of personal freedom never before possible.

The single word “liberty” articulates not only basic rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, but many other vital concepts: opportunity, choice, security and even happiness. Indeed, it is a word that symbolizes the dreams and goals of every human being. Yet its very power makes it liable to abusive ends entirely opposed to its true meaning. In consequence, both individual and national freedoms can be eroded in a manner that escapes detection.

In this lecture, Ron reveals that life is an energy, one entirely separate and distinct from the physical universe. Moreover, here too are the answers to how life attempts its conquest of matter, energy, space and time. As for what these discoveries mean to everyday life of the individual, the answer is everything. For no matter one’s occupation or activities, here are both the anatomy and ramifications of the unavoidable interaction with the physical universe.

A family is simply a group for the purpose of sexual pleasure and the rearing of children and mutual economic advantages amongst ourselves. You know, it’s a small group. Therefore, we have this actual group. The race wouldn’t be anywhere without the family.

Ron reveals discoveries that provide a wholly new perspective on efficiency - not in a mechanical sense, but in terms of thought, emotion and effort. Moreover, here is the explanation of why an address to thought is of paramount importance, in that thought alone can change emotion and effort. In full, then, contained within this lecture is the “secret” of efficiency and the very means of overcoming the vagaries of emotion and the effort of work.

Here is a story that begins with Ron’s immersion in a deeply spiritual, deeply traditional Asia, where he met and befriended - among other savants - the last of the great magicians whose predecessors served in the court of Mongol emperor Kublai Khan.

From the dawn of time, Man has cherished the hope he could achieve a greater freedom. That hope, articulated by the greatest religious leaders across the centuries, has time and again renewed his strength to face the future. But with no practical means to convert hope to reality, the goal of a greater freedom remained, for most if not all, a distant and unattainable dream. Then, with the onset of the twentieth century, came the rapid and unprecedented advance of the physical sciences.

Education would be in the direction of accomplishing certain actions professionally. Now, that is my own word introduced into there, professionally. But if one is educated in a subject, one expects him to be able to accomplish certain things with that subject.

What does the other fellow consist of? What is that other fellow? Well, the philosopher had to answer that question. And it’s the one question he never answered satisfactorily. And it’s the one question that’s been answered satisfactorily in Scientology.

It is the thing everybody is after. If you didn’t have something that everybody was after, then you wouldn’t have any game. And so we get down to one of the most fundamental agreements of our present society: that money is something everybody is after and very few people have.

It has been bought and sold in a thousand dramas. It has been preached about from every pulpit—debated, contested, condemned and exalted. And with no means to accurately measure or quantify it, the physical sciences either ignored it or denied its very existence. The human soul. Here, then, is a discovery all the more remarkable for being grounded not merely on faith and belief, but on proofs as irrefutable as any in science.

What motivates life? What motivates Man? Those were the questions Ron posed when seeking workable answers to the problems of both the individual and society. After examining the whole of life in its variety and complexity, he isolated a common denominator to all living things - the Dynamic Principle of Existence: Survive! Here was a watershed breakthrough in Man’s understanding of Man. For while “everyone knows” that life forms are surviving, survival as their sole motivation was a brand-new discovery.

The most popular book ever published on the human mind, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, generated an unprecedented wave of popular demand for personal instruction from the author. This lecture is L. Ron Hubbard’s first recorded spoken word on the breakthrough technology that inspired a movement now spanning every culture, across every continent, in over 50 languages. Here, then, is where the adventure began, an exploration into Terra Incognita - the mind.