Exhibit 26 [handwritten note: Sluicing with crew on Corozal River, '32 P.R., L. Ron Hubbard]
L. Ron Hubbard (facing camera) conducting the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico, at the age of 21MISSION INTO TIMEL. Ron Hubbard has always been an explorer. Even as a youth, it was natural for him to look beyond the descriptions of others and to see with his own eyes the thing described.
And, as he grew to manhood, the urge was strengthened and the ability to organize resources towards the attainment of a more precise observation increased.
As a young man he had already travelled around this world, lived amongst peoples of the most varied culture and studied their behavior and beliefs with great interest and understanding.
While still young his attention had been drawn increasingly to non-materialistic realms, but a vivid curiosity about the details of existence always informed the loftier areas of his research and writings. So it was not at all unusual for him to be exploring underwater sites in the Caribbean or Mediterranean at the same periods as he was developing some of the highest spiritual concepts in Scientology.
The mission into time which gives this book its title was the natural outgrowth of L. Ron Hubbard's attainments as an explorer, mariner and Founder of the most rapidly expanding religious movement on earth, Scientology.
But let's go back to the beginning and recount the events that made this all possible.
L. Ron Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska, on 13th March, 1911, to Commander Harry Ross Hubbard of the United States Navy and Dora May Hubbard (nee Waterbury de Wolfe.) As his father's career kept the family on the move, his parents decided to send their son to his maternal grandfather's cattle ranch in Montana. It was here that he spent his childhood years.
L. Ron Hubbard found the life of a young rancher very enjoyable. Long days were spent riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyote and taking his first steps as an explorer.
For it was in Montana that he had his first encounter with another culture -- the Blackfoot (Pikuni) Indians. He became a blood brother of the Pikuni and was later to write about them in his first published novel, Buckskin Brigades.
When he was 10 years old, in 1921, he rejoined his family. His father, alarmed at his apparent lack of formal learning, immediately put him under intense instruction to make up for the time lost to the 'wilds' of Montana.
So it was that by the time he was 12 years old L. Ron Hubbard had already read a goodly number of the world's greatest classics -- and his interest in philosophy and religion was born.
Not that the explorer in him had been stilled. Far from it. A Montana newspaper of hte period reported thusly on one of Helena's newest high school students:
Ronald Hubbard has the distinction of being the only boy in the country to secure an eagle scout badge at the age of 12 years. He was a boy scout in Washington, D.C. before coming to Helena.
In Washington, he had also become a close friend of President Coolidge's son, Calvin Jr., whose early death accelerated L. Ron Hubbard's precocious interest in the mind and spirit of Man.
The following years, from 1925 to 1929, saw the young Mr. Hubbard, between the ages of 14 and 18, as a budding and enthusiastic world traveller and adventurer. His father was sent to the Far East and having the financial support of his wealthy grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard spent these years journeying throughout Asia.
He explored many out-of-the-way places and saw many strange-seeming peoples and customs. But it was in Northern China and India, while studying with holy men, that he became vitally engrossed in the subject of the spiritual destiny of Mankind.
With the death of his grandfather, the Hubbard family returned to the United States and, after intense study at Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas, Virginia and at Woodward Preparatory School in Washington, D.C., he enrolled at the George Washington University Engineering School in the fall of 1930.
At George Washington, L. Ron Hubbard became associate editor of the University newspaper, "The Hatchet," and was a member of many of the University's clubs and societies including the Twentieth Marine Corps Reserve and the George Washington College Company.
It was while at George Washington University that he learned to fly and discovered a particular aptitude as a glider pilot.
Here, also, he was enrolled in one of the first nuclear physics courses ever taught in an American university.
As a student, barely 20 years old, he supported himself by writing and within a very few years he had established himself as an essayist in the literary world. The pattern was becoming clearer. A relentless interest in all forms of human activity, exploring the frontiers of his time as they were revealed to him.
And, explorer that he was and is, he made the time during these same busy college years to act as a director with the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition of 1931. The underwater films made on that journey provided the Hydrographic Office and the University of Michigan with invaluable data for the furtherance of their research.
