To meet the veritable flood of inquiries from readers, Ron was next urged to author a definitive text on the subject. In reply, he began work on Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health the first comprehensive text ever written on the human mind and life. Released May 9, 1950, the work immediately rode the New York Times bestseller list and gave rise to some 750 Dianetics groups from coast to coast. It further inspired the formation of Dianetics Foundations in six American cities to help facilitate Ron’s advancement of the subject.

That advancement was swift, methodical and at least as revelatory as what had preceded it. For extending from the final chapter of Dianetics, wherein Ron wrote of plans to pursue “further research into life force,” he soon found himself investigating mounting evidence that this life force was intrinsically spiritual and extended well beyond any one lifetime. That is, as he phrased it:

“As it develops, Dianetics more and more seems potentially able, eventually, to contact the often-postulated, but never thoroughly sensed, measured and experienced human soul.”

The statement proved entirely accurate and, with further investigation through late 1951 and 1952, Ron indeed contacted, measured and provided a means to experience the human soul. Thus the Scientology religion was born as “the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, universes and other life.”

Through the latter 1950s, Ron continued delving ever deeper into the nature and potential of the spirit, while documenting discoveries in recorded lectures, technical issues, articles and books. As the community of Scientologists commensurately swelled, Churches of Scientology opened across the United States, Europe, Australia and South Africa. Accordingly, he both oversaw the worldwide growth of Scientology and worked to codify an exact and standard route along which individuals could ascend to higher states of awareness.

Yet, as Scientology embraces the whole of life, there is finally no aspect of human existence L. Ron Hubbard’s subsequent work does not address. Residing in Great Britain, then aboard a research vessel in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Caribbean before returning to the United States, he drew from the larger body of Scientology procedures to develop an array of social betterment technologies. To wit:

• L. Ron Hubbard’s procedures for drug rehabilitation are presently employed in some 50 nations. They have proven five times more effective than any similarly aimed program.

• His program for criminal reform is presently at work in more than 2,000 prisons and penal institutions internationally and has produced an 80 percent reduction in recidivism.

• His technology for learning and literacy is delivered across better than 70 countries.

• L. Ron Hubbard’s universally acclaimed moral code and guide to better living, The Way to Happiness, is nonreligious and appeals solely to common sense. It has statistically proven effective in reversing declining moral trends across whole communities, with some 100 million copies distributed in more than 90 languages in over 150 nations.

But, of course, the greater story of L. Ron Hubbard can only conclude with his completion of his mainline research. Before his passing in 1986, he fully codified all Dianetics and Scientology materials for application across every level of society and to the utmost spiritual heights.

Today, those materials comprise tens of millions of published words, recorded lectures and films. With over 250 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard has inspired a movement millions strong and spanning all continents.

In testament to the workability of his legacy are the miracles of his technology and his millions of friends world over who carry that legacy forward. Both continue to grow in number with each passing day, and otherwise affirm what Ron declared in his own essay, “My Philosophy”:

“I like to help others 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.”