No more fitting statement typifies the life of L. Ron Hubbard than his simple declaration:
"I like to help others and count it as my greatest pleasure in life to see a person free himself from the shadows which darken his days." Behind these pivotal words stands a lifetime of service to mankind and a legacy of wisdom that enables anyone to attain long-cherished dreams of happiness and spiritual freedom.

Born in Tilden, Nebraska on March 13, 1911, his road of discovery and dedication to his fellows began at an early age. "I wanted other people to be happy, and could not understand why they weren't," he wrote of his youth; and therein lay the sentiments that would long guide his steps. Under the tutelage of his mother, a thoroughly educated woman, he was reading well beyond his years-Shakespeare, Greek philosophy and later classics-all in an attempt to satisfy an insatiable curiosity. Yet his life was by no means bookish. Having moved with his family to the rugged plains of Helena, Montana, he was also riding by the age of three-and-a-half, and, later, breaking broncos with the best local wranglers.

It was additionally in Helena that Ron (as he wished to be known to his friends) first encountered the deeply spiritual heritage of the Blackfeet Indians, then still living in isolated settlements on the outskirts of town. His particular friend was a tribal medicine man, locally known as "Old Tom." Establishing a unique friendship with the usually taciturn shaman, Ron was eventually honored with the rare status of blood brother and thus entrusted with the various tribal secrets, lore and wisdom.

It was no less than a student of Sigmund Freud's who opened the next door of discovery to a young L. Ron Hubbard. Moving with his family to Seattle, Washington and then on to the nation's capital, Ron was befriended by Commander Joseph C. Thompson, the first American officer to study under Freud in Vienna. Recognizing an unusually keen intelligence in the twelve-year-old, the Commander spent several months passing on the substance of Freud's theories. Although genuinely fascinated with the premise of unconscious behavior, Ron was also left with many unanswered questions.

His father's naval career provided the next avenue of inquiry. Following an assignment to the island of Guam, the Hubbard family ventured East, and Ron was soon pursuing answers to very fundamental questions in what was then a remote Asia. By the age of nineteen, he had traveled more than a quarter of a million miles, examining the cultures of Java, Japan, India and the Philippines. With the same determination, he had even gained access to forbidden Buddhist lamaseries in the western hills of China. Yet for all the celebrated traditions of the East, he found much that troubled him: ignorance, poverty and wanton disregard for suffering. "And amongst this poverty and degradation," he later wrote, "I found holy places where wisdom was great, but where it was carefully hidden and given out only as superstition."

Returning to the United States in 1929, Ron resumed his formal education and enrolled in George Washington University the following year. There, he studied mathematics, engineering and the then new field of nuclear physics-all providing vital tools for continued research. After examining modern psychology, however, he came to another critical realization: Although the West may have possessed the methodology of investigation, it had never applied that methodology to basic questions relating to man's nature, his mind and life. In fact, as he wrote, "it was very obvious to me 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. Knowing also that people in the East were not able to reach as deeply and predictably into the riddles of the mind as I had been led to expect, I knew I would have to do a lot of research."

To finance that research, Ron embarked upon a literary career in the early 1930s, and soon became one of the most widely read authors of popular fiction. His stories spanned all genres-adventure, mystery, western, science fiction and fantasy-and earned him world-wide recognition. He also scripted screen plays for Hollywood and instructive essays for fellow writers. Yet never losing sight of his primary goal, he continued his mainline research through extensive travel and expeditions to then remote islands in the Caribbean, and off British Columbia and Alaska where he studied among the Tlingit, Haida and Aleut tribes. In all, he examined twenty-one races and cultures while searching for underlying truths of human existence. In recognition of this work, he was awarded membership in the famed Explorers Club where he was known as a foremost ethnologist. And throughout all subsequent expeditions he would carry the coveted Explorers Club flag.