Then in 1932, the true mark of an exceptional explorer was demonstrated. In that year L. Ron Hubbard, aged 21, achieved an ambitious "first." Conducting the West Indies Minerals Survey, he made the first complete mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico. This was pioneer exploration in the great tradition, opening up a predictable, accurate body of data for the benefit of others. Later, in other, less materialistic fields, this was to be his way many, many times over.
Throughout this whole period, the writing never let up. Several million words poured from his pen and into print, both fact and fiction. Travel articles, stories of exploration and adventure, essays and anecdotes as well as science fiction and western stories appeared in over 90 magazines and journals. Today, his science fiction stories, in particular, are still widely read and new editions are on sale in many countries.
More exciting travels, this time with his sailing ship (a ketch) "Magician" which he called "Maggie," along the coasts of Alaska, added to the existing knowledge of unfrequented navigational passages and islands in America's northwest ocean waters.
His aviation articles in "The Sportsman Pilot" dealing, among other things, with aerial navigation of the Indies, date from this period.
By 1936, at the age of 25, the restless explorer was in Hollywood, ready for adventures of a different sort. Working as a script writer on several films, he made his reputation there, appropriately enough, with the highly profitable Columbia production titled "The Secret of Treasure Island."
Hollywood has always been a good place to study "what makes men tick," and the late '30s were no exception. In fact, L. Ron Hubbard dates his own statement of the discovery of the primary law of life, summarily expressed by the command "Survive!", at 1938. He says, "A work was written at that time which embraced man and his activities." This was the still-unpublished "Excalibur," a sensational volume which was a summation of life based on his analysis of the state of Mankind. The part played in this by his explorations, journeys and experiences in the four corners of the earth, amongst all kinds of men, was crucial.
As a logical consequence of his achievements in the field L. Ron Hubbard, on December12th, 1939, not yet 30 years old, was proposed as a Member of the Explorers Club of New York. He was duly elected a Member on February 19th, 1940. Now the honors were coming.
In May of that same year, 1940, he was awarded his first Explorers Club flag for conducting the Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition. Carrying the Club's flag on an expedition is one of the highest honors granted.
Also in 1940, on 17th December, he earned his "License to Master of Steam and Motor Vessels" from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Within 4-1/2 months he had further obtained a second certificate attesting to his marine skill: "License to Master of Sail Vessels" ("Any Ocean").
Now, in 1941, the time was at hand when L. Ron Hubbard would take a voyage with many other men of his generation: he was ordered to the Philippines (which he had known as a youngster) at the outbreak of World War II.
He survived the early war in the South Pacific and was relieved by fifteen officers of rank and was rushed home to take part in the 1942 battle against German submarines as Commanding Officer of a Corvette serving in the North Atlantic.
After continual service in the various theaters of the war, 1944 found him crippled and blinded in Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. From Commander Thompson of the Medical Corps of the U.S. Navy, a friend of his father and a personal student of Sigmund Freud,, he had received while still young an extensive education in the field of the human mind. That data would now prove itself invaluable. Aligning what he knew of psychoanalysis to his own observations, he developed techniques that would help him overcome his injuries and regain his abilities. His research and hard-won knowledge was beginning to pay off handsomely in an unexpected way.
Altogether, he spent a year at Oak Knoll, during which time he synthesized what he had learned of Eastern philosophy, his understanding of nuclear physics and his experiences among men. He says, "I set out to find from nuclear physics and a knowledge of the physical universe, things entirely lacking in Asian philosophy."
He concluded that the results he was obtaining could help others towards greater ability and happiness, and it was during that some of the basic tenets of Dianetics and Scientology were first formulated.
Thanks in great part to the unusual discoveries that L. Ron Hubbard made while at Oak Knoll in 1944, he recovered so fully that he was reclassified for full combat duty.
Even for L. Ron Hubbard, this degree of penetration into the mysteries and secret ways of the human mind represented a new form of exploration. And this was to be only the beginning.
More research and writing, and the direction of future work was becoming clear. A major breakthrough was in the offing.
In 1948 it came. Dianetics. The original thesis, his first formal report back from the frontiers of the mind and life, which he had been scouting for years, was a 30,000 word revelation. The manuscript was copied out extensively and quickly passed from hand to avid hand in many countries.
