The choice of actions and decisions requires skill and wisdom, not just self-interest or just group interest. Containing 21 precepts, "The Way to Happiness" helps guide one in those choices encountered in life. This might be the first nonreligious moral code based wholly on common sense. True joy and happiness are valuable. If one does not survive, no joy and no happiness are obtainable. Trying to survive in a chaotic, dishonest and generally immoral society is difficult. Any individual or group seeks to obtain from life what pleasure and freedom from pain that they can. Your own survival can be threatened by the bad actions of others around you. Your own happiness can be turned to tragedy and sorrow by the dishonesty and misconduct of others. I am sure you can think of instances of this actually happening. Such wrongs reduce one's survival and impair one's happiness. You are important to other people. You are listened to. You can influence others. The happiness or unhappiness of others you could name is important to you. Without too much trouble, using this book, you can help them survive and lead happier lives. While no one can guarantee that anyone else can be happy, their chances of survival and happiness can be improved. And with theirs, yours will be. It is in your power to point the way to a less dangerous and happier life.
Author, humanitarian and Founder of Dianetics and Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard is one of the most acclaimed figures of the modern age.
In a writing career spanning more than half a century, he was both a leading light of American fiction and the author of more than 35 million words of nonfiction—the single most embracive statement on the human mind and spirit, providing the only road to total spiritual freedom.
To date, more than 250 million copies of his works are in circulation worldwide, in 71 languages. All told, those works comprise over 3,000 recorded lectures and some 5,000 writings, including nineteen New York Times bestsellers.
Accordingly, and in testament to the magnitude of his literary legacy, there are his four Guinness World Records: most published author, most translated author, the author with the most audiobook titles and the single most translated non-religious work.
Yet the essence of L. Ron Hubbard’s legacy is perhaps best expressed in his simple declaration:
“I like to help others and count it as my greatest pleasure in life to see a person free himself of the shadows which darken his days.
“These shadows look so thick to him and weigh him down so that when he finds they are shadows and that he can see through them, walk through them and be again in the sun, he is enormously delighted. And I am afraid I am just as delighted as he is.”