SCIENTOLOGY RELIGION | MARCH 13, 2021

The Essence of Religion: L. Ron Hubbard’s Birthday, and His Gift

Though I grew up Catholic, I’ve been into many churches of different types and one thing I’ve always noticed is the same sense of relief from the world and the safe space a church can provide. When I go into a church I feel a sense of home and a sense of being me—who I really am minus the judgments or comparisons of the outside world. Be it in an Eastern religious meditation retreat, a rousing tent revival or anything in between, it’s always the same feeling. And I pondered that when I recently walked into my local Church of Scientology for the first time in some time, due to the pandemic. What a relief.

The Grand Chapel of the Scientology Flag Building in Clearwater, Florida, where parishioners attend Sunday Service

L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday is today, March 13. Mr. Hubbard, who was known as “Ron,” “LRH” and other monikers of affection and respect, would be 110 years old now, and I’ve been thinking about the tribute I’d like to give him in relation to that feeling I get inside a Church of Scientology and in the participation of the religion Mr. Hubbard founded.

Then it hit me.

You see, there are three conditions we, as spiritual beings, encounter as we grow, bloom and wilt away in this brief passage we know as life. They are (1) The inevitable (2) The probable, and (3) The possible.

When I go into a church I feel a sense of home and a sense of being me—who I really am minus the judgments or comparisons of the outside world.

We all know what the inevitable is: Death and Taxes, the seasons, as well as a whole lot of other repetitive, inescapable things—barriers constructed by nature and Man that we must all face and overcome, or even sometimes succumb to.

The probable are those things that can be expected to arise from time to time, for us or for someone else. Fire, flood, disease or even a bit of good luck now and then, things we can prepare for and either guard against or celebrate when they turn out to be good fortune.

In the everyday world, it is the rules and boundaries of the inevitable and the probable with which we must contend.

But the possible has none. Anything is possible.

The possible is an order of magnitude far beyond the inevitable and the probable—it is unlimited and infinite. The possible is the playground of the spirit and the imagination. The possible has always been the very hope of mankind. The possible is where we can conceive of an ideal without boundaries or hindrance—everything from a better mouse trap, a better human being, a better society or a better world. Since the first humans danced around a fire appealing to the first gods for something better, the possible has always found its home in religion, and a church is a place for us to contemplate an ideal, a perfection and conceive that those things may be possible—to conceive of unlimited joy or love or wisdom or serenity or ?

It is where any and every possibility is possible.

Im is cut off of impossible — Image by Tomertu/Shutterstock.com

L. Ron Hubbard was the first researcher in the field of the mind to look beyond the inevitable and the probable. He was the first to explore, in depth, and begin to discover and categorize the possibilities of the human mind and of humankind. That had never been truly done before, and that fact alone made him a giant. If the inevitable and the probable were the limits of human ability, what were its possibilities? On the day he asked that question, using the rigors of science as it applied to the inevitable and the probable, and began his research into the possible, he’d unwittingly stepped into the realm of the infinite. The realm of religion.

He never looked back.

What is the old adage? That “it is far better to give than to receive”? As we Scientologists celebrate the birthday of L. Ron Hubbard, we are really celebrating the gift he left for us. The gift of infinite possibility.

Exploring them is the gift we give in return.

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