Recently the truly excellent (IMHO) short film director and Scientologist Taron Lexton completed work on a visualisation of the 1981 nonreligious moral code by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, The Way To Happiness. It’s basically a feature film but the characters don’t have any dialogue as such; rather the narrative is provided by a word-for-word reading of the book, with the video imagery supporting and helping visually explain the content. Never seen anything quite like it, loved it, end of story. So here’s a quote from my favourite part of the book, the penultimate (second-to-last) chapter:

“Sometimes others seek to crush one down, to make nothing out of one’s hopes and dreams, one’s future and oneself.

“By ridicule and other means, another who is evil-intentioned toward one can try to bring about one’s decline.

“For whatever reason, efforts to improve oneself, to become happier in life, can become the subject of attacks.

“It is sometimes necessary to handle such directly. But there is a long-range handling that seldom fails.

“…The real handling of such a situation and such people, the real way to defeat them is to flourish and prosper.

“Oh, yes, it is true that such people, seeing one improve his lot, can become frantic and attack all the harder. The thing to do is handle them if one must but don’t give up flourishing and prospering, for that is what such people want you to do.

“If you flourish and prosper more and more, such people go into apathy about it: they can give it up completely.

“If one’s aims in life are worthwhile, if one carries them out with some attention to the precepts in this book, if one flourishes and prospers, one certainly will wind up the victor. And, hopefully, without harming a single hair on their heads.

“And that is my wish for you: flourish and prosper!“—L. Ron Hubbard

For more information about use of The Way To Happiness in upholding and restoring morality across the world, visit the website of The Way To Happiness Foundation. The Way To Happiness is © L. Ron Hubbard Library.

As you should probably already know, I’m a Scientologist. That doesn’t mean I tell everyone about how they have to become Scientologists in order to survive, or that I try to “convert” all my friends. Far from it in fact, but I use Scientology in my life every single day, and it really does run through a lot of my activities, particularly because I work at the Church of Scientology, but also because as a practical philosophy, it has solutions to many of the common problems we are faced with on a daily basis. So let’s take this criminal. I witnessed a crime this week but I didn’t catch the perpetrator because I thought he was legitimately in the place where I saw him, which I later found out he wasn’t. He left behind several clues, including his own blood. I joked with the police officer and forensic expert about how he wasn’t even a clever criminal, but then it makes you wonder why people who commit crimes really do leave so many clues. Cryptic as they may be, the police usually find them or they get otherwise caught up or end up destroying themselves, even if that means living in hiding or on the run—it’s destructive of their life for sure.

So I’m reading a book called Introduction to Scientology Ethics by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. It’s a reference book taken directly from Hubbard’s administrative policy letters for Churches of Scientology on the subject of “ethics”. Before I give you the quote about criminals that I want to share, why don’t we have a look at this thing called “ethics”. What does Hubbard mean exactly?

“Throughout the ages, Man has struggled with the subjects of right and wrong and ethics and justice.

“…Ethicsconsists simply of the actions an individual takes on himself. It is a personal thing. When one is ethical or “has his ethics in,” it is by his own determinism and is done by himself.”

So now what does Hubbard say about the criminal?

“When a person finds himself committing too many harmful acts… he becomes his own executioner. This gives us the proof that Man is basically good.

“The criminal who leaves clues behind is doing so in hopes that someone will come along to stop him from continuing to harm others. He is basically good and does not want to harm others. And in the absence of an ability to stop himelf outright, he attempts to put ethics in on himself by getting thrown in prison where he will no longer be able to commit crimes.”

I found something else interesting. The police officer told me that statistics show 2% of people commit 95% of crime. We were discussing the fact that even if crime is prevalent in an area, it still represents a minority of activity, because most people are doing good things. It’s only if you believe the media that you’ll start thinking the world is full of war, crime and madness.

In discussing the antisocial personality, Hubbard gave some interesting statistics which seem to correlate with this. He said that “they only comprise 20 percent of the population” and “only 2 1/2 percent are truly dangerous”. That fits with our policeman’s 2% figure. Very interesting.

So in conclusion then, people are basically good but sometimes it goes wrong. The evil actions people undertake may be very harmful, but they are against the best nature of the individual and sooner or later he won’t need to seek for whom the bell tolls…

“What is true for you is what you have observed yourself and when you lose that you have lost everything…”
“Nothing in Dianetics and Scientology is true for you unless you have observed it and it is true according to your observation. That is all.”—L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology

What this means is that you could be a Christian or a Jew or a Mormon or whatever you liked, and you could still use Scientology if you found something in it that was true for you. You wouldn’t necessarily have to call yourself a Scientologist, but if you did, you wouldn’t have to stop calling yourself Christian, Jewish, or whatever you already consider yourself to be. Equally, a Scientologist may be only a Scientologist and have no other faith or religious denomination. Personally, I am a Scientologist and nothing else.

So if you want to find out about Scientology, don’t think you’re going to have to denounce your faith, give up your job, stop eating chocolate, or live in a commune. Because Scientology is about life, and you live life every day! Scientology helps you to live life to the full, and to improve your ability to communicate and to get along with the world around you. And I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?

• Read about Scientology in L. Ron Hubbard’s books
• See videos about Scientology
• Find out about Dianetics
• See inside a Church of Scientology
• Find out more about L. Ron Hubbard