More About Scientology: Milestone One

Right now what we’ve got to do is to carry forward far enough, as individuals, beyond the first milestone, so that some of the actual native goals of Man can be realized in this universe. And we can do it, because every doubt which you have right this minute is just an aberration. Anything which is fighting you at this moment is within you. There is nothing—fire, swords, police, national governments, economic systems—none of these things could stop Man once he started. And what we’re trying to do is ‘start’ Man. —L. Ron Hubbard

By early 1952, Mr. Hubbard’s investigations had led him to an altogether new view of human history. This trail of discovery began in the summer following the release of Dianetics, sparked by auditors’ reports that preclears were contacting incidents which could only be explained in terms of past lives.

“The further one investigated,” he wrote, “the more one came to understand that here, in this creature Homo sapiens, were entirely too many unknowns.”

Through the ensuing twenty months, L. Ron Hubbard carefully investigated those unknowns, corroborating his own research findings with information supplied by auditors in the field. Of paramount importance in this investigation was the development and use of the first E-Meter, enabling him to uncover and map long-hidden incidents and, in turn, leading to the startling discovery that life force, or theta, had its own time track, independent of a body and extending back millions of years. Moreover, as he also discovered, certain incidents on this theta line were common to all cases.

In consequence, a new and revolutionary picture of Man emerged, not as a limited flesh-and-bone animal, but as an immortal being whose roots stretched back to the very beginning of time. As Mr. Hubbard said at the time, “Finding out where Man came from, finding out where he is going, finding out why he knows what he knows and what he’s trying to do is, of course, the greatest adventure that Man can have.”

A Western Union telegram received at the Wichita, Kansas, Foundation offices gave no hint of that adventure to come. “Am giving a series of lectures,” it simply stated, “as the Professional Course tapes, beginning Mar 3. This series to cover the whole of Dianetics as it exists to date.” But the gathered students knew they were moving into new territory when L. Ron Hubbard began the first lecture with six words that would change the world forever: “This is a course in Scientology.”

Thus began the first course ever given on this brand-new subject. And, in the more than twenty lectures that comprise this series, he not only described Scientology, its vast scope and where it was headed, he detailed whole track discoveries, exploring in depth one particular incident common to all beings—an incident diabolical enough to extinguish OT abilities and degrade a race of powerful thetans. He called it Facsimile One.

By course’s end, what lay before the graduates were wide-open horizons. The lie of “one life” had been vanquished. As Mr. Hubbard said, “It’s like taking a condemned man out of a cell and saying, ‘There’s sunlight!’”

Here, then, is the genesis of Scientology and, with it, the means to give Man an unshakable certainty of his own true spiritual nature.