A grass roots interest in Dianetics spread like wildfire. Letters began to pour in asking for clarifications and advice. Answering them was becoming a full time occupation.
What was needed was a complete popular text on the subject which would answer all questions. A publisher, Hermitage House, was anxious to print such a book. There was one condition: the manuscript had to be delivered in three weeks.
Three weeks of fever-pitch writing and concentration, the summing up in a tremendously communicative style of a full, young life of direct observation and experience, of absorbing and coordinating data from the most disparate sources of knowledge and the book was done and delivered.
There was the anatomy of the mind, and a technology -- called auditing * -- out in the open. 180,000 words of breakthrough, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health exploded onto the booklists of May, 1950, like a roman candle of life and hope. Providing, as it did, for a truly workable school of the mind which would predictably improve the human condition, it leapt to the top of the New York Times best seller list and just stayed there. The 12-year-old eagle scout had come quite a ways.
And in the Winter-Spring issue of the Explorers Journal of that year (1950), in an article entitled "Terra Incognita: The Mind," L. Ron Hubbard paid homage to the vocation he loved and had always followed:
Probably the strangest place an explorer can go is inside. The earth's frontiers are being rapidly gobbled up by the fleet flight of planes, the stars are not yet reached. But there still exists a dark unknown which, if a strange horizon for an adventurer, is nevertheless capable of producing some adventures scarcely rivaled by Livingstone.
During the course of three minor expeditions before the war, the realization came about that one of the most dangerous risks in the field of exploration is not located in the vicinity of the geographical goal, but is hard by from the first moment of planning until the last of disbanding -- the unbalanced member of the party.
After some years of war it became even more of a conviction that there are some things more dangerous than the kamikaze, just as they had been more dangerous than malaria.
For a mathematician and navigator to become involved in the complexities of the mental frontiers is not particularly strange; to produce something like results from his explorations into the further realms of the unknown definitely is.
There is no reason here to become expansive on the subject of Dianetics. The backbone of the science can be found where it belongs, in the text book and in professional publications on the mind and body.
But in that Dianetics was evolved because of observations in exploration for the purpose of bettering exploration results and safeguarding the success of expeditions, it would be strange, indeed, to make no mention of it in its proper generative field.
Almost immediately, thousands of readers began to apply the data from the book and Dianetic groups sprang up across the country, with and without sanction.
Realizing already at this stage that the mind in itself, no matter how liberated, was limiting and that there was something 'animating' the mind, he founded, in 1950, the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation to facilitate investigation into the realm of the spirit. Thus was Scientology born.
And in this period, revolted by the excesses of Man's inhumanity to Man, he resigned his naval commission to concentrate his attention on the furthering of Dianetics and Scientology.
The pace of research and writing quickened. To an already crammed schedule, lectures were added. These lectures, usually arranged in a series spread across one or two weeks of intensive meetings, were later to become even more famous, and many are preserved on tape and in book form.
The Oakland Lecture Series in September of 1950 and the Los Angeles Lecture Series in late November of that same year are preserved in book form in Notes on the Lectures.
1951 saw the publication of Self Analysis, a very practical self-help volume giving a way to improve memory, reaction time and general ability.
Also in 1951, Science of Survival was published, a 506-page volume outlining and describing in detail the relationship of Man to the physical universe and an exact pattern for the prediction of human behavior.
Then came A History of Man, with its extraordinary account of evolution and past lives as revealed in Dianetic and Scientology processing." This was the explorer again, setting out into uncharted territory to return with truths that at first could only seem real to those who followed and saw for themselves.
Pressure was brought to bear on L. Ron Hubbard to prevent the publication of A History of Man on the grounds that it would appear literally unbelievable and damage his reputation. But he, secure in the tradition of the true researcher and explorer, published what he had found, pointing out at the same time that two-thirds of the world's population still held religious traditions aligned to the basic premises of A History of Man.
In 1952, L. Ron Hubbard published Scientology 8-80, which described the physical manifestations of thought and past identities in terms of flows and ridges surrounding the body.
The data was pouring forth. A gate long locked by superstition and fear had been thrown open.
