We’re after this: we’re after bringing up the capabilities of a being. So we want to know what a being is and then we want to bring his capabilities up to that ideal. That’s our ambition. —L. Ron Hubbard

In the fall of 1952, L. Ron Hubbard was deep into an intense and sustained exploration of the nature, abilities and potentials of the human spirit.

The discoveries were astounding. Drawing on all tools of research including the technologies of twentieth-century science, Mr. Hubbard had moved far beyond anything even conceived of by past investigators, not only identifying the actual energy of life itself, but precisely measuring the electronics of human thought. In England to establish Britain’s first professional school, he detailed these breakthroughs in a series of evening lectures, available today as Source of Life Energy.

Yet so rapid was the pace of his research at this crucial period that even as he gave those lectures, he was already advancing into a new phase of discovery, one that expanded and further clarified all previous developments. And in one pivotal statement to students enrolled on a new Professional Course in London in November, he explained why, for the first time, the material transcended even the scope of survival:

“We suddenly step outside of a continuous existence along a span of time. We have something else, something new and that would be beingness, which wouldn’t have any relationship to the span of time called the MEST universe, but would have something to do with spans of time but not necessarily. Beingness could exist independent of a span of time.”

What followed was a journey of adventure, step by step and breakthrough by breakthrough, into a wholly new and uncharted realm. Encompassing everything from Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health to Scientology 8-80, here was an introduction to the universe of theta itself. And whereas these revelations crossed a new frontier of discovery, they also formed the prelude to all L. Ron Hubbard would unveil the following month in the Philadelphia Doctorate Course. Indeed, he was concurrently at work on a new book, Scientology 8-8008, whose aim embodied the central theme of all he taught during these London lectures: to reduce the importance and seriousness of the MEST universe and its authority and to increase the ability to build and create a universe of one’s own.

Here, then, is the moment that defines a permanent shift in orientation in life from MEST to theta and to the threshold of OT. Containing the technology that bridges from Scientology 8-80 to Scientology 8-8008, these lectures not only provide a comprehensive introduction to the universe of one’s own true beingness, they contain Mr. Hubbard’s first full exploration of Cause:

“Don’t lose sight of how high that elevation is. No god has ever been defined at that elevation. They have defined a god as being capable of making this universe. Somebody has occasionally thought maybe he made many universes. But nobody ever broke this down to a point of where he also imparted his ability to do this to everything he made and so defined, in terms of God, the human soul.”