As a word of general background, let us add: Although events recounted here mark the commencement of Ron’s philosophic search, he had previously spent several years, as he put it, “poking an inquisitive mind” into related fields. 

Today, of course, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists et al., continue to turn themselves inside out in an effort to propose theories broad enough to explain human memory in purely physical terms. (One of the latest involves a model of nonlocalized, or scattered memory traces along synaptic contacts so that memories are superimposed upon one another, while another holds that memory is recreated through dynamic neural interplay.) In either case, questions Ron posed in 1932 are still not answerable within a wholly material context. Hence the increasingly frequent admissions from the scientific community that perhaps, after all, as Ron puts it, “man, as a learned whole, knew damned little about the subject.”

            The Rediscovery of The Human Soul

                             By L. Ron Hubbard

   Once upon a time man knew he had a soul; he would have been shocked if he had been told that someday a book would have to be written to inform him, as a scientific discovery, that he had one.

     And yet that is what this book is about. It is not about yoursoul. It is not designed to tell you to be good or bad or a Christian or a Yogi. It is written to tell you the story of the rediscovery of the human soul as a scientific, demonstrable fact.

     Here at a moment when all religions everywhere face extinction by Communism, psychiatry, psychology, dialectic materialism and other “ologies” and “isms” without number, one might believe this book was an effort to create adequate religious fervor to stem the onslaught of the propaganda pamphlets which, all other things aside, are really the most hideous aspect of these threats to man; however this volume seeks no such thing: it is doubtful if religious control of man was very successful either. In the scorch of friction created by such conflicts one might not realize that the soul is worth investigating and writing about for its own sake, not for the sake of capital to be gained from its establishment or extinction.

     The tale of the rediscovery of the soul is a considerable adventure entirely from the philosophic and experimental aspect; the adventure has been quite heightened by the amount of preconception and rebuff encountered because of these “isms” and “ologies.” One would think that ideologies were quite swollen with their fine opinion of themselves to believe that any investigation of the soul would of course be meant as a personal affront to each or all.

     One conceives the view, after he has been awhile investigating the soul, that amongst all these modern disagreements there existed only one agreement: that the subject of the human soul, for bad or good, was only within the personal sphere of each. Thus, publishing this book will in itself be an adventure for it will discover amongst these “isms” and “ologies,” each one, the conceit that it itself is being attacked, and to “attack” that many oppositions at one fell charge requires in an author either the hide of a rhinoceros, the Citadel of a Christophe, or the legs of an impala. Having none of these but only a certain confidence in the stupidity of all these schools of slavery we locate in ourselves a willingness to accept the risk if not the combat.

     Our main controversy, quite aside from minor ones, is whether or not the soul or knowledge about it could be considered a “scientific subject.” For by definition in these dialectic times, science is a somethingness which considers itself concerned entirely with matters of matter and has sought to accumulate to itself alone—much like other “isms” and “ologies”—the entire proprietorship of knowledge and has then sought to demonstrate that knowledge is only to be found in materialism. This somewhat detoured view becomes artificial on its first inspection. “Science” means only “truth” being derived from the Latin word “scio” which is “knowing in the fullest sense of the word”; more severely and lately used, “science” infers an organization of knowledge: and if this is the case, then this material concerning the human soul, being based on critically observational knowledge and being organized, certainly meets the criteria of “scientific” knowledge.

     Being then, based on observable, measurable truth or knowledge and being organized, we assigned to this body of information about the human soul, the word Scientology, which is to say, the “knowledge of knowledge” or “knowing how to know” or “study of truth,” thus and thereby, with the word, taking sides with the “ologies.” But we could just as well call this material “soulism” or “the doctrine of the human soul” and take the alignments of the “isms,” thus, so to speak, edging over on the good side of each and thus avoiding war.

     Scientology as a word is quite necessary since we need an identifying symbol to represent these particular discoveries and data and the methodology of their use and to prevent our making errors in conversation; the subject of the soul lends itself readily to any branch of any knowledge, and to keep oriented and localized with the information contained herein we need the word.

     Very well, now that we have, we hope, announced our political climate—or lack of one—and have given a word to what we are doing, let us examine WHAT we are doing.

     We are studying the soul or spirit. We are studying it as itself. We are not trying to use this study to enhance some other study or belief. And we are telling the story of how it came about that the soul needed rediscovering. And now that we’ve rediscovered it, we are also discovering if the information thus attained can in any way assist us to live better, or for that matter, die better.

     Thus you can plainly see that this book is perfectly safe to read. It does not seek to alter your ideological or religious beliefs. If these alter simply because you read this book, no one is to blame but yourself and it was not the author’s intention to tamper.

     Of course if you DO read this book and do its few simple experiments, your ideological and religious beliefs will alter, there’s no doubt of that. However, remember, should the idea of blaming anyone occur to you, that whatever actually HAPPENS, we didn’t really INTEND to change your philosophic pattern—all we intended to do, quite innocently, was to give you some data about the human soul—not even your own soul, just the soul in general.

                                                       oOo