A new series of lectures was delivered in Philadelphia, also in 1952, in course format: The Philadelphia Doctorate Course. These lectures, all of which were preserved on tape and are available today, went into great details about the behavioral patterns of the spirit -- a breathtaking delineation of the spiritual landscape he was now surveying.
Many awards and honors were offered and conferred on L. Ron Hubbard. He did accept an honorary Doctor of Philosophy given in recognition of his outstanding work on Dianetics and, "as an inspiration to the many people ... who had been inspired by him to take up advanced studies in this field ..."
A historic milestone in the person life of L. Ron Hubbard and in the history of Dianetics and Scientology was passed in February, 1954, with the founding of the first Church of Scientology. This was in keeping with the religious nature of the tents dating from the earliest days of research. It was obvious that he had been exploring religious territory right along. And whatever the name given to the technique or study and whatever way it had been interpreted by skeptics or sensation-mongers, it was apparent to those with a sense of history and Man's ages-old spiritual quest that this was indeed the realm of the soul and its havens.
And Dianetics and Scientology were snowballing across the United States and reaching other shores -- England first of all. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, was everywhere. As early as 1951 the publisher Casini had brought out the first Italian edition in Rome.
In 1954 there was another lecture series, in Phoenix, Arizona. These were startling talks on the qualities and fundamental nature of all life. Today they can be studied in book form: The Phoenix Lectures. It was in this series that he described The Axioms of Scientology, those self-evident truths which provide the philosophical foundation for the entire religion.
And in 1955, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia authorized L. Ron Hubbard to celebrate marriages there.
The search and research went on. The spiritual frontiers being tackled were those which had stopped many of history's greatest men. A search for the source of all life was turning up new ways in which the data could be used to benefit Man. Thousands of people were being audited now, finding out for themselves what could be achieved beyond the barriers of supposition and fixed ideas.
Another new honor was to come his way when, on November 13th, 1957, The International Oceanographic Foundation, with headquarters in Miami, Florida, made him a Fellow of the Society, "by virtue of contributions to the advancement and extension of knowledge and discovery in oceanography and the marine sciences."
Reaching the end of the fifties, L. Ron Hubbard decided once again that it was time to move on. This time it was to England that he would travel, there to find a home which could become an international center for the study of Dianetics and Scientology.
Saint Hill Manor, a vast and beautiful Georgian residence in the green hills of Sussex, was to be that home and that center. Increasingly effective techniques had been developed for the further liberation of the spirit and the exploration he now conducted was leading inevitably to a goal of total spiritual freedom, the ages-long quest of Man's greatest religious leaders.
On a literally "down-to-earth" level, though, L. Ron Hubbard was moving in a direction new even for him. 1959 and 1960 saw him, now firmly established at Saint Hill, conducting a series of revolutionary experiments on plants in a fully-equipped greenhouse laboratory on the Manor grounds. On September 25, 1959, a local paper was able to record that, "L. Ron Hubbard ... whose researches in plant life at the Manor look like revolutionizing horticulture, has carried out an experiment which points to the fact that plants react in much the same way to certain situations as do human beings."
And under the headline "Hubbard Seen by TV Millions," London's "Garden News" reported that, "... it was this discovery that took interviewer Alan Whicker to East Grinstead. There Hubbard demonstrated his experiments with an electric galvanometer (E-Meter *) on a geranium plant. The reaction of the plant to the threat or "fear of death" ... was shown by the oscillation of the needle on the galvanometer.
"Viewers (of the Cliff Michelmore 'Tonight' program) had good scenes of the large experimental laboratory and gardens at East Grinstead and must have formed a favourable impression on this most likeable and confident personality."
The plants were reacting on the E-Meter. Tearing off a twig or a leaf produced definite reactions not attributable to movement of the plant.
And there were other experiments. Ways were found to successfully raise plants from seeds normally planted in the Spring -- in September ! And an exact X-ray treatment of seeds resulted in larger vegetables and the growing of plants not normally suited to the English climate. In a country where the subject is taken seriously indeed, "Garden News" stated that "Current experiments he is conducting are 25 years in advance of today's methods and ideas."
