In Pursuit of the Answers to the Mind
(continued)
With these breakthroughs -- that were both observable and verifiable -- the time had come to formally compile his research. In the weeks that followed, Ron summarized the previously uncharted landscape of the human mind in a manuscript entitled Dianetics: The Original Thesis. Here was something completely new -- a workable science of the mind that could produce results where others believed that results were not possible.
The manuscript was copied and recopied, and passed from hand to hand throughout the world. As his researches had resulted in unprecedented advances in the field of psychosomatic illness, Ron offered his discoveries and papers to the American Psychiatric Association. His offer was rebuffed. He then approached the American Medical Association. They refused to even consider the offer.
Friends and associates who were aware of the astounding results that Dianetics had been achieving, persuaded Ron to write a book on the subject -- a comprehensive manual of the mind which anyone could read and apply -- and publish it broadly.
On May 9th, 1950, DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH was released.
Word of mouth spread like wildfire and the popularity of Dianetics soared. People began clamoring for the book and it jumped to the top of the New York Times best seller list.
Groups began to spring up all over the country and within weeks news of Dianetics spread around the world, starting a juggernaut that to this day continues to expand to millions of people on every continent.
In the face of such immediate and unstoppable success, Dianetics was an affront on those bent on enslaving man and keeping him ignorant. But despite a wave of vicious attempts to debase Dianetics and its author, the names Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard became more popular than ever before and the book in even bigger demand.
Within a year of the release of Dianetics, Ron had embarked on another journey of discovery that would lead him into realms hitherto unknown to any man on earth.
"In the fall of 1951, I found out what was looking at the pictures. Here we had mental image pictures. Up to that time I’d been studying them and their behavior, which is the reaction, stimulus-response mechanisms that psychology itself had been familiar with, but never had analyzed.
"I found out what was looking at the pictures. And described it. And found out that you could do things with it from a very practical standpoint, that nobody’d ever done before. I found myself suddenly in the field of religion, whether I wanted to be or not. There I was. Very simple. The human soul was the fellow."
And that was the beginning of Ron’s discovery of the religious philosophy of Scientology.
