Likewise, Mr. Hubbard’s internationally acclaimed drug rehabilitation program has proven to be highly effective. His unique solution not only addresses what drugs spell in terms of mental and spiritual debilitation, but handles the underlying problems which led to taking drugs in the first place. Today, Mr. Hubbard’s methods are used in more than 100 drug rehabilitation centres and drug abuse prevention programs in 35 countries.

In 1959, Mr. Hubbard moved to Saint Hill Manor near East Grinstead, Sussex, where he established his home, and throughout the 1960s continued to research, instruct and lecture on the spirit, its qualities and capabilities, to ministerial students from all over Europe and around the world.

His contribution to the field of education is equally stunning, for his study technology provides the first fully workable approach to teaching students how to learn. It offers methods for recognising and resolving all difficulties in absorbing material, including a previously unacknowledged barrier that ultimately lies at the bottom of all failures to pursue a given course of study. In short, the revolutionary methods he developed help anyone to learn anything. These techniques are today used by more than 350 educational organisations in 29 countries on six continents.

His impact has been equally great in the field of criminal reform, with the development of an effective solution that addresses and handles the underlying cause of criminality that is today used in nearly 2,000 locations around the world, from Australia to England and Hungary to Mexico.

And through it all, Mr. Hubbard’s vision of achieving personal spiritual freedom for the individual included ensuring that society protected the basic human rights of every person. In the early 1960s, his visits to South African churches included actions to empower and educate those disadvantaged by reason of colour, including the drafting of a constitution proposed to apartheid officials of Rhodesia that called for “One Man One Vote.” He embraced the view, time and again throughout the years, that “Human rights must be made a fact, not an idealistic dream.”

And in later years, Scientologists and other concerned individuals carried forward Mr. Hubbard’s human rights legacy by establishing organisations throughout the world to expose and remedy abuses of human rights, such as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International.

Yet however impressive these accomplishments, no measure of L. Ron Hubbard is complete without some appreciation of what became his life’s work: Dianetics and Scientology. The world’s most effective force for positive change, Scientology represents spiritual freedom for millions of people the world over. They come from every walk of life, every culture and every strata of society. Moreover, when one is speaking of L. Ron Hubbard’s discoveries relating to the human mind and spirit, one is ultimately speaking of the philosophic foundation of all he accomplished: better education, crime-free cities, drug-free campuses, stable and ethical organisations and cultural revitalisation through the arts — all of this and more is made possible because of the breakthroughs contained in Dianetics and Scientology.

Because of the scope of what he achieved — as an author, educator, humanitarian, administrator and artist — no treatment such as this can be entirely complete. After all, how can one convey, in only a few words, the impact of someone who has so deeply touched so many? Nevertheless, this succinct profile of the man and his achievements is provided in the spirit of what he himself declared: “If things were a little better known and understood, we would all lead happier lives.”