This proved prophetic for 13 years subsequent to L. Ron Hubbard's findings, experiments on plant life reaction in Swiss, German, Russian, American, British and Canadian scientific institutions have validated his findings in rigorous test conditions.
But reporters weren't the only ones converging on Saint Hill. Scientologists had good reason to make the trip there from the far corners of the earth, for at Saint Hill, in 1961, he instituted The Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, to bring practitioners of Dianetics and Scientology up-to-date with the latest developments.
Other, higher training courses were begun as the power of the materials uncovered grew to unprecedented magnitude.
At the root of all the research was the one guiding principle: does the data discovered and the method of its application lead to a direct improvement in the condition of the human spirit? Academic speculation could play no part in the development of a religious philosophy which, above all, had to work. Nor could such have been expected from a man this familiar with the ways and pitfalls of life on this planet. An Ivory Tower is no place to hang an Explorers Club flag.
1965 began with L. Ron Hubbard's election to membership in the National Geographic Society. But 1965 held momentous treasures in store for Scientologists and, indeed, for all men and women.
For more than two millenia Man had dreamed of a spiritual state where, free of his own mental aberrations, he would be truly himself. L. Ron Hubbard called this state "Clear.*" And, at Saint Hill, in August of 1965, he announced the attainment of Clear.
The dream of Buddha, attained by the few, was a reality. Man could be Clear.
And the reality which was and is Clear was to be available to all who followed the exact route he had laid out. This route he called The Bridge. For it was as a span across the abyss of misery and degradation and sorrow to a higher plateau of ability and happiness.
The explorer had reached the land he foresaw.
And, in 1966, having paved the way to Clear so that it was safe and sure for others to walk, the Founder resigned from any official administrative capacity in Scientology to devote all of his time and energies in the following years to even loftier looking.
It was then he discovered and developed the astonishing materials above Clear now known as the Advanced Courses. These are the eight OT * sections, enabling one who has attained Clear to regain abilities never before accurately credited to the human spirit, as an Operating Thetan, a spiritual being operating independently of the laws of the physical universe.
In July of 1966, OT I and OT II were released and, during the last months of 1967, came the breakthrough of OT III.
A research accomplishment of immense magnitude, OT III has been called "The Wall of Fire." Here are contained the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy. The end result of OT III is truly the stuff of which dreams are spun: the return of full self-determinism and complete freedom from overwhelm.
The formation of a new Scientology group dates from this same period. Hearing of L. Ron Hubbard's plans for further exploration and research into, among other things, past civilizations, many Scientologists wanted to join him and help. They adopted the name "Sea Organization."
Then came the "ideal expedition." Actually an exploration into both time and space, it is fully described in this book. Free of organizational duties and aided by the first Sea Org members, L. Ron Hubbard now had the time and facilities to confirm in the physical universe some of the events and places he had encountered in his journeys down the track of time. And so we have Mission Into Time, the voyage in which he combined all the know-how of a life's work on land and sea and with the mind and spirit.
The excitement of the expedition generated greater interest in this new Sea Org and more and more Scientologists wanted to join. Inevitably the Sea Org, whose colloquial name stuck, grew and grew and today is an integral part of the Church of Scientology.
January 1968, then saw the release of OT Sections IV, V and VI as a sequence of astounding spiritual abilities to be reached. And, in September of 1970 came OT VII. OT VIII has yet to be released.
These OT Sections and the abilities and awarenesses they restore to the individual are the greatest gifts to Man of a great man.
Latest in a long series of honours, L. Ron Hubbard, in July of 1970, was awarded the key to the City of Long Beach, California, by the city's mayor. It was accepted on his behalf by his daughter, Diana.
And still the momentous expedition continues through the seventies. Today, Scientology's Founder lives with hi wife, Mary Sue, and three of their children: Quentin, 19; Suzette, 18; and Arthur, 15. Their oldest daughter, Diana, 21, is happily married.
Today, L. Ron Hubbard explores the future as he always has. His life work continues unabated. His unrelenting desire to raise the intelligence, ability and spiritual integrity of all men and women is ever leading him to new crossroads and hitherto unexplored realms of life and the human